Reflection On Social Work

From my earlier process recording, I was able to see how my technique change over time when engaging clients. From my earlier process recording with Donavon, I notice I was doing all the work during our sessions. I was asking questions that I needed answers to and not allowing Donavon feels like he was controlling our session. Although I was able to engage with him I realize I struggled with asking him certain questions. I also realized that I was focused on his family and his living situation and not what he wanted

My goals for the session were to introduce myself to the client, understand the client’s concerns, learn her background and current situation for several areas relevant to her life and her concerns, such as medical, family, legal, educational, and vocational. I

Before beginning the Master of Social Work program at Laurier I figured I had a strong understanding of what social work was. However, I quickly learned that I had only scratched the surface. I knew oppression existed, but I never understood the depth of it. I now know that I was afraid of it. It was easy for me to stay silent, because it was such a comfortable position to be in. Doing nothing meant I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. This was influenced by the privilege I had.

This was a very eye opening class for me. Coming from a mental health counselling background I have to admit it is a major difference in how social workers operate versus therapist. In this essay I will reflected on how this social work class has genuinely affected me, my strengths and weaknesses, and what I have taken away from this class. I always gain a great deal of satisfaction from helping others. I remember from middle school on through adulthood I was the go to person. If a person had an issue or needed to talk. I was the voice of reasoning. I was the one able to grab hold of certain resources if someone was in need

I was able to focus in on the strengths of the client along with providing the client the right to self-determination as to what she would like to do. I attempted to summarize what the client was saying to ensure the client felt understood and to clarify that I understood the situation and needs of the client along with her overall goal of being reunited with her children. There were areas for improvement which include expressing more empathy for the client’s overall situation. I failed to ask how certain things made the client feel. I could have expanded on how the client felt about the death of her grandmother, living in a half-way house, and being separated from her children. I also did not use lead-in responses as much as I could have. As the social worker, I should have expanded on the client’s willingness to be honest about her past and should have thanked her for doing so. This can be extremely difficult for clients to do and honesty is a key part of the working relationship that is being established during the

The class SW 6030 Human Development and the Social Environment has brought new insights and makes me see some topics in a different perspective. The critical reflection paper number one will integrate different concepts that I learned so far in this class.

In the prior session, the client detailed his family relationships, legal issues, and discussed how his father played a “role” in his life. The activity was selected as a way to get the client to think about someone important in his life and then later process the information. The client was to listen to my prompt and imagine opening an envelope with a letter inside. He would open the envelope, read the letter and visualize the letter for a few moments. After reading the letter he was instructed to explain who the letter was from and what the letter said.

Setting a boundary is an important core value in the field of social work. According to the Social Work Code of Ethics, “social workers should provide and represent themselves as competent only within the boundaries of their education, training, license, certification, consultation received, supervised experience, or other relevant professional experience” (Code of Ethics of the NASW). Professional helpers are generally compassionate people, but they also need to recognize the value of setting limits. This was the case when I worked as an adjunct instructor, which included providing individual tutoring. Sara Towns (name changed), a student and distant cousin, evoked the possible clouding of boundaries. For new social workers, this kind of reflection may be helpful as they define their roles. Through a series of professional and personal experiences with Sara, I learned that boundaries must be maintained to foster a positive relationship and prevent potential conflicts.

PER REPORTER: Kathy said one of her students by the name of (Shadavious) went to visit her father (David Lee) this weekend when she was told some disturbing information. According to Shandavious, there are four children living in the home with David Lee and one of them by the name of Staciera told her that David Lee makes her do things they should not be doing. Shandavious said Staciera told her David Lee threatened to taker her phone and tell her mother on her if she did not do what he told her to do. She also told her that at night David Lee comes and gets in the bed with her and makes her do unknown things to him. Shandavious said one of the other children (Kishona) living in the home told her that she sleeps on the top bump bed above Staciera,

I found that I need to make improvements in many respects. First, I need to improve my opening statement to make it more clearly and smoothly and give my client an open question to encourage her to talk about her issue. Moreover, I need to make an improvement on identifying specific emotions that clients are feeling. In this session, I failed to use “feeling” vocabulary to reflect her feelings and create an empathic environment. In addition, I need to learn not to let my own experience and judgement influence the helping process. For example, when my client was talking about how smoking habit took away her studying time, I was thinking, “exactly, bad habits always influence many students’ academic performance in a negative way.” Although I did not say it, I wanted to say this to help her feel accepted and understood. This may not what she was thinking, but I was thinking it because I have experienced it before. To effectively help people explore themselves, I should make an improvement in these

Overall, we had a great session. I believe I will incorporate Claire’s rules into the next session (She is a bit bossy). I hope this structure will help the session’s flow better. I will also begin working on the goals. I will record my voice reading a few times then record my client’s voice to play back on W’s

During the speaking turns I analyzed, I began to suggest to the client actions she could do to improve her situation. Surprisingly, during the speaking turns I asked the most closed questions, 20 percent of the helping skills I used were closed questions. Hindsight, I should have used more open questions. However, I believe that I was trying to really get my client thinking about how to improve her situation. I already had answers for the questions that I was asking her, perhaps not the best strategy. I decided to ask those questions more consciously and with a goal in mind. At the end, I even found myself saying, “So maybe I know we are wrapping up a little bit, but maybe something to carry with you, something may be to try is to see if number one if they have anything personally against you.” This phrase was informing my client about the helping session and a directive. These two skills had the highest helpfulness ratings, 7 and 6.5 respectively. I thought this phrase was helpful because it signaled the close of the helping session and specifically gave my client action items to do to improve her situation. However, I may have made an assumption about if my client wanted action items, even though that is my personal style. In the future, I will try to ask my

However, I may have not used all the skills necessary to draw out the client’s feelings and meaning in a therapeutic way (Ivey & Ivey, 2007). I used open ended and closed questions to gather more in depth information from the client. For example, “What are your expectations?” and “Would you be satisfied with your grades if your parents do not pressure you?” I also used encouragers such as head nods and repetition of key words stated by the client. I also summarized her story several times to clarify with the client that I was hearing her correctly. I felt that she was motivated to elaborate (Ivey & Ivey, 2007, pg 231). I also used some observation skills such as observing the client’s verbal and non verbal behaviours, e.g. her voice tone, eye contact and the way she was sitting at certain point in the session. While I listened to the tape, I realized that I had empathized and reflected on the client’s feelings a few times and this was done later in the interview. Not reflecting empathy earlier led the client to think that I did not understand her situation. Also, I imposed my values on the client by telling her that eighty percent is good even though she clearly stated that it is really bad for her. I thought this would have made her feel better but it did not. If I were to meet this client again for the same issue I would reflect empathy by saying the following: “Getting good grades means a lot to you. I can see

Every worthwhile journey begins with one step. My social work journey began when I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Utah in 2003. I thought my next step would be to immediately pursue a graduate degree. In my undergraduate career I had taken numerous classes from the College of Social and Behavioral Science and had done well in those classes. In my Social Work as a Profession course I had an assignment to shadow a social worker and write a paper about my experience. I chose to shadow my father-in-law, a social worker with over 30 years of experience, and in my paper I expressed my desire to go into the social work field. I knew I liked helping people. I knew I liked problem solving and critical thinking. I thought my 22 year-old self was ready to embark on that journey, but I wasn’t. I realize now that what I lacked at graduation was one crucial step… perspective. Over the past twelve years I have gained that much needed perspective and have taken many steps forward in my journey, and with those steps and that increased perspective, I now feel more fully prepared to begin my social work career.

In this reflection essay, I will demonstrate my learning experience in this counseling session. I will talk about my strength, weakness, verbal, nonverbal expression, including improvements needed to become more efficient in the social work profession. I will also speak about a learning tool called process recording in Social work profession. This process recording was done with the help, with my fantastic Daughter Kendra Shelton as the client and my incredible husband Michael McVay as Video Recorder /producer.