My Experience in Northwest Domestic Crisis Services

This fall semester, I volunteered at The Northwest Domestic Crisis Services Center in Alva, Oklahoma. The Northwest Domestic Crisis Service Center or NWDCS for short has a mission of giving empowerment of all victims and committed to the elimination of personal and social violence of victims and their families to provide intervention, prevention, education, and information to the public without regard to race, age, sex, religion, economics or ethnic and social lifestyles. The NWDCS provides victim services to victims of domestic violence and sexaul assault and their services are for free. I chose to volunteer at this specific place because I have always been drawn to helping domestic violence and understanding the victims lives after they report it. I believe I feel like this because I have experienced domestic abuse and sexual abuse when I was younger, but never reported it. So I have always been interested in what the victims lives look like after the fact. According to Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Crime Statistics; 24,543 of intimate partner violence was reported in 2017 (Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Crime Statistics, 2017). Even though these statistics are from two years ago, this an abundance of reports of domestic abuse but it is not all of it. Many partners do not file a report due to obstacles standing in their way. And some of these victims go to the NWDCS to seek shelter. During my time at the NWDCS, I have acknowledged an amount of different social work values and ethics.

I encountered many social work values and ethics including; service, social justice, and integrity. Service was the biggest value in this project, and was centered around it. This project was to put aside your self interest and help people without expecting anything in return. Helping people in need and trying to address the social problem. Without providing direct service towards the client at NWDCS I tried to make their stay at the Center more welcome by cleaning the apartments and decorating the main offices, computer room, and the outside of the building. Also during this project I encountered social justice values, which were to pursue social change of the regularity domestic abuse has become and have equality with whatever gender or age someone comes in to recieve help at NWDCS. The third value I encountered was integrity, with not only with the profession, but also with the NWDCS program. I signed a contract before my time volunteering, that stated I will not share incidents that I could see in the center and the people who lived their and if I did it would be a breach of confidentiality. I would uphold the mission, values, ethical principles, and ethical standards during my time at NWDCS.

With doing my 20 hours of Service Learning, I gained competence in the field of mezzo and micro practices. Due to helping at a Center for domestic abuse, I found that I experienced mezzo social work practices. This institution had about 10 apartments that victims can live in after the report of the abuse, also victims came into recieve help and they did not have to be living their. As said before, I decorated for Christmas in the lobby, computer room, and the front of the building to help all clients feel like it was their actual home and make them feel more comfortable. Micro practice, which is the most common type of social work practice is when social workers engage with individuals or families. I experienced micro practice when I helped clients with their appropriate housing. Cleaning the apartments to help get them ready for an incoming client puts my as close as I could have gotten to the victims, due to my contract.

My role that came from engaging in NWDCS for my service learning was to do the work that the people who actually worked their did not have time to do. Their were only 2 and sometimes 3 workers their everyday working and helping clients. Since they were always busy with the victims, I worked on making their environment better and more appealing. I think it was a good balance between my work and their work. I wish I could have had more of an opportunity to help victims and hear their empowerment stories but I had to withstand the social workers ethical confidentiality, and stand back from that. I solved this ethical dilemma by being aware of my surroundings and leave the room if I victims is their to talk to the Head Coordinator.

Their was not a direct bias or prejudice that was formed since I got their but the Head Cordinator described that most people think that domestic abuse and sexual assault can only happen to women, and the victims and their families living in the apartments are only women. This is just not the case, many people think that women can only be victims and that why men do not report the abuse due to the prejudice against them. In my professional career, I will try and advocate that men can be victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse too, and spread competence in other people so they can adovacte in the mens rights as well. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline showed this eye- opening statistic, “Nearly half of all women and men in the United States have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime (48.4% and 48.8%, respectively)” (Thehotline.org). People forget abuse happens in every race, gender, culture and not just those who we hear the most stories about.

The most significant encounter that I experienced was a small one, but was the biggest impact for me while I was their. A little boy that lived their with his mom, came to the apartment that I was cleaning and it turned out he used to live in the apartment before him and his mom got moved to a bigger one down the lot. He walked around and talked about how he loved this apartment, continuing to tell my stories about how him and his brothers would play “Don’t touch the lava!” in his old bedroom. He offered to help me clean the apartment and it had me very emotional. The apartment that I was cleaning was not anything special to me, but to that little boy it was his first home away from the domestic violence he was shown at his original home. It was a safe haven for him in a way, and was probably the first time he felt at peace in his childhood.

The effectiveness of my practice with the Northwest Domestic Crisis Services was received well by the victims in the Center. I feel like them, and the two people who worked their felt like the could trust me to keep confidentiality. With my Christmas decorating along with some other volunteers, helped the women who lived their with kids give them something to look forward too and put a smile on their face.

This Service Learning project has made me understand the how values and ethics of a social work professional come into play in an actual job setting . I got more than what I expected in this course because I took away social injustice, service, and integrity when handling a job, people’s biases towards the domestic violence, confidentiality, and by using mezzo and micro social work practices and a generalist practice, I can use different involve myself with just not one type of client. Service learning is a helpful opportunity for you to educate yourself about what your future roll is in the professional social work community. You are doing a service for someone who needs it but also building up your competence as well.

References:

1. About. (n.d.). Retrieved from xxxxxhttps://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English.
2. Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.thehotline.org/resources/statistics/.
3. United Way of Central Oklahoma. (n.d.). Retrieved from xxxxxhttps://www.unitedwayokc.org/research/data-center/strong-families/domestic-violence/totaxxxxxl-number-intimate-partner-violence.