The General Method of Social Work Practice:

McMahon’s Generalist Perspective

Maria Joan O’Neil McMahon died of cancer on October 26 1996. For her, social work represented a calling of service to others and provided a sense of meaning and fulfillment in life’s purpose.

She evidenced her commitment to social justice and the enhancement of human life through both social action and direct social work practice.

Using this text is a commitment to her legacy

My own practice research in the field of social work and music-based intervention relates to evidenced-based practice

My own sense of teaching is that I see it as privilege and an honour.

• Throughout her career as a social work educator, Dr. McMahon demonstrated sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of students and served as a model of professional excellence through her teaching, community service and scholarship.

• Neither can you underestimate your role as a student in learning and how collectively we can create “a viable and caring community mutually invested in each others academic and professional, needs. I will be coming back to this now and again.

• Calls for a commitment for us to invest ourselves in the teaching/learning process.

In Her Own Words Commitment to Service Today

• It is very fitting that at least once a year social workers take a little distance from the pressures, demands, policies and procedures to reflect and recommit ourselves to what in fact we are all about

In Her Own Word: A Commitment to Service Today

Important to take time when we can in class

to reflect of upon our experience for that

day, especially at the end of the semester

• So even with your pressures, your stresses and your often difficult jobs what keeps you going and what keeps so many other noble, seasoned, wonderful people in public sector jobs has been the fact that there is meaning and purpose to what these jobs are about and the fact that they and you have a commitment –

• a commitment to human service. What does commitment mean?

Dictionaries define commitment as a “declaration of adherence to an ideal or doctrine or a “decisive

moral choice for action”.

What about service?

The definition of service is to meet the needs of others or to repair or provide maintenance for others.” Within the public social service system, there is the need for a decisive choice or declaration of adherence to the ideal and a definite course of action in serving, in meeting the needs of others and in repairing or providing maintenance for others.

I will challenge you to strive for that ideal

according to the furthest limits of your

individual capacity.

Within the public social service system,

there is the need for a decisive choice or

declaration of adherence to the ideal and a

definite course of action in serving, in

meeting the needs of others and in repairing

or providing maintenance for others.

Do we as a society realize that when we decrease opportunities for people, pullback on our programs and services for those in need, there is a corresponding increase in crime,

suicide,

drug addiction, and family breakdown?

Social Work is the Conscience of the People to Administer to those Without

As food for thought, this should motivate us

to bring out the best in ourselves so that we

may bring out the best in others.

Our poor and our needy have a real problem called poverty and it is a multifaceted problem that involves the health system, the education system, the social service system, transportation, housing,

unemployment and more.

There is no simple answer to poverty. You are not to blame and our service system is

not to blame because poor people are dependent on you. The sad thing is that there are not

enough resources to give you the basics of what the poor need or the opportunities to go beyond

that bare subsistence.

To truly serve today, we have to grow in our knowledge and skills, to become more sophisticated ourselves in doing justice to what social work is all about. Just as one of the things we have also learned is that there’s a need for teamwork, holistic understanding and commitment. Everybody is called to care.

• Where do we begin?

• We begin with a sense of unity. Shared commitment. Others are needed.

• Commitment and caring are what bring us together.

We are the people who keep knocking, who don’t go away….who will be

there? Knock on my door –open door policy

What keeps us going is the recognition that we have meaning and purpose in our lives.

Yes we have our goals and we have our dreams and we have our past experiences. But most of all, what keeps us going is the belief in human life and our commitment to

human service

We know we can’t do it all. But we sure can so something, and that’s what keeps us going. We

are doing what we can to make a difference, and that gives us purpose and meaning. That makes

us more than just alive, it truly helps us live.

But most of all, we find meaning here and now in the present moment and that’s what it is all about –

to live in the present fully.

Think about your call to really live the gift of the present moment. To quote Buechner

(1983, p. 86) “listen to your life See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement

and gladness: touch taste and smell your way into the holy and hidden of it because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments and

life itself is a grace.”

My parting words are:

Know that you are a grace to many in your

own way. You might be the only grace to

many.

• My supreme challenge to you is that you become “spiritually intoxicated” with the high entailed in “real” genuine, authentic learning and of being “teachers” to one another.

A Light of Hope to One Another