Working with the Social Autism Person - Case Study Example

Critical Placement Report Name Student No Course Instructor’s name Institution Affiliation Location Date Critical Placement Report The call to care for others is a necessary command that God provides in favor of few individuals within the society. Within a single society, there exist several challenges that need to be solved and evaluated by the professionals in the community to realize the collective progress in the today’s world (Rhodes, 2014). Every person in the society develops the aim to leave a happy and healthy life which is hard to attain but is possible through acceptance of the challenges in our lives. During the placement period, I was placed in one of the Autism Spectrum Australian day care branch at main city that was dealing with the adults with autism and I appreciated my time at the center. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that develops in an individual from the infancy stage and follows a steady course without remission in an individual with the affected persons showing severely impaired respects (De Rubeis et. all, 2014). In working with different categories of people, I got different challenges and experiences which strengthen me towards being a good community worker. The report is about the positive experiences I received from working with the social autism person during placement as well as how the experience can be applied in the cross-cultural work. During my first days at the placement point, I came across a woman who was never interested in the activities of the peer. She was never involved in the actions of the friends and most times the woman was never laughing or smiling at any activity of the friends. It sounded to me like the problem had been developed by the woman from childhood and irrespective of the funny jokes I made, I realized that she was never moved and she could only express her frustration through destruction of properties. It looked like a little problem to the fellows and they could lough at the patient all the time which lowered her self-esteem. Loneliness was the order of the day for the woman and to her she did not find it as a problem. The individual seemed fine and the friends at the day care were crazy at every aspect when she could not even engage in every activity that was taking place. I evaluated myself and observed the system set up of the lady, since it was clear to me that the same set of the system and fun I was making were familiar to her system as I realized that she was suffering from social autism (De Rubeis et. all, 2014). On first communication with the woman I realized that she was always treated harshly by the parents as well as denied the opportunity to be close to the friends during her development. According to my understanding of the theory of development, I realized that behavior can also be learned through observation and modeling which is a great argument of the social theory (Crain, 2015). I took the woman with me to the comedy show since I believed that she was going to have environmental change in every action that she was taking. At the start of the show she was silent and felt like I was wasting her time but as the show continued, I could recognize the elements of smile and joy in the face. After the show I asked for her opinions concerning the show and what she felt and she stated that she was happy for the event which encouraged me to book for more of such events. After a trip to six events, I could find her making jokes and smiling at the friends’ fun and on the seventh trip she was the one who requested for the show trip. The development in her was quite great and I was happy for the achievement and with her experience I learnt that the social set up of an individual’s designs the behavior of the individual (Irish, 2013). Also, when you are in a given system, you should not only learn the specific ideas of the area but expand your mind to the other system set up as argued in the system theory (Haniff et. all, 2014). The understanding of the Person-Centered approach helped realized that despite being an expert I could not deal with the patient on my own but offer her to other environment to help me through (Silani, Zucconi and Lamm, 2013). Just as argued by Gambin and Sharp, (2015) I did not major on the part of the patient as I knew that it would worsen my situation as regarded by the Task-Centered models but focused on solving the situation at present as well as in the future. I did not ignore the application of other theories in helping the woman, as I wanted to ensure that she was fully recovered. I applied different approaches and realized the following; From the Person-Centered Approach, the friendship between me and the patient was created and this was allowing me to monitor the progress of the patient on daily basis (Gambin and Sharp, 2015). I was in the mode of performing a solution focused brief therapy (SFBT) with the lady throughout the time as I realized that there was the need to facilitate communication between the patient and the peers as it was a way of bringing the miss in the patient (Zhang et. all, 2014). I realized that lack of motivation and care from the fellow’s throughout the day care was contributing to the woman’s problem on daily basis as her situation was worsening day in day out. It was quite clear that social environment of the individual and set-up changes of the individual are geared towards changing the perception of the victims (Crain, 2015). Every action that I took was governed by the changes that I was expressing and as I learnt new ideas, it drove me to understand that for the victims of autism every action towards helping them involve introducing a replacement for the action which they undertake. Applications of the practices to the cross-cultural work and work with Aboriginal Australians and the Torres Straits Islanders Working with an autism victim is like working under new environment with different cultures in the life. You realize that every individual have different cultures which requires evaluation and understanding in order to work with them just like the lady required my understanding to work with her. Different theories that worked for me while dealing with the woman are the same guiding theories that can help an individual to deal with the diversity of cultures. A good relationship created between people in different cultural difference brings closeness in ensuring that every individual appreciate the culture of each other (Crain, 2015). Through the developmental processes and theories eah member of the community is able to appreciate and understand each other’s behavior creating good correlation within the society diverse like the Aboriginal and the Torres Straits Islands. Through learning the ways of expressing the model of Person-Centered approach, various individuals have the ability to gain the first hand information regarding the cultures making it easier to fit in any community (Silani, Zucconi and Lamm, 2013). Just like working with autism which needs an individual to identify the problem and its solution in order to take good care of the victims, cultures are also diverse and the individuals need to understand their shape and ways before embarking on creation of the ideologies and other practices within the cultures. In working with the Aboriginal Australians and the Torres Straits Islanders, an individual needs to understand the diversity in their cultures in order to be understood and be accepted by the islanders (Dudgeon, Milroy, and Walker, 2014). The communities have divers culture with rich cultural activities and understanding their diversity requires that an individual critically analyze the communities actions through different approaches as used in the case of the woman. The experience that I received from the autism day care through application of various models are the guiding principles towards working with the community, as the experience taught me tolerance patients, and ways of having cognitive understanding of the community and individuals. Working with the autism was the hardest experience as involved personal evaluation an action which makes working with the Islanders easy since they are willing to share and train people their cultures. Working with all level of people at placement also made me appreciate the diversity in cultures hence giving me courage to work with the more diverse community like the Islanders. Conclusion From the discussion, the paper has majored on the experience and the situations of the woman with social autism problem. Different theoretical models and theories have been applied in helping the woman to develop a good communication relation with the peers. Bearing in mind some of the goals of the organization such as ensuring an autism free community, it became a practical idea for me to help the woman. Understanding different theories and models involved in working with autism are important towards ensuring the success of the organization is achieved. Negligence should be the story of the past and care should be provided from the childhood to ensure that the society grows continuously without failure in any sector of the economy. Also the experienced gained in the placement should allow us to ensure that we appreciate the diversity that takes place within our community and every environment that we visit to give us room for cultural appreciation. Interaction with other cultures should be based on learning new ideas but not for judgmental purposes. We should have the society at heart and ensure that we develop our society uniformly through involvement in the social welfare actions. List of references Crain, W., 2015. Theories of development: Concepts and applications. Psychology Press. De Rubeis, S., He, X., Goldberg, A.P., Poultney, C.S., Samocha, K., Cicek, A.E., Kou, Y., Liu, L., Fromer, M., Walker, S. and Singh, T., 2014. Synaptic, transcriptional and chromatin genes disrupted in autism. Nature, 515(7526), pp.209-215. Dudgeon, P., Milroy, H. and Walker, R., 2014. Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice. Pat. Gambin, M., Gambin, T. and Sharp, C., 2015. Social cognition, psychopathological symptoms, and family functioning in a sample of inpatient adolescents using variable-centered and person-centered approaches. Journal of adolescence, 45, pp.31-43. Haniff, D., Chamberlain, A., Moody, L. and De Freitas, S., 2014. Virtual environments for mental health issues: a review. Journal of Metabolomics and Systems Biology, 3(1), pp.1-10. Irish, J.E., 2013. Can I sit here? A review of the literature supporting the use of single-user virtual environments to help adolescents with autism learns appropriate social communication skills. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(5), pp.A17-A24. Rhodes, M., 2014. Southern European welfare states: Between crisis and reform. Routledge. Silani, G., Zucconi, A. and Lamm, C., 2013. Carl Rogers meets the neurosciences: Insights from social neuroscience for client-centered therapy. In Interdisciplinary Handbook of the Person-Centered Approach (pp. 63-78). Springer New York. Zhang, W., Yan, T.T., Du, Y.S. and Liu, X.H., 2014. Brief report: effects of solution-focused brief therapy group-work on promoting post-traumatic growth of mothers who have a child with ASD. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 44(8), pp.2052-2056. Read More