Reflection on Social Work Practice: Personal Experience Essay

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For this assignment, I interviewed my colleague, Christina, who is also a social worker. We both work for Legal Aid Alberta. Christina and I sat down together and filled out the tree of life exercise and exploring ourselves exercise and then compared each other’s answers. Christina and I discussed our similarities which were, we both have completed some sort of education, we both love to travel and have been to some of the same places, we both have similar values and beliefs when it comes to our practice in social work. For example, we both agree that acceptance, self-discipline and being non-judgemental (Miley, O’ Melia and DuBois, 2017, p.49-51) is important in our current practice with our clients. Christina and I also discussed our differences which were our upbringings, worldviews and culture. My upbringing was in a white middle-class family, as hers was in a lower-income family with only one parent present. We then talked about our cultural upbringing as they were vastly different. I grew up with Norweigan traditions and she grew up with Vietnamese traditions. Christina talked about how she grew up celebrating different traditions, different foods and even different etiquettes than me. Christina’s beliefs were also different than mine. She grew up with a traditional Vietnamese religion called Confucianism and I grew up Catholic. Our values were similar, as we both value respect, honesty, and dignity, which align with our social work ethics. We both agree that being a social worker means putting aside personal values in order to better assist our clients. We think this can be one of the hardest parts of being a social worker. Our own values and beliefs are instilled in us at a young age and are an important part of ourselves. We both agree that social workers do not have to change or deny their values, but rather encourages us to be aware and reflect on them so they do not interfere with our practice. We talked about our cultural identity and how our social position influences the person you believe yourself to be and how that can also change and develop with life experiences (Miley, O’ Melia and DuBois, 2017, p.41). Our world views were also different due to our upbringing. We both agreed that once we were old enough we developed our own worldviews that fit with our current lifestyle and experiences. We both still practice our religions but we both agree that we like the Indigenous worldviews because it is based on a holistic and community approach and we follow those closely in our personal lives and our professional lives as well. We both agree that practicing Indigenous world views builds a trusting foundation and relationship with our Indigenous clients. It also shows that we are culturally competent as Miley, O’Melia & Dubois (2017) state “competence targets social workers knowledge of development, focusing on culturally specific demographics, characteristics, values, and interventive techniques” (p.59).

We are both familiar with the tree of life and have used it before in our practice. The tree of life exercised helped us both increase our self-reflection skills in our personal and professional lives. We talked about each of our professional and personal goals (the fruit) for the future and how those align with the values of our social work practice. Both of our goals is to complete our MSW, and to start a family. We discussed what strategies (the leaves) we use to source or information such as our friends, families, books and the internet. We then talked about empowering experiences (the trunk). We both had similar answers, we both discussed our jobs, family, communities and how that empowers us to become better social workers. We then discussed our values and beliefs (the roots) such as our families, our cultural traditions and people who have influenced us (Ferrer, (n.d), slide 5-10).

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My beliefs, scripts, values, experiences, culture and worldviews all play an important role in my social work practice. As a practicing social worker, I often find it hard to separate my personal and professional values and beliefs which can leave me in an ethical dilemma but I know I have to in order to better assist my clients. As a social worker, I am constantly thinking about my scripts and how that may interfere or enhance my practice with clients. I am accustomed to the western scripts but I also have to remember that every client I serve has different cultural scripts. For example, some cultures don’t like looking people in the eye when talking or some don’t like physical touch such as handshakes or hugs. It’s extremely important in my role as a social worker to remember these differences as it could potentially cause harm to my developing relationship with them. As a social worker, I need to put my own values and beliefs aside when working with clients who don’t share the same ideals. I need to remember that clients are diverse and are not going to always have the same values as me. I understand, that as a social worker I need to act in accordance with the values, and ethics of the profession, recognizing how personal and professional values may conflict with the needs of diverse clients. This is where I find it important to follow our professional Code of Ethics and guiding principles. Value one of the Code of Ethics is Respect for Inherent Dignity and Worth of Persons (CASW, 2005, p.4). The CASW states “Social workers recognize and respect the diversity of Canadian society, taking into account the breadth of differences that exist among individuals, families, groups, and communities” (CASW, 2005, p.4). To me, this shows that clients are the main priority and social workers should respect clients’ decisions, race, religion, and culture while putting aside the social worker’s biases. Social workers should promote clients’ self-determination and consent along with demonstrating cultural awareness. I believe these principles of the CASW are ones that I can use universally when working with any client population.

An important aspect of social work is the use of self. The use of self enables social workers to strive for authenticity and genuineness when working with clients, while at the same time reflecting on one’s, ethnicity, gender, physical abilities, socioeconomic status, and culture (Bender et al., 2010. p. 35). My use of self in social work influences my practice when working with diverse populations by examining my values when faced with ethical dilemmas. I have strong values in regard to abuse in my personal relationships. As a domestic violence social worker, I am faced with conflicting values when creating a safety plan for my clients who are staying in an abusive relationship. This creates an ethical dilemma for me, as my personal values do not align with my professional obligations. Putting my personal values aside I then work from professional values. In this scenario, I have learned to support the client in their decisions. Making sure their safety is the main priority. In this case, my personal values do not align with those of my professional ones but in order to help my clients, I have to work from a non-judgemental standpoint.

As a social worker, using strength and empowerment perspectives can enhance my practice with clients. I believe by utilizing strengths-based perspective with clients it enables social workers to focus on the client and family strengths and abilities instead of focusing on the client and family’s problems, bad behaviours and pathologies (Miley, O’ Melia and DuBois, 2017, p.71). As a social worker, I like using the strength-based approach as it allows the client to see their own strengths without being told by a professional. When I first started practicing social work I used to want to help clients by telling them what their strengths are instead of letting them discover their own, which actually caused harm to my relationship with clients. As Miley, O’Melia & Dubois (2017) describe, a key to the strengths perspective is to understand that “People strive toward the development of their potential, mastery and self-actualization (p. 71). As a practicing social worker, I believe this is an important component to remember when working with clients. Supporting client’s inherent powers can enhance their chances of positive growth and allows the clients to see their own capabilities. I believe focusing on positive outcomes can identify the unrealized potential for any given client. In order to promote positive change, a strength-based approach encourages the social worker to focus on what is going well and how we can help build our clients’ strengths and competencies (Miley, O’ Melia & DuBois, 2017, p.75) by making it a focal point of the intervention we need to “look beyond their presenting problems, to shift the attention of the work from solving problems per se to developing strengths and finding solutions” (Miley, O’ Melia and DuBois, 2017, p.71). The Empowerment perspective inherently complements the strengths perspective. I use both of these approaches simultaneously as they compliment each other. Using this approach with my clients enhances my client’s capabilities and provides them with certain skills and resources that will enable them to be independent or stand on their own. As Miley, O’Melia & Dubois (2017) state “Instead of dwelling on vulnerabilities, empowerment-based practice accentuates resiliencies” (pp. 79-80). Letting clients discover their own strengths empowers them to make positive changes in their life. As a social worker working with domestic violence survivors I find myself using both of these approaches in my work as I find it helps my clients rediscover themselves. Using both of these approaches with domestic violence clients allows them to feel a sense of control and power as that normally gets taken away from them in their relationships. These approaches enhance my work with clients because it allows for me to gently guide the clients towards their strengths and empowers them to achieve their capabilities. These approaches allow me to treat my clients as equals without creating a power imbalance. Instead of being seen as a ‘fixer’ of client problems I am there to help guide them to solutions. I find these approaches help me learn alongside the client in which we both can reflect on their strengths together by doing so it can create a positive and lasting rapport with clients.

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