The Case Of Marie And Her Sons

Brenda Combs is a strong, determined women who has experienced the roughest parts of life and who has made a positive impact on people around her. When Combs developed a partying habit, she also got into the dangerous habit of taking drugs. Combs eventually became a cocaine addicted who would fall in and out of bad relationships. Then, one day when she got her shoes stolen from her, Combs decided to turn her life around and gain her dignity back. The first challenge she faced while changing her life around was to try and stay strong in rehab as it was “the hardest she had ever known” (paragraph 18). Combs determination eventually led her to a bachelor’s degree from the University of Phoenix and a job at the StarShine charter school.

Social workers are often on the forefront in the fight against any form of oppression as against the marginalized society. These demanding but oftentimes unappreciated efforts are often addressed through the conscious use of skills and knowledge of the problems being solved against. When such oppression is however committed against them within the organization where they work, the social worker seems to be mum about the situation, or their efforts perhaps are rendered inutile. North America social workers experience this form of oppression within the social service institution. For this reason, I examine the arguments why the social workers need to be aware of the existence of this unique form of oppression. In order to eliminate oppression in the social welfare workplace, the social workers, in their pursuit of social change, must have a competent understanding of the theory around racism and oppression.

From our text, Race, Class, and Gender, we read Unit III E: The Structure of Social Institutions; The State and Violence: Policing the National Body: Sex, Race, and Criminalization; The Color of Justice; Rape, racism, and the Law; and Interpreting and Experiencing Anti-Queer Violence : Race, Class, and Gender Differences among LGBT Hate Crime Victims. We also encountered and excerpt from Social Work Practice With a Difference; The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. The first four reading from our text explore the association of the manner in which state power organizes race, class, and gender. We also get a view of how the intersectional approach of race, class, and gender may help us to understand some forms

This week, the readings touched on issues relating to resistance and social change. Martinez explains how the U.S. has struggled to see issues of race beyond just Black and white. She also stresses the importance of including other races when speaking on these issues. Hernandez argues that the mainstream feminist movement fails to include minority and low-income women and the issues they face. She states that the movement only benefits white middle class women. Collins explains how people’s ideas and behaviors actualize other people’s inequalities. She says comparing levels of oppression is a competition for attention and instead we should use a new mentality that interlocks these inequalities. Harris

Race is a particularly powerful way of maintaining the dominance of the social group in power. The construct of race is about stratification, which puts a racially justified hierarchy among people in society to keep the dominant social group in power. Stratification can influence the resources an individual receives. Therefore, social workers sometimes use a theoretical approach called, Critical Race Theory (CRT), to guide their work in making certain general assumptions about issues of power, race, ethnicity, and racism. This is because CRT is an alternative theory that offers a radical lens to make sense of racial inequality in society, which could prove useful when analyzing a client’s situation. The

I hope to use my law degree to change the lives of mistreated children from all over the world. As a victim of child abuse, serving this community has become a part of my identity. My aspiration to represent mistreated children, albeit vitalized by personal turmoil, has been intensified through professional experience. Through my work with Child Protective Services (CPS), during an internship with a family law attorney, I developed my passion for advocating on behalf of children. While working on CPS cases, I have seen how the lives of children can improve through diligent efforts by authority figures. However, I have also witnessed the shortcoming of the system as well where there is room for improvement. These vulnerable children deserve

The job of a child welfare worker appears to be a demanding profession that promotes the child’s safety, but also strengthens the family organization around them in order to successfully raise the children. This child welfare workers work in the system known as the Child Protective Services whose initiative is to protect the overall welfare of the child. The short novel From the Eye of the Storm: the Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker by Cynthia Crosson-Tower demonstrates the skills necessary to deal with the practice of social work along with both its challenges and its happy moments. The novel consists of some of the cases involving Tower’s actual career in social work. In reading the book, I was able to experience some of the actual

This article was published in The New York Times in October of 2011. The article illustrates the daily challenges faced by multiracial families. Based on where the article was published, Saulny’s intended audience was the 18-49 year-old demographic as this makes up 64% of The New York Times readers (Mahapatra, 13). Roughly 80% of readers of the The New York Times have had some post-secondary education or graduated from college, indicating a highly educated audience (Mahapatra, 13). Readers also tend to lean more liberal; meaning, readers likely hold the basic liberal ideologies of equality for all and social justice as their core values (Mahapatra, 13). All of these demographics come together to create and audience that is full of young and middle age families in the middle class. Saulny’s goal for this article is to convey the social challenges multi-racial families face on a daily basis and evoke an emotional response. Saulny effectively evokes an emotional response in her audience to help garner more acceptance for multi-racial families by including anecdotes of the families’ experiences. These anecdotes help move the audience emotionally because they show the challenges multi-racial families experience, which doesn’t sit well with a majority of the liberal-leaning readers. However, with all the challenges highlighted in this article, a reader may start to assume that it is un-wise

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 non-fictional book, “The Lost Children of Wilder; The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care” written by a reporter of The New York Times Nina Berstein, is an inspiring story about the lack of proper funding and placement of children in the foster care system in New York City from before 1972 to today. This book in specifics focus ' on an attorney and child advocate Marcia Lowery who respectfully stood up to the entire foster care system of New York City using the face of then, thirteen year old Shirley Wilder and her soon born son Lamont Wilder.

One of the most challenging professions for African American males is social work. As a social worker, I have realized that I have to work under two domains. The first one is to work under the race identity and the second one is to work as a class identity. Although I am proud of being an African American, I usually feel sorry for myself being from unprivileged social class in the American society. The identity of being an African American male has affected my social work in many aspects. This is because it has made it impossible to carry out my professional duties because of negative perspectives and discrimination in the society. African American social workers are considered to be incompetent by the rest of the society hence making it impossible to delegate duties without any form of discrimination. This paper provides my own reflections as an African American male in the field of social work and how this identity has affected my practice in community work and advocacy duties.

At 11 years old she saw her mother deceased in a casket. She gave birth to her first baby at the age of 16 and had five more children to relieve issues of feeling empty and alone. As the pressures of teen pregnancy, poverty and motherhood mount Diane turns to crack cocaine and neglect her then young children. Her eldest daughter reports her drug use to her teachers which results in the removal of all six of Diane’s children into foster care for a period of 10 years. During that time Diane turns to her community drug rehabilitation center, Child welfare services, her religion and her therapist for help in recovering from her addictions and for help in reuniting with her children.

Feminist and critical race theory both address privilege and social oppression in society. Though both theories seek to address the same issues, they have wildly different approaches to understanding the mechanisms behind them. It is imperative to know how these theories acknowledge oppression as well as privilege in order to decide whether it is appropriate to utilize them when practicing as a social worker. In doing so, the social worker will be able to more effectively know when to correctly apply one of these theories as well as when it would be inadvisable to do so.

My journey began as the oldest of three children, in an isolated rural area, on my grandparent’s alfalfa farm. Prior to high school graduation, in 1991, I have memories of travelling the I5 corridor for specialized care. After leaving home, I found myself as a single mother and homeless. As I held my baby in my arms, cold and hungry, I rejected my circumstances. I was able to access resources and later earned an Associates of Science Degree in Criminal Justice. I have used my personal story, for women experiencing similar circumstance, as an advocate and as a parole and probation officer. I relocated to Klamath Falls five years ago, also a rural community. Since

Other things that I found interesting was (Newdestinyhousing.org) reported that 33.33 percentage of homeless people in New York City were survivors of domestic violence. (Newdestinyhousing.org) One does not think of things like that and just judges people who are homeless. They assume homeless people are lazy, but in reality that isn’t true at all. I stumbled upon (Woodbridgedvrt.org) and it laid out the different types of violence and it truly shocked me. (Woodbridgedvrt.org) So many people assume women can “just leave.” This is a horrible myth. If you have a child, how can you just leave and let your child live on the streets? You simple don’t and you toughen it out. I didn’t realize the various types of domestic violence and this project truly educated me on the various types. If I grew up a portion of my life in a domestic violent house and still had no idea on some of these things, how could people that didn’t grow up in that environment understand? That is why I chose the