Social Worker Reflection

and the Providence Hospital had to take all the responsibilities of funding the agency many budget cuts had to be done in order for the agency to stay open. Due to the lack of funds the majority of the employees had to be laid off, the English teacher and the parenting class teacher had to be let go, also they had to move Mobile from Semmes. Because of this changes the number of individuals the agency can serves has become lower, the agency relies on volunteers to help with the interpretation in medical appointments. (S. Vaca-Diez, personal communication, November 12, 2014). The agency accepted Social Work students from the University of South Alabama to do their internship with them. The author started her internship for the fall semester of 2014. While on the agency, the intern’s job was to schedule appointments, interpretate in medical appointments every Monday and Wednesday at the women health center, or at other via phone with medical appointments and governmental interviews the rest of the days. The intern meet her client “Susana” for the first time, when she was seeking help scheduling an appointment for the women health center to get a pregnancy test. Since that first meeting the intern was assigned to “Susana’s” case.

As part of our preparation for placement, we were required to make a role play on a given scenario in pairs. Each of us had to play the role of the social work student and the service user. We chose to use Miss Allen’s scenario, because we both had experience of working the adults. In preparation for this task, we met twice to clarify our roles and discussed the scenario as we understood it. We also discussed how we were going to assess Miss Allen, and what help we would offer her. The preparation was an important part of our task because it challenged us to think of the interview within its widest context, taking into account the particular needs of Miss Allen, agency policy and procedure and ourselves as student social

At my first observation, I shadowed Doctor Lindsay Matthews who was a social worker in the emergency room department of the hospital. As a pre-medicine student, I had never considered a social worker as an important job in the hospital. I did not even know we had one. When I thought of social workers, I thought of people who dealt with kids and people with

The story Social work in the ER by Ogden Rogers was an eye opening read because, the medical field has always fascinated me. The idea of social workers, and medical professionals working together is interesting to me. Dr. Rodgers job in the ER seems to be both sad, but also self-fulfilling. He was able to switch from telling a family member their love one has passed, to aiding a lost teenager to a way out of trouble.

Social Work is a career defined as “work carried out by trained personal with the aim of alleviating the conditions of those in need of help or welfare”. Social work varies in several fields, social workers work as part of multi-disciplinary teams with child welfare organizations, adoption and foster care agencies, hospitals, schools, prisons, mental health institutions, and more. Social work may leave the impression that it’s an easy field because it is assumed that all social workers do is serve others and manage paperwork but that is only a small chunk of the job. Social workers must deal with the ethical and emotional aspect of helping others. As a social worker, it is critical to comply with the National Association of Social Workers

I interviewed the Bonneville County Jail social worker, Brian Mecham. Social Workers at the jail are mainly responsible for helping the inmates, doing assessments for individuals that need medications, group and individual discussions and also helping them with learning more life skills. Being their advocate and helping them go through changing processes is all part of the job. Mecham and his wife are both a part of the social work profession. Although seeing two completely different sides with Mecham working in the jail and his wife in the hospice field, Mecham emphasized the importance of finding what you want to do in the social work field. “You never know what is going to impress you to do one thing or the other.”

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

The past couple semesters we have focused on theories, techniques, role-plays, etc. However, I think learning more about the human services profession as a whole is extremely beneficial. For this assignment, I conducted an interview with a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) named Joshua Feinberg at Chestnut Ridge Hospital. Joshua has been working as a social worker for four years. He enjoys the counseling aspect more than anything as being a social worker. At Chestnut Ridge Hospital, LICSW are technically called a “Clinical Therapist”. They are called clinical therapists because they mostly do counseling at this facility. During the course of the interview, the questions focused on the professional roles, positives, negatives,

“Diversity makes for a rich tapestry. We must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value, no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture,” by Maya Angelou. I met my interviewee, Bill Hemphill through a mutual relative in my family who was generous enough to provide his contact information. Although he was he was a busy man, he agreed to let me interview him at his office. At first, I thought he was very strict and sympathetic , as a social worker should .To become a qualified Medical Social Worker you must be hard working, educated and dedicated. Upon meeting him he seem very courteous to those around him; he came up to me and shook my hand and praised me from becoming a “fellow” social worker. My impressions of him were that he was a delightful man who would give the world to his patients. We walked to his office and he shut the door behind to give us privacy. He bluntly said “ask any question you like about me and my career.”

According to Duffy (2016), there are two different types of social work practice when it comes to working alongside a disadvantaged population. The first kind, is used more often and is called conventional social work approach, which focuses its attention on undertaking assessment and ensuring that individuals are families are received the correct support through organised services and support. On the other hand, critical social work, the less utilized approach aims to challenge the inequalities and oppression in society, by targeting the societal structure via activism and research, in order to bring forth criticism and questions on discourses attached to particular marginalised groups. The author proposes that both social work practices are important, however, critical social work should be emphasized on more frequently, especially with groups such as the ageing population as it targets the stubborn discourses (Duffy, 2016). Mattsson broadens critical social work, by relating it to critical reflection. Critical theorists have proposed critical reflection as a method to understand how social work practices can uphold oppression due to seemingly everyday actions, words and attitudes. Therefore, this can have an implication on how social workers execute their practice, as ordinary and structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies may senselessly abide social workers to uphold and reproduce social oppression, even though they might be well-intentioned. Critical reflection

I recently conducted an interview with a Social Worker by the name Kathryn Schley. She has her Masters of Social Work, she is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and is currently the Homeless Services Program Manager. The company she works at is called Southlight, a private non-profit health care organization. SouthLight’s mission is to, “meet the holistic needs of individuals facing addiction, mental illness, and chronic health challenges, by delivering compassionate and coordinated behavioral healthcare with successful outcomes” (SouthLight, 2012). Throughout this interview she provides advice, personal experiences, and tips for success in the Social Work profession.

“The most challenging part of this job is being the person that has to tell a family member that the patient isn't at a level for rehabilitation and is possibly going to need a long term care facility for the rest of their lives. Just generally having to be the bearer of bad news, and not being able to meet a family/patient's expectations. It is never fun to crush people's hope.” Does he/she feel like he/she is making a difference and how does he/she know? “While it doesn't always seem like medical social workers make a huge difference, I do get to see successful discharges every day.

The functions that the social worker plays in this part is helping students who have a difficult time with their family or have a disability. Maintaining a good relationship with the students while working with the families with everything that is needed or that can be helped with. The social worker will stay in touch with every student and family to see how everything is going. Sometimes you will have that family that is struggling so as a social work find ways to help.

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.