The Social Workers Work of Heart - Term Paper Example

The Social Worker’s “Work of Heart” This fast-paced world of ours seems to continually crave for products and processes that bring instant gratification… be it modern gadgets, speeding up courses of action, and even moving on from one significant life change to another. However, as human beings, there remain life circumstances that need a lot of intensive processing in which speed of resolution may not help at all. Amidst the breakthroughs of science and technology, and the modifications of moral standards, people still need basic care, acceptance and understanding of their humanity. One career that promotes such is Social Work. The social worker wears many hats in the implementation of his/her job. Van Nijnatten (2006) says, “The aim of social work is to enhance citizens’ ability to take care of themselves and to promote their participation in the social process. This can vary from helping one client to get a secure income, or organizing material security to providing information and organizing a social network. It can also mean that the social worker, reviewing her clients’ affairs, comes to the conclusion that there is something structurally amiss at the workplace and that something must fundamentally change in the company’s organization if systematic absenteeism is to be further prevented. The aim is always to help clients to help themselves, to develop new prospects for the future or to simply accept a reality that is difficult to alter.” (p. 141) In order for a social worker to be successful in her career, her broad knowledge of various organizational and networking systems that provide support and services to their clients must be matched with her own vast understanding of how a person’s mind and emotions operate especially in times of crisis. Most of the time, counseling sessions are conducted with her client, or members of her client’s family. Here, the social worker’s communication skills are put to the test. “In conversations with the professional, clients speak out about their pains and sorrows, and about their hope and beliefs.” (Van Nijnatten, 2006, p.133) It becomes an avenue where both the social worker and the client brainstorm on ways to express these emotions so they construct new meanings and new perspectives. Coming from an objective frame of mind, the social worker helps the client distance himself to the concern at hand and explains that such overwhelming emotions that the client is undergoing are normal and can cite cases of others who have survived through the same. Then ways to resolve the problem are discussed. With children, social workers take on a more critical role, as they adjust to the developmental stages and needs of the child client. Like the parents’ role, a social worker helps the child to find the words that enables him to express himself well. When the child feels empowered enough to become the author of his life story, he becomes better able to reconstruct his life. (Van Nijnatten, 2006) This paper focuses on the importance of social workers in the rehabilitation of young offeders in residential facilities. These children and adolescents have committed crimes, however, because of their young age, are not sentenced to imprisonment, instead, they are placed in residential correctional institutions. These children are vulnerable to a host of depressive symptoms which may be very difficult to handle on their own. Roy Williamson, executive officer of the Independent Childrens Homes Association shares his views regarding the youth offenders under their care: “For a start they are children first but with offending behaviour that needs to be dealt with. When you look at it like that there is no reason necessarily to exclude them from homes. But it is important to ensure that when their lives are in total chaos, with offending and substance misuse going on, then that chaos must not be allowed to impact on anyone else. Again, that is where very small residential placements come into their own - it could be a one-bed childrens home - allowing you to deal with the behaviour without too many distractions.” (Community Care, 2007, n.p.) Just what happens to youth offenders sentenced to life in residential placements? Some are provided with “safeguarding”. “Safeguarding is an inclusive approach to the care of juveniles in custody and includes suicide prevention and self-harm management, anti-bullying, child protection, anti-discrimination and an overall holistic approach to care in custody” (Sale, 2006, p. 34) An exemplary institution for youth offenders is the Echo Glen Children’s Center. It is one of Washington State Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration’s three state correctional facilities providing juvenile rehabilitation for over 200 sentenced youth offenders. The ages of the detained youth offenders range from eight to twenty one. Many have committed serious offences including rape and homicide. A large number have serious mental health problems, use drugs or alcohol and have many learning disabilities. “Echo Glen provides treatment programs for young offenders with a range of psychosocial problems. Young people have access to a wide range of mental health services designed to improve emotional health and wellbeing, social skills and self-control. This is alongside grief and loss counseling, drug and alcohol treatment and violence prevention programs based on anger management and impulse control. There are also treatment programs designed specifically for girls and young women.” (McDougall & Jones, 2007 p. 20). The social worker usually becomes the child or adolescent’s strongest motivator. However, it is her task to help her clients to become independent. She tries to encourage their capacity for reflection and to delineate their persons from the problem itself. This is because clients are often so immersed in their concerns that they perceive that they are unable to change anything, often becoming hopeless (Van Nijnatten, 2006). Barrie Hopwood, a Project Manager for Hounslow Youth Counselling Service at Feltham shares that being a counselor for youth offenders for over two decades involved him being engaged in helping people to confront, work through and often overcome fear and anxiety, despair and depression, loss and abandonment, abuse and neglect (Hopwood, 2007). He continues to reflect, “My work as a volunteer and later as a supervisor for Harrow Victim Support Scheme, where I understood the trauma and despair that crime causes for victims and their loved ones. This work helped me to maintain a perspective, which embraces the need always to hold the suffering caused to victims in the overall picture when working with young offenders. “ (Hopwood, 2007) Hopwood explains that any inmate who voluntarily chooses to enter the counseling relationship with a social worker knows that he will be constantly validated and strengthened. Most of the children or adolescents rarely had positive role models and choose to use ‘illegitimate’ channels to fulfill their goals. When they intimate a real desire to transform their lives and voice out an absolute conviction that they will not be “doing time” again, they need the social worker to honor their commitment and at least give them an ‘outside chance of a chance outside’. Although 75 per cent of young offenders are reconvicted, there remains the 25 per cent who are not and truly go on to transformed lives. It is important for social workers to follow up the lives of those under their guidance to know if work with them had made a difference. (Hopwood, 2007) With young offenders, their own sense of uncertainty may be overwhelming and need someone objective to explain to them so they can better deal with it. Knowledge of what to expect can give them a sense of control over the situation. Even young children need to have developmentally appropriate information and the opportunity to participate in decision-making. For adolescents the need for personal control seemed especially important (Jones, 2006). Usually, children find it less stressful to unburden to a stranger or to a friend outside their family, as there are less emotional involvement with that person. Also, their own parents and relatives may try to coddle them from the pain of the truth It is true that children and adolescents under the care of efficient social workers are not guaranteed to be forever changed for the better. However, a positive difference in them was a feeling of being supported as well as monitored. “Some children described relationships with individuals who they felt cared about them and would fight their corner. This was demonstrated partly by practitioners who "actually did something", like attending appointments at the job centre, but one child valued his mentor simply because she rang to ask how he was.” (Williamson in Community Care, 2007). Such open communication is likewise crucial to the family of the young offender. Openness and honesty regarding their child’s case is to be discussed by the family members, the social worker in a sensitive and compassionate manner (Jones, 2006). In a crisis such as this, parents, most especially need assurance that they will not be abandoned by the people helping them. The quality of support the social worker provides is necessary for the healing process of the family to ensue. The lack of childrens services’ involvement in planning can seriously affect the childs rehabilitation A network of support between children’s and youth justice services require agencies to share information, coordinate plans and identify clear roles at each stage of the child’s pathway through their services. Being so, they can chart the child’s progress and development after his or her release from the juvenile home. It takes so much commitment and dedication to be an effective social worker, not to mention the skills and knowledge she must possess in order to carry out her job well. However, such high regard given to their wisdom by her clients must not go to her head. “It is therefore most important that the social worker should maintain an appropriate distance and indicates to the client the limits on any possibilities of assistance: the social worker cannot do everything, has limited time available, and so on. At the same time, there is a never-say-die attitude necessary, and all possibilities that may offer a perspective on the future are examined together with the client, however limited they may be. This attitude also serves to protect the social workers themselves, who otherwise run the risks of themselves being dragged into the delusion that they are able to solve all the client’s problems.” (Van Nijnatten, 2006, p. 140). Social workers must be wary of this messianic belief as it may overwhelm them into thinking they are all-important, and may develop an attitude of superiority. They must always keep in mind that they belong to the human service profession and not in any way involved in their own ego-boosting. Social work continues to be a significant career that upholds and maintains the humanity of people in a world where modern influences can make them cold and indifferent. Social workers are beacons of light in the dark tunnels of hopelessness. They serve to provide hope and acceptance of the things life may throw at people in unfortunate times. Social workers have the power to provide temporary relief from pain, whether physical, cognitive or emotional. They are our confidantes, our sympathetic friends, our angels on earth. References Hopwood, B. (2007) Locked in. Therapy Today, 17487846, Apr2007, Vol. 18, Issue 3 Jones, B.L., (2006) “Companionship, Control, and Compassion: A Social Work Perspective on the Needs of Children with Cancer and their Families at the End of Life” Journal of Palliative Medicine, Volume 9, Number 3, 2006 McDougall, T. and Jones, C. (2007) Dialectical behaviour therapy for young offenders: lessons from the USA, Part 2. Mental Health Practice October 2007 vol 11 no 2 Mendenhall, M (2003) “Psychosocial aspects of pain management: A conceptual framework for social workers on pain management teams.” Social Work Health Care 36:35–51. Roff, S. (2001) “Analyzing end-of-life care legislation: A social work perspective.” Social Work Health Care 2001;33: 51–68. Sale, A. U. (2006) You Can Always Talk To Maxine. Community Care; July 13, 2006 Issue 1631, p32-34. Stein, G.L., And Sherman, P.A. (2005) “Promoting Effective Social Work Policy in End-of-Life and Palliative Care” Journal of Palliative Medicine Volume 8, Number 6, 2005 Van Nijnatten, C. (2006) “Finding the words: social work from a developmental perspective” Journal of Social Work Practice Vol. 20, No. 2, July 2006, pp. 133–144 Williamson, R. (2007) “Some children just cannot live in a family.” Community Care, 03075508, 9/20/2007, Issue 1691 Read More