Reflection On Social Work

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.

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.

I plan to use my Masters of Social Work degree to work with children who have experienced abuse or domestic violence. I have already assisted in situations where children of witnesses or survivors of domestic violence during my field work. This population is challenging and every client’s case is different. Children are innocent and must have their rights protected despite their innocence and understanding. Working with this population takes patience and energy. I believe I have both of these traits due to my undergraduate education and field work, which have properly prepared me for this field. In particular, I have worked with a client who came to the Crisis Center for South Suburbia with seven children. The children had witnessed and even possibly experienced the domestic violence. This client case was the very first I was assigned to. In the beginning, it was quite difficult to help the children heal from the experiences they witnessed. The majority of the children were nonverbal and aggressive. I worked with the over the course of six weeks through group therapy. By playing with the children and gaining their respect, I was able to communicate with them effectively and assist them with life after leaving their mother’s abuser. This situation has given me experience and knowledge to assist children in similar situations in my future social work career. This population interests me simply because it is one that will unfortunately never go away. Due to this, children in abusive or domestic violence situations need professionals who will go above and beyond to advocate for them. I believe that I am one of these professionals. If accepted in Aurora University’s Masters of Social Work program, I plan to concentrate in child welfare. These are my professional aspirations for my future career as a social

When I am working with a client, we both need to work together in order for the client to progress. The social worker brings their knowledge, understanding, identifying needs, and a strengths perspective. The client must be motivated to change and have the ability to do so. The chapter emphasized the importance of treating the client as an unique individual, and not categorizing them. The client needs to be able to express positive and negative emotions, and receive sympathetic responses from the social worker. They need to be valued as a person, and not judged. Decisions affecting their lives need to be made by the clients. The client will need to keep confidential information about themselves secret.

You made a lot of good points throughout. I enjoyed the point you made about using language familiar to the client, but also keeping the professionalism in the conversation. That is such a hard boundrie to distinguish especially the first few times you meet with a client. Although some modification may be necessary there is always a standard we must uphold to keep the professional relationship between us and the client. I was also very intrigued by your point about expecting perfection from social workers. I had never thought about it like that but it is true that we seem to be held at different standards of perfection. I think the pressure is there because in our line of work a little mistake could have detrimental effects

In some social work settings, people may contact an agency or hospital intake department and have no more than brief contacts. Social workers can have an impact on people’s lives, even though their connection is of short duration. On the front line, social workers need to be equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to provide effective screening, assessment, and referral with the intention of favorable results. This was the case early in my career, as a drug counseling coordinator, at an addiction council. This reflection may be helpful to social work students or new practitioners. In an intake interview with a caller, I learned how building rapport, showing empathy, being non-judgmental, and offering hope created positive

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.

I believe this kind of client would be challenging to service as a helping professional, because of the problems the children are forced experience. As a helping professional there is great compassion for the children in this situation. The client would be challenging because she is aggressive and offensive to her children and herself. This harm is caused to the client and her children, because the mother has not dealt with the internal issue of her past childhood abuse trauma. This condition would be beyond challenging because the mother is only causing the same issue for her children. Guiding the mother on how she has to address her problems physically and mentally in

I had a great pleasure being in this class to learn the different stages of social work process, while reading the books, taking the quiz and in class activities has made it easy for me to understand and try to apply them to my everyday lifestyle. Social work practice has helped me develop the knowledge of the principles, values, and methods of becoming a social work. The first important process of a social worker is the engagement stage, this is when the social worker and the client have their first interaction. As a social worker you need to build the connection with your client to show them that you are here to help them. It is critical for social worker to be open to the client and establish a level of trust, active listening to ensure the clients is heard, and note taking notes. The second process is the assessment stage, this is when the social worker and client come to an agreement to the information shared by the client to develop strategies. Social worker uses this time to clarify with their client about the problematic they have, and work through the problem so they can work together to come up with an action plan. The third one is the intervention stage this point of the process is when you begin to planning. The social worker works with their client, begins to develop a plan with the client in order to accomplish goals that work targeting the issues. To ensure that the goals and objectives are clear to the client and the social worker, that nothing is misunderstood. At this stage the social work and the client execute to ensure their goals are being met. The evaluation is the last stage when the social worker receives feedback from the client about the process, and goal they set together to see if their goals were met. This stage is when social workers help their client independently continue to work on the issues on their own. If client feels that specific issues were not satisfied or addressed correctly than it is necessary to begin the assessment and implementation stage again.

As of now, I have learned a lot of new information. I have also expanded on some of my knowledge, as I have taken Human Behavior with Kathryn last semester.

My social work foundation practicum is located at the Salvation Army: Red Shield in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. When comparing the differences between learning from my field placement and in a classroom setting, they are vastly different. For example, in a classroom, I’m learning about theories and best practices of the social work profession. At my field placement, I’m experiencing a “hands-on” perspective of social work. The classroom provides examples of situations with clients. Whereas my placement on the other hand, will give me a “real in-person” experience with clients as they occur. In the classroom, I’m learning from a professor and other students’ perspectives from some of them working in the field. With my field placement, I’m learning from the perspectives of clients, caseworkers, Veteran Affairs (VA) representatives, field instructor, and the program director.

When analyzing my path to the social work profession, I have come to identify my first personal experience with social work as being when my grandmother was diagnosed with brain cancer when I was fifteen years old. I was one of the primary caretakers, alongside my mother, while my grandma spent her final days with hospice care in our home. Through this experience, I was able to draw on skills that appeared to be inherent within my being, such as an empathic spirit and a desire to encourage the strengths that are present in others.

My first few days at Bethel Home have been nothing like sitting in the classroom, but I absolutely love it. I have learned that everything that I had been learning in the classroom had been preparing me for the first moments of my internship. I have been able to shadow the many responsibilities of a skilled nursing home social worker. I have experienced meeting individually with residents to establish a relationship, I also experienced meeting a multidisciplinary team who I can work alongside for nine months. I enjoy the experience of working with other professionals so that I can understand their viewpoints on situations. I find it interesting how I am recognizing things I’ve learned in classes that I am now experiencing in field such as dynamics between different professionals. After my first week, I am also realizing how important self-care is.

Beginning my undergraduate studies Bennett College for women, I was a Biology Major. On the first day of classes, I was up early and full of energy, I walked into my biology classes excited to do crazy labs and cut stuff open. By midterms, I knew biology was not for me. I no longer felt excited about my courses and I didn’t have the passion for biology like my classmates did. While in freshwomen orientation I met two social work majors and we talked about our classes and what we wanted to do in our different fields. I became incredibly interested in the social work field. I learned that I could be a medical social worker, school counselor, Marriage and Family Therapist, Clinical social worker and so much more.