HMS 18Week 2

Agenda

● Attendance

● Lecture: Chapter 2

● Break

● Vignette

● Lecture: Chapter 3

A Brief History of Social Work● Early 1800s, social work was about:

● Meeting the needs of people living in urban areas● Agencies/Services were private agencies developed

by the clergy, religious groups, wealthy “do-gooders” who had no formal training and little understanding of human behavior

● The focus was on meeting:● Basic physical needs such as food and shelter, and

attempting to “cure” emotional and personal difficulties with religious admonitions

● Early social welfare organizations:● Society for the Prevention of Pauperism (founded

by John Griscom)● Charity Organization Society● Settlement Houses: Hull House (founded by Jane

Adams)

Social Welfare Organization● *Society for the Prevention of Pauperism: goals were to investigate the habits and circumstances of

the poor, to suggest plans by which the poor could help themselves, and to encourage the poor to save and economize. They conducted house-to-house visitation of the poor.

● *Charity Organization Society: private agencies joined together to: ● Provide direct services to individuals and families (casework/counseling approach)● Plan and coordinate the efforts of private agencies to combat the pressing social problems of

cities (community organization and social planning approach)● Conducted detailed investigations of each applicant for services and financial help, maintained a

central system of registration of clients to avoid duplication, and used volunteer “friendly visitors”-”doer of good works” to work with those in difficulty

● *Settlement Houses emphasized:● Environmental reform● Continued to teach the poor the prevailing middle class values of work, thrift, and abstinence as

the keys to success● Played important roles in drafting legislation and in organizing to influence social policy and

legislation

*Development of Social Work

● Richard Cabot introduced Medical Social Work at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1905->leading social workers in schools, courts, child guidance clinics and other settings

● Mary Richmond published Social Diagnosis, which was the first text to present a theory and methodology for social work and focused on how the worker should intervene with individuals -> created a common body of knowledge for casework

● Sigmund Freud’s theories of personality development and therapy became popular in the 1920s● The psychiatric approach emphasized intrapsychic processes and focused on enabling clients to

adapt and adjust to their social situations

● The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) was formed in 1955. Their purpose was to improve social conditions in society and promote high quality and effectiveness in social work practice● Publishing several journals: Social Work and The Encyclopedia of Social Work and monthly

news letters titled NASW News

A Multi-skilled Profession

● Social work is distinct by virtue of its responsibility and mandate to provide social services

● Skills of a social worker requires training and expertise in a wide range of areas to handle effectively the problems faced by individuals, groups, families, organizations and the larger community● Skills includes: Relationship building with clients, interviewing, problem solving,

referral to other organizations, research, granting writing skills, program development, fundraising and knowledge of how to handle ethical and legal issues.

● 2 skills:● Ability to counsel clients effectively● Ability to interact effectively with other groups and professionals in the area

● These skills allows for effective intervention:● Common personal and emotional problems of clients● Common social problems faced by groups, organization and the larger community

A Problem Solving Approach

● When working at the micro, mezzo and macro levels, social workers use a problem solving approach:● Identify as precisely as possible the problem or problems● Generate possible alternative solutions● Evaluate the alternative solutions● Select a solution or solutions to be used and set goals● Implement the solutions● Follow up to evaluate how the solutions worked

Micro, Mezzo and Macro Practice● *Social workers practice at 3 levels:

● Mirco: working on a one-to-one basis with an individual● Mezzo: working with families and other small groups● Macro: working with organizations and communities or seeking changes in statutes and social

policies

● *Activities performed by workers may include:● Social Casework: aimed at helping individual on a one-to-one to resolve personal and social problems● Case Management: assessing the needs of a client, arranging and coordinating the delivery of essential goods

and services● Group work: facilitate the intellectual, emotional, and social development of individuals through group

activities● Group Therapy: facilitate the social, behavioral and emotional adjustment of individuals through group

process● Family Therapy: a type of group therapy aimed at helping families with interactional, behavioral and

emotional problems can be used with parent-child, marital conflicts and conflicts with grand parents ● Community Organization: stimulating and assisting the local community to evaluate, plan, and coordinate

efforts to provide for the community’s health, welfare and recreation needs● Administration: setting agency and program objectives, analyzing social conditions in the community,

making decisions relating to what services will be provided, hiring and supervising staff, setting up organizational structure, administering financial affairs and securing funds

*Medical vs. Systems Model of Human Behavior

● *Medical approach believe that the disturbed person’s mind is affected by some generally unknown internal condition● This approach was developed by Sigmund Freud● It viewed the clients as “patients”● Task of provider of services is to diagnose the causes of a patient's problems and then to provide treatment● Medical model provided a humane approach to treating people with emotional and behavioral problems ● By the 1960s, social work began questioning the usefulness of the medical model because its approach

focused on enabling patients to adapt and adjust of their social situation

● *Systems approach was introduced in the 1960s and focused on looking beyond the client’s presenting problems to assess the complexities and inter relationships of the client’s life situations● A systems perspective is based on systems theory

● Key concepts of general systems theory are wholeness, relationship and homeostasis.● Wholeness: means that the objects or elements within a system produce an entity that is greater than

the additive sums of the separate parts● Relationship asserts that the patterning and structuring among the elements in a system are as important as

the elements themselves● Homeostasis suggests that most living systems seek a balance to maintain and preserve the system● Opposes simple cause and effect explanations

*Ecological Model of Human Behavior

● The ecological approach integrates both treatment and reform by conceptualizing and emphasizing the dysfunctional transactions between people and their physical and social environments

● Human beings are viewed as developing and adapting through transactions with all elements of their environment

● It views people not as passive reactors to their environments but rather as dynamic and reciprocal interactors with those environments

● Tries to improve coping patterns so that a better match can be attained between an individual’s needs and the characteristics of his or her environment

● *Emphasis: “Person in Environment”

● Focus on the person and seek to develop his or her problem-solving, coping and developmental capacities

● Focus on the relationship between a person and the systems he or she interacts with and link the person with needed resources, services and opportunities

● Focus on the systems ad seek to reform them to meet the needs of the individual more effectively ● *Ecological model view individuals, families and small groups as having transitional problems and needs as they

move from one life stage to another● Central concern is to articulate the transitional problems and needs of individuals, families and small groups.● *Focus on maladaptive interpersonal problems and need-articulate the maladaptive communication processes

and dysfunctional relationship patterns of families and small groups

Person-in-Environment

*Goals of Social Work Practice1. Enhance the problem-solving, coping and developmental capacities of people

2. Link people with systems that provide them with resources, services and opportunities

3. Promote the effectiveness and humane operation of systems that provide people with resources and services

4. Develop and improve social policy

5. Promote human and community well being

● “The purpose of social work profession is to promote human and community well-being. Guided by a person and environment construct, a global perspective, respect for human diversity, and knowledge based on scientific inquiry, social work’s purpose is actualized through its quest for social and economic justice, the prevention of conditions that limit human rights, the elimination of poverty and the enhancement of the quality of life for all persons” –CSWE (Council on Social Work Education)

*The Strengths Perspective and Empowerment

● Why is it essential to include clients’ strengths in the assessment process?● Attending to clients’ strengths allows for clients to enhance their self-esteem and to be able to

recognize their strengths and competencies. Many clients have feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy, a sense of being a failure and a lack of self-confidence and self-respect

● The strength perspective is closely related to “empowerment”● Empowerment is the process of helping individuals, families, groups and communities to

increase their personal, interpersonal, socioeconomic, and political strength and to develop influence toward improving their circumstances

● According to Saleebey, 5 principles guide the strengths perspective:● Every individual, group, family and community has strengths● Trauma and abuse, illness and struggle may be injurious, but they may also be sources of

challenge and opportunity● Assume that you do not know the upper limits of the capacity to grow and change and take

individual, group and community aspirations seriously-workers need to hold high their expectation of clients and form alliances with their hopes, visions and values

● We best serve clients by collaborating with them● Every environment is full of resources

*Self-Awareness and Identity Development

● A skill one must have as a social work student, is the ability to be self-aware of one’s identity● Educators are finding that the students who are best able to counsel others are those who know themselves;

that is, they have a high level of self-awareness.● A counselor has to be perceptive regarding what clients are thinking and feeling, and in order to be

perceptive, the worker must have a high level of self-awareness. If not, it is unlikely that she or he will be able to perceive what others are thinking and feeling.

● *Identity Formation is the process of determining who you are and what you want out of life. It is a life long process, there are gradual changes in our identity throughout our lifetime. ● Those who develop a success identity view themselves as being generally successful and follow a pathway of

love and worth and must feel: ● At least one other person loves them and also that they love at least one person● At least one other person believes they are worthwhile and they must feel they-themselves are

worthwhile● This usually occurs during childhood with parents.

● A person can feel loved but not feel worthwhile, because worth comes through accomplishing tasks and achieving success in the accomplishment of those tasks.

● A failure identity is likely to develop when a child has received inadequate love or been made to feel worthless. People with a failure identity are likely to be:● Depressed, lonely, anxious, reluctant to face every day challenges, and indecisive

● Some important issues you will ever have to face are these:● What kind of person do you want to be? What do you want out of life?Who are you?

BREAK

Vignette: Forming an Identity

● Page 60 

● Goals: This exercise is designed to help students form a sense of who they are, examine the extent to which they have already formulated a personal identity, and identify specific areas they have to focus on in order to formulate a more thorough sense of who they are.

QuestionnaireArriving at a Sense of Who I am and What I Want out of Life 

● What do I find satisfying/meaningful/enjoyable? (Only after you identify what is meaningful and gratifying will you be able to consciously seek involvement in activities that will make your life fulfilling and avoid those activities that are meaningless or stifling.)

● What is my moral code? (One possible code is to seek to fulfill your needs and to seek to do what you find enjoyable, doing so in a way that does not deprive others of the ability to fulfill their needs.)

●  What are my religious beliefs?

●  What kind of a career do I desire? (Ideally, you should seek a career in which you find the work stimulating and satisfying, that you are skilled at, and that earns you enough money to support the lifestyle you want.)

Questionnaire● What are my sexual mores? (All of us should develop a consistent code that we are comfortable with and that

helps us to meet our needs without exploiting others. There is no one right code—what works for one may not work for another, due to differences in lifestyles, life goals, and personal values.)

● Do I desire to marry? (If yes, to what type of person and when? How consistent are your answers here with your other life goals?) If you are married, is marriage overall fulfilling for you, and do you want to remain married?

●  Do I desire to have children? (If yes, how many and when? How consistent are your answers here with your other life goals?) If you have children, do you want to have more children?

● What area of the country/world do I desire to live in? (Variables to be considered are climate, geography, type of dwelling, rural or urban setting, closeness to relatives or friends, and characteristics of the neighborhood.)

●  What do I enjoy doing with my leisure time?

Questionnaire● What kind of image do I want to project to others? (Your image will be composed of your dressing style and

grooming habits, your emotions, personality, degree of assertiveness, capacity to communicate, material possessions, moral code, physical features, and voice patterns. You need to assess your strengths and shortcomings honestly in this area, and seek to make improvements.)

● What type of people do I enjoy being with and why?

● Do I desire to improve the quality of my life and that of others? (If yes, in what ways? How do you hope to achieve these goals?)

●  What types of relationships do I desire to have with relatives, friends, neighbors, with people I meet for the first time?

● What are my thoughts about death and dying?

● What are currently the most severe stresses in my life?

● How am I handling these stresses? What strategies am I using to resolve them?

● What do I want to accomplish in the next five years?

● What are my plans for accomplishing the goals I listed in question 17?

Generalist Social Work Practice Defined

● The crux of generalist practice involves:● Viewing a problem situation in terms of the person-in-

environment conceptualizations● Being willing and able to intervene at several different levels

● *2 primary goals in Generalist Practice:● Aims to teach students the relationship-building, interviewing

and problem-solving skills necessary for them to work with individual clients, families and groups and organizations and communities.

*The Change Process

● In the change process, there are different areas that the worker must follow in order to be successful in working with clients:● Engagement: Engaging clients in an appropriate working

relationship● Assessment: Identifying issues, problems, needs, resources and

assets, collecting and assessing information● Intervention: Planning for service delivery, using communication

skills, supervision and consultation, identifying, analyzing and implementing empirically based interventions designed to achieve client goals, applying empirical knowledge and technological advances

● Evaluation: Evaluating program outcomes and practices effectiveness

*Roles ● Enabler: a worker helps individuals or groups to

articulate their needs, to clarify and identify their problems and explore resolution…

● Broker: links individuals and groups who need help with community services

● Advocate: active, direct role in which the social worker advocates for a client or for a citizens’ group->leadership, arguing correctness and challenging inst…

● Activist: seeks institutional change; often the objective involves a shift in power and resources to a disadvantage group

● Mediator: intervention in disputes between parties to help them find compromises, reconcile differences, or reach mutually satisfactory agreements.

● Negotiator” brings together those who are in conflict over one or more issues and seeks to achieve bargaining and compromise to arrive at mutually acceptable agreement

● Educator: giving information to clients and teaching them adaptive skills

● Initiator: calls attention to a problem or even to a potential problem

● Empowerer: process of helping individuals, families, groups, organization and communities increase their personal, interpersonal, socioeconomic, and political strength and influence through improving their circumstance

● Coordinator: components together in some kind of organized manner

● Researcher: practice in studying the literature, topics of interest, evaluating the outcomes of one’s practice, assessing the merits and shortcoming of programs and studying community needs

● Group Facilitator: serves as a leader for group activity

● Public Speaker: recruited to talk to various groups to inform them of available services or to advocate for new services.

Social Work with …

● *Individuals: aimed at helping people, on a one-to-one basis, to resolve personal and social problems

● Families: a family is an interacting interdependent system. The problems faced by any individual are usually influenced by the dynamics within a family. A family is an interacting system, change in one member affects other members.● When working with families:

● In-home services are preventive, helping families stay together● Out-of-home services are those services that must be operationalized

when the family can no longer remain intact

Satir’s Family Therapy Approach● Virginia Satir, a psychiatric social worker

● Stressed clarification of family communication patterns. ● Examined the communication patterns among troubled families tend to be vague and indirect● Indirect communication in the troubled family begins with courtship of the marital pair and is due to

the low self-esteem of the individuals involved ● *There are 2 types of communication used:

● Non-verbal: gestures, facial expressions, voice tone, posture and the like.● Non-verbal communication that matches the meaning of any words used is considered congruent.

However, messages are often incongruent when the communication does not match the words. ● Another kind of incongruent communication is one that places the receiver in a double bind-that is

no matter how one responds, the sender will criticize.

● *Satir’s therapeutic goals and techniques are: ● Each member should be able to report congruently, completely, and obviously on what he or she sees, hears,

feels and thinks about himself or herself and others● Each person should relate to his or her uniqueness so that decisions are made in terms of exploration and

negotiation rather than in terms of power● Differentness should be openly acknowledged and used for growth● “I-messages”, are non blaming messages that communicate only how the sender believes the receiver is

adversely affecting him or her

Social Work with Groups

● Is defined as: two or more individuals in fact-to-face interaction, each aware of his or her membership in the group, each aware of the others who belong to the group, and each aware of their positive interdependence as they strive to achieve mutual goals

● Examples of groups: ● Social Conversation Groups, Recreation Groups, Recreation-

Skill Groups, Education Groups, Task Groups, Problem Solving and Decision Making Groups, Self Help Groups, Socialization Groups, Sensitivity Groups

Models of Community Practice● *There are 3 models of community practice:

● Locality Development Model: asserts that community change can best be brought about through broad-based participation by a wide spectrum of people at the local community level

● Social Planning Model: emphasizes the process of problem solving. It assumes that community change in a complex industrial environment requires highly trained and skilled planners who can guide complex change processes

● Social Action Model: assumes that there is a disadvantaged segment of the population that needs to be organized, perhaps in alliance with others, to pressure the power structure for increased resources or for social justice

Knowledge, Skills, and Values for Social Work Practice

● *Core Competencies: is an outcome performance approach to curriculum, they are measurable practice behavior that are comprised of knowledge, values and skills. ● Identify as a professional social worker and conduct oneself accordingly● Apply social work ethical principles to guide professional practice● Apply critical thinking to inform and communicate professional

judgments● Engage diversity and difference in practice● Advance human rights and social and economic justice● Engage in research informed practice and practice informed research● Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment● Engage in policy practice to advance social and economic will being and

to deliver effective social work services● Respond to contexts that shape practice● Engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate with individuals, families, groups,

organizations and communities

*Social Work Values● Values are beliefs, preferences or assumptions about what is desirable or good for humans

● Respect for the Dignity and Uniqueness of the Individual● This value or principle has also been called individualization, which means viewing and treating each

person as unique and worthwhile. ● Individualization is relatively easy for a social worker to achieve when clients have values, goals,

behavioral patterns and personal characteristics that are similar to those of the worker● Clients’ right to Self-Determination

● This principle asserts that client have the right to hold and express their own opinions and to act on them, as long as doing so does not infringe on the rights of others

● Client self-determination derives from the belief in the inherent dignity of each person.● Self determination implies that clients should be made aware that there are alternatives for resolving

their personal or social problems● Confidentiality is the implicit or explicit agreement between a professional and a client to maintain the

privacy of information about the client.● It is absolute when:

● Information revealed to a professional is never passed on to anyone in any form● A professional must use his or her own best judgment about when a client’s actions or communications

warrant protective measures and about what those measures should be

Social Work includes:

● Advocacy and Social Action for the Oppressed

● Accountability

● Respect for the Spiritual and Religious Beliefs of Others

● Promoting Social and Economic Justice Safeguarding Human Rights