Being A Competent Social Worker

Donahue, P. (2005, July-September). Current perspective and future directions for social work practice and research. Families in Society, 86.3, 359-366.

Joan’s family was selected for this because she has experienced parenting, marriage, and divorced at the tender age of twenty-five. She has also taken on other significant responsibilities such as purchasing a home and a vehicle in addition to raising two children solely on her income. Joan is driven and motivated to pursue and finish her education; rear her children in a stable home environment, despite facing the challenges of single parenting. She does not receive any type of financial spousal or child support from her ex-husband. Joan’s ex-husband is currently employed as a police officer and lives with another woman. The ex-husband rarely interacts with the children; he sees them only when his mother keeps them for Joan. Joan heavily relies on her parents and other family members to assist her with finances and childcare.

One of the most important skill to have as a social worker is to identify your client’s strengths. All social workers should have knowledge of an effective leader that are identified by their strengths or limitations in order to improve the one’s they identify. There are several evidence-based assessments that help identify the strengths and limitations of any individual. Thus, it is also necessary to obtain other perspective based on your leadership strengths or limitations in order to improve or strengthen those qualities. The self-assessments used through this paper will help me develop a plan that points out my challenges, help expand and improve on my strengths (Human Services Guide, 2015).

Alot of people do not notice the mammoth problem drug abuse is in the United States, and how fast it is increasing in our society. Billions of dollars are spent each year to combat drug treatment but more are spent on buying and selling narcotics. Many people think they

In order to be a competent social worker one must know the community that he/she is serving. There is a need for cultural competence because knowing the families and communities you are working with is more important than ever. Where we live is growing and changing everyday, which can create a challenge but also great opportunities. This paper will examine a small little town in Montana called Helena and will show how different populations can be.

The importance of understanding the community cannot be overstated. Most people access resources at the community level, regardless of whether the program funding originates at the local, state, or national level. It is at the community level that government is potentially most responsive to individual citizens. Quality-of-life issues are most profoundly confronted at the local level.

This case study is on assessing, planning, and intervening with families. During these type of cases, one must be familiar with the general practice with individuals, families, groups, and communities. It is important to have good communication skills, critical thinking, tolerance, setting boundaries, emotional intelligence and organization skills. There are many skills needed when working on cases.

In Human services, competence is your ability as individuals to expand, and appropriately influence building your success on the job. The combination of observing and measurable knowledge, abilities, skills, and individuals personal attributes to contribute enhancement on employee performance and result in organizational success. Social workers ethical principle are to practice within their areas of competence and develop and enhance their professional expertise. Social workers continually strive to increase their professional knowledge and skills and to apply them in practice. Social workers should aspire to contribute to the knowledge base of the profession(Code of Ethics (English and Spanish) - National Association of Social Workers 2008).

Choosing to pursue this education to become a Social Service Worker has been a life long passion; living a so called “roller coaster” of a life and being subjected to many things, enjoyable and regretful has helped me in many ways to comprehend what it is to truly have human empathy and compassion for others. A veteran at life in its lowest and highest forms, and feeling completely alone and hopeless at times; being subjected to sexual and physical abuse, seeing what alcohol and drugs do to families, how poverty effects children and loved ones. Fortunately there were a few individuals that reached out, bring me up out of the darkness. This is something that I feel in my heart that needs to be given back, for me to provide someone the empowerment that others have given me, to show that there is hope and give reason to keep going, individuals who feel desperate, help to raise their chances, dreams and the basic needs of life. Having the knowledge of education to give these resources for expert referrals to assist people in desperate times, so they can live the life that is deserving and fulfilling to them, therefore this is my ultimate goal!

Social work is a recognised profession with its own code of ethics and professional standards. It is a complex profession, and social workers have to have a sound knowledge base combined with the skills to carry out their tasks effectively and professionally. The process of developing professional capacity, capabilities and expertise, is an essential, crucial and ongoing part of the social work profession. The College of Social Work created the Professional capability framework (PCF) for the purpose of education and professional development. The nine domains signify various aspects of being a competent social worker. The PCF sets out the stages and the level of knowledge required for social workers as they progress from students to more

If there is one specific lesson I could take away from life it would be helping others. Everyone in this world is born for a reason and sometimes we are not able to discover what specifically brought us here. I was born to help others in those of difficult times of needs. I was born to learn from others and inspire human beings to do better for themselves. One of my favorite quotes is by Danny Thomas, the founder of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He once said “All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don’t discover why. Success has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It’s what you do for others.” Danny Thomas’s quote inspires me to help others in order to be successful in life. If the world didn’t have professions that required helping others, humans would never be able to learn from mistakes and promote social change. Social work is a profession that requires helping others. Not everyone can be a social worker, and those who are fortunate enough to be a social worker have the opportunity to learn something new about others every day.

Everyone can help one another but it is not everyone that has the necessary skills to help people properly. Competency is very important when working with people and being in the school of social work, we are taught the nine competencies and how to use them. Poulin & Matis, S. (2015) wrote, “According to Drisko (2014), competence refers to “the ability of an individual to perform a task,” further adding that “the task must be performed fully and properly” (p. 416)” (p. 1). Not everybody can call themselves a social worker because for them to be able to do that, they have to be able to perform the tasks of a social work to properly and in order to do that they have to go through different sets of training and course for them to be able to execute the job right. Training is not just a one-time thing; it is an ongoing processes that professional have to go through in order to grow in the field. Poulin, J., & Matis, S. (2015) also wrote that “McKnight (2013) proposes that competence is an “ongoing ability” to “integrate knowledge, skills, judgment, and professional attributes in order to practice safely and ethically” within one’s professional scope (p. 460)” (p. 1). It is a way to build on to what you have already learn and by doing that your knowledge will increase, judgment call will increase and you will be able to “practice safe and ethically.”

I was in grade 10 when I thought of becoming a social worker. As social worker practitioner the fields that interest me to work in is domestic violence and child abuse because I want to make change to the society. Also Mahatma Gandhi was my major inspiration through this quote “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”. Than an idea came to me, why not involve my contribution to the wide variety of communities. My communication with school counsellors and social workers has impacted my choice of desiring to study social work. I realised that if I have had a chance of seeing a social worker when I was young, things would have been much easier and less stressful. I want to provide opportunities that I did not encounter to other people. This essay will reflect my past experience, motivation and why I want to be a social worker, values, beliefs and theory of practice.

For most of the last half of the twentieth century, social work practice with families was based on an understanding of social systems. One of the concepts of social systems theory contends that the “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. When applied to a family this means that the

Law has come to play a very important part in social work practice. It can be said that the understanding of law underpins and provides duties and power, whilst understanding the statutory legal requirements is essential for effective, fair, anti-discriminatory practice (Brammer 2007). Due to the shear amount of laws and legislation that have been passed or updated over the last decade, the role of the social worker, metaphorically speaking could be said to have become somewhat of a chameleon, forever adapting to their legal environment, whilst trying hard to remain true to the traditional values of the role of a social worker. It is this conflict between law and social work values that will be analyzed in this paper. From looking at the values that underpin the modern day social worker and then looking at some of the main legislation relating to adult services such as the Mental Health Act 2007, the Community Care Act 1996, Mental Capacity Act 2005 the relationship between these Acts’ and how they sit with social work values will then be discussed.