The Impact of Personal Preferences on Working Practices

Years later in this process of growth, I was blessed with a summer internship at a larger congregation in Dallas, Texas. Although I grew from my relationships and from the mentorship I received, I also observed that the bulk of the ministry meetings focused on changing and adapting our church’s corporate worship to be more and more “seeker sensitive.” The thought was that corporate worship was something malleable that could be altered into something more like the culture of the surrounding neighborhood, so people would want to come. “After all,” so the thinking went, “scripture provided only a rough guideline as to what the church is to do when coming together and there is little-to-no reason to keep intact what past generations did or passed down.” In essence, we sought to form our corporate worship for the purpose of evangelism. I believed that the important thing to focus on is love of God, love of neighbor, and piety. Something in the line of reasoning that insisted on changing the community worship ritual to reflect the world didn’t feel right to me, yet I could not articulate what it was. Several months later I visited an Eastern Orthodox Church as part of a course on Christian spiritual development and after a didactic

| Describe how to apply principles of equality and diversity when communicating and working with others.

As a case worker you have to consider your own thoughts, prejudices and judgements and treat everyone the same way you wish to be treated.

The Service Users i deliver care to are all different in many ways.This can be along the dimensions of gender, age, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, physical abilities, political beliefs, religious beliefs or other ideologies. This means that i have to be aware of a person’s individuality and respect their choices. To be understanding and not show prejudice. Valuing the benefits of someone being different from ourselves, not making assumptions.

In the Christian community, every single person plays an important role in making the community as safe and caring as possible. One of the most vital beliefs of a Christian is that we are all equal, so we when we are called to serve and help each other, we should obey. This call, although we may hear it at different times and see it in different ways, the call comes to everyone. We may have different understanding of the call, or we may even conflicting ideas of how to answer this call, but in the end, every single idea is important.

I was a volunteer at the Emergency Relief Department at Lentara Uniting Care, I had a variety of roles and I frequently interacted with co-workers and clients that were from very different cultures, religions and social statuses.

I generally believe in treating all people as I would like to be treated, with respect and courtesy; as a carer I regularly deal with two different groups of people – service users and colleagues. A consistent part of my job is to meet the needs of service users who would fall under the disabilities characteristic in the Equality Act 2010.

Where i work in supported living everyone has their own why of living and their own behaviours and believes and they all must be respected. all the clients are raised in a very different way to how I

Explain the importance of a person centred and inclusive approach and give example of how this is implemented in own work.

It is therefore very important to respect and honour their personal beliefs. Some want to go to church on Sundays and others do not want to speak about church at all and I must respect the fact that they do not want to speak about anything about the Church. It is part of the work that I do to make sure my clients are happy and therefore am conscious at all times that they feel comfortable about anything they want to talk to me about.

Making a space for a wheel chair user so they can participate in a group activity, by not putting them to one side of the room while others continue their discussion because of their disability. When working with clients we need to interact with individuals in an inclusive way. The language we use with babies would not be appropriate with adults and this would seem as if we are treating them with disrespect. With babies, we use the word Choo Choo to train, whereas we would not use this term with an older client, it would seem we were talking down to them. In some cultures it is wrong to make eye contact, touch the head, shake hands so it is polite to observe the person's culture and ask before we presume to take an offending action.

     Today’s religions have aided both personal and international peace. It has given hope to people and has helped some deal with difficult situations. Religions give some people purpose to life, and an explanation as to why things are the way they are. Praying can give some peace of mind to those who are dealing with problems in life.

An example of the way I promote a caring and culturally respectful attitude within the

Professionals should also strive to be culturally competent and continuously educate themselves to aim to “understand the nature of social diversity and oppression with respect to race, ethnicity, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, political belief, religion, immigration status, and mental or physical disability,” and should use respectful language while communicating to or about clients. (5)

Recommending three minutes of reading to help caregivers relax and focus before starting their work is an appropriate and nice thing to do, the only problem that I have is if that is what I really want to do to feel relaxed. Does it fall into the categories of things that can make me relaxed? Does it make me feel board and unhappy before starting work? What if it is not everyone’s preference? To some people, this could be a waste of time, some might look at it as a ritual, while some see it as a good idea.