What is the most essential knowledge that social workers students must have to work effectively with families? The social work profession has always emphasized the importance of strong family functioning. When families are successful in meeting their goals, individuals and society as a whole thrive. Throughout the history of the profession, social workers in child welfare, child guidance and mental health have worked with families to ensure that children are safe from abuse and neglect, that parents know ways to manage emotional challenges of childhood and that families know effective communication processes to resolve the symptoms of mental illness. Over time, however, the approaches to building effective family interventions have changed and schools of social work need to be attuned to the demands on agencies to offer services that are effective. Students who want to work with families must graduate from their academic programs knowing how to deliver effective interventions. In order to best educate students for this, faculty at Springfield College School of Social Work have participated in curriculum development workshops at the Wheeler Clinic in Plainville Connecticut. 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
Social workers’ commitment to social justice means they want everyone to have a fair and equal opportunity to an assessment. In line with fairness, social workers should tell carers about their right to refuse an assessment as their permission, and not the person receiving care, is needed before the carer’s assessment can commence. In addition, social workers, bound by legislation regarding confidentiality and information sharing, must reserve the carer’s right to privacy whilst uphold their right to a fair hearing. This is achieved by only disclosing carer’s personal details to 3rd parties with consent, unless a safeguarding concern arises.
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.
Social worker practice involves the application of values, techniques, and practices is involved in helping people, communities, groups, with a family or individual setting. Social work practices require the incorporation of theories and perspectives that have been successful in helping people. Social workers use theories and perspective in every form of their services. Social workers are required to assess their clients and needs provided services that fit the current problem. The assignment provides students to discuss theories and perspective they are currently using and how specific theories can be incorporated into future social work practice.
Under the social work profession, social workers embrace the principle of social justice and are committed to work toward achieving social change. In direct practice, social workers work with individuals living in poverty and subjected to all sorts of injustices. In social work, practitioners work in partnership with clients, when coming up with possible solutions to the presenting problems. It is important that in the process, social workers remain with a nonjudgmental attitude and look at how the person’s environment has been harmful to his or her life. For example, when a social worker is working with a homeless individual, it is crucial to “begin where the client is”, while assessing the client’s current needs.
Understanding these theories as a social worker can help with clients, such as families and children. For example, if a child is anxiously or avoidantly attached perhaps the child is being neglected. It can help to understand the dynamics of a family and what needs to be worked on in the home. However, these theories do not necessarily take events such as loss or cultural factors much into account. For example, perhaps the reason a child is anxiously attached because the previous caretaker or close family member recently passed. They may believe that their caretaker may never come back if they leave, since their previous one did and never came back.
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.
Margarita Perez received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from York College, The City University of New York. She then went on to receive her Master’s of Social Work degree at San Francisco State University, with a double emphasis on Individuals, Families and Groups, as well as, Child Welfare. She began her social work career as a Mental Health Treatment Specialist at Family Paths, a child abuse prevention and treatment agency. There she gained experience dealing with infant mental health, lack of attachment and the effect of trauma on early childhood. She now works as a Family Treatment Rehabilitation Case Planner at Forestdale Inc, a child welfare agency dedicated to ensuring the safety of all children.
Have you ever wondered what it will feel like to bury a love one? Communicating with elderly family members and their love ones concerning final arrangements can be a stressful process. It is essential that we speak with our love ones concerning death arrangements. In an article from The Association of Social Workers, it states that communicating about death is a very difficult process and often leads to dreadfulness as well as regret. Today I will enlighten you and give you a clearer understanding of the necessity of communicating about death as well as final arrangements. In doing so I will explain the responsibility of a social worker, which often deals with families during the time of death. Things that will arise in why it is difficult to talk about death and finally vital topics that should be discussed.
Loving people, in my opinion, is at the core of social work. When you love someone, you want them to have only what is right, true, beneficial, safe, respectable, and good. Love is not about taking but giving—the giving of your time, attention, skills, talents, forgiveness, amongst other things. That is what social workers aim to do; they give of themselves for the benefit of another. Ephesians 4:2 says, “Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love.” The Bible also states in 1 Peter 4:8, “Above all, show sincere love to each other, because love brings about the forgiveness of many sins.” In my core, I consider social work to be about showing love to others in the hopes that they will be able to overcome their adverse experiences, to forgive and not be defined by their past.
Whenever big projects were given to me, I had to work with at least three people who helped my work temporarily for as long as six months. Mostly, I regarded them as being diligent and active, and most of them deserved that. However, I have never given them A. I did not assume that they were excellent, although some of them were superior no matter what I thought about them.
There are many helping professions. Society has doctors, therapist, teachers, nurses, etc. To help means to assist, which means to serve. Every business has the infrastructure to serve a need presented for whatever motives lay behind the person’s reasoning. What makes social work idiosyncratic unlike the rest is the willingness and passion to promote human well-being. I yearn and hunger to see growth of what is already innate. That is the reason psychology became my undeclared major.
It is mainly focused on providing parental information and will require adaption in dealing with the trend. Research has shown that being obese or overweight negatively effects an adults or child’s mental health (Huang et al., 2005). While this intervention already has a mental health sector, with the increasing need of the population this will likely need to be expanded, and other departments may need to undergo training to identify mental health symptoms.
Overall, I really enjoyed this experience and felt like by the end of it I learned so much what it can be like not only being a social worker, but also being a client. At the start of this assignment I had a lot of different expectations. Initially I thought it was just going to go terribly wrong and that I would get everything wrong. Then I got even more nervous knowing that I should not be doing any type of preparing before the interview and instead just wing the whole interview. My expectations for during the session was that I would forget about everything I’ve learned in this class so far and just fail miserably. Before looking at the video after the session I thought I could have definitely done a better job and that it wasn’t good. Typically, I am not the type of person who likes to take pictures or videos of themselves, so I definitely felt weird and uncomfortable being videotaped and watching that video.
The duties of a social worker vary based on their field but one duty all social workers have in common is their determination to help someone who cant necessarily help themselves. There are several different fields of social work one in particular stands out to me – Medical social work. Medical social work stands out to me because overall I’m curious of how they would differ from any other social worker. Therefore I will explore their history, duties, education requirements, as well as whom the population they serve and challenges faced.
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