Relationship in Social Work Practices - Assignment Example

Practice Scenario “Mia” Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Practice Scenario “Mia” Question 1: Discussing “Tune-in” to Mia before Meeting with her Tuning-in to the client, social worker has to consider understanding loss and grief, emotional intelligence and identification of “systems” in clients’ lives. Having these qualities of tuning-in to the client, social worker understands the client’s description with a lot of ease. In the Mia’s case, she describes the challenges she encountered since she migrated from Austria to Australia for six years. The Tune-in to Mia would focus on her lifestyle in both countries that is Austria the where she was born and had her first family and Australia where she migrated after being married to the second family. To start with, while in Austria, prior migrating, she had a good job as Vocational College lecturer. At this position, she was well paid at the standard of a lecturer and hence having a good lifestyle. Comparing the working condition of the two countries indicates that she faced life challenge in the foreign land. Tuning-to Mia helps in connecting her life challenges to reality in life as they haunt her peace. She abandoned two adolescent daughters with her ex-husband and started the process to migrate to Australia. After arriving at the new marriage, it only lasted for one year. Reason being that is it different from the home country. This is connected to misplaced objective, wealth illusion and thinking she was getting into a better life (Campbell, 2015). Marriage break-up, poor housing, lack of friends and lack of formal employment are among the issues that affected her. The physical and emotional changes are major issues that should determine the turn-in to understand her feelings. The most important consideration is ensuring Mia to relate to reality on the issues influencing her life through supporting her decision. Health challenges indicate another issue that completely influenced the status of Mia. While is Australia, she was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. The diagnosis and treatment influenced her health condition and impacted on her financial status. Health issue was another factor that made her earn less in the part-time job she got at Australia. This made her think and dream that she was like floating alone across a large sea far from land. At this early stage, what would you think about her statement “something was holding her back”? According to Mia’s statement that “something was holding her back,” it means that she was not ready to engage the family members in Austria about her condition. She left adolescent daughters and her ex-husband. During her stay in Australia, she visited Austria twice, and her daughter with her baby visited her in Australia and understood the condition of life she is living. This shows she is guilty of returning and asking for help. Her health condition is improving while in Adelaide. Now moving to a new location would deter her treatment. Furthermore, she does not understand the treatment quality in the Melbourne. Therefore, the issues surrounding her life are holding her back to continue with treatment. Question 2: How you would begin with Mia and gain her trust In gaining Mia’s confidence, I would engage her professionally using the social work principles and ethics. This would help in ensuring the discussion and interactions remain professional. In so doing, I would first request her to provide me with relevant literature concerning her life issues and challenges (Hepworth, 2010). The nature of communication would help me as the social worker to imagine and walk in Mia’s shoes. The connection of the literature provided and facial and gesture, expression would help in connecting how to address Mia’s issue (Walsh, 2006). Furthermore, while narrating her issues and challenges, I would be in a position of getting in touch with her potential feelings. Therefore, this connection forms the basis of building trust between Mia and I as the social worker. Empathy, warmth, and genuineness are interpersonal qualities that are essential in turning-in to the client. These interpersonal conditions are essential in this case of Mia as they help in winning her trust (Thyer, Dulmus, & Sowers, 2012). Empathy indicates the willingness and the ability to understand Mia experience and feelings toward her issues and challenges in life. The warmth that is referred to as the unconditional positive regard or respect shows the willingness and ability to accept the clients, showing care and being non-judgmental. As the social worker, the basic consideration is ensuring that the client gets unconditional positive regards and winning her trust, she should not be judged (Goodman & Trowler, 2012). At turning-in to client stage, it is essential for a social worker to listen and feel the client’s expression without interrupting and judging. Genuineness shows the willingness and the ability of a social worker in expressing helpful commentary that is natural without pretense to the client. Identifying concepts from the Interactional Model that are relevant to “Mia’s” situation and discuss how you would apply them in your work with her The Interactional Model concepts are relevant in addressing Mia’s case cover study, treatment, and evaluation (Shulman, 2016). This model is essential for a social worker to engage the client on the issues and challenges they are encountering. Listening with focus and having the urge of reaching in the information helps in unearthing issues that are affecting the client. It is essential for the social worker to display an understanding of the client’s feeling and expressing the client’s feeling into words (Nieters, 2012). The interactional model aspects help the social worker in interpreting the clues presented through non-verbal language by the client. This communication is essential in showing the inner feeling and how the client relates issues and challenges with her life experience and reality (Shulman, 2016). The interactive model would be of great importance while addressing Mia’s condition and reaching the inside silence. The presentation of her issues, communication strategy and verbal and non-verbal language are essential in studying Mia’s reaction (Nieters, 2012). Furthermore, after studying her reaction, issues and challenges, I would be in a position of offering professional treatment and evaluation as a social worker. Question 3: from the Former British Child Migrants, the five women who wrote about their lives as children felt they had recovered from their ordeal. Do you agree? If yes, give your rationale and discuss what factors you feel helped them. According to the five women presentation, I agree that they recovered from their ordeal. To start with, the rationales that the five women used were a determination to understand who they were and to thrive in the life to realize the reality. The presentation of the five stories indicates their expression from digging their background, traversing to their life context and realizing their status as a human being (Campbell, 2015). The track of the events is the key factor for healing as it helps in comparing the reality, issues, and challenges to the life reality. Having a place to present their ordeal was the first step of healing as they shared what they went through as immigrant under different institutions such as churches and government institutions (Bliss, 2015). Therefore, the foundation of their recovery is an expression of their minds, feelings and thought regarding the issues and challenges they faced since their childhood as an immigrant. The factors that helped the five women in recovering from their ordeal are courage to survive, the journey to truth discovery about their families in England and loss discovery. The stories of the five women help in indicating some of the challenges they faced as an immigrant. These challenges include loneliness and bewilderment, abuse and ill-treatment [Iri04]. Connecting the challenges that these ladies went through as an immigrant and the end results of discovering the truth about their origin and family gives recovery from their ordeal. The issue presented in this connection is that the zeal of getting the truth of their origin was successful at the end (Bliss, Pecukonis, & Snyder-Vogel, 2014). The five stories indicate the success of the ladies after going through the hectic life of ill-treatment and abuse. As a migrant, the children were lonely, and they felt as they were in the wilderness. The courage to un-earthen the truth was faced with a lot of tribulations, hardship, and challenges. The stories of the five women reveal the reality in such institutions as churches and government. The social context of these institutions shows that things are all right, but on the truth of the matter and in reality people are suffering. The connection of the stories shows the challenges that minority in the society is going through [Iri04]. The issues are connected to mistreatment, lack of essential support and denial of the rights. These ladies experienced these tribulations as chances for proper health care, education, and their wellbeing was minimized [Iri04]. The truth of the matter is that immigrant faces challenges, but only the courageous like the five ladies emerge winners. There is a need to express their connections that exist between emerging victorious and being subjected to hardship in life. Question 4: Choose one reading from this semester’s weekly readings that has influenced your thinking or knowledge about social work. Discuss this influence. Chapter 7: Relationship in Social Work Practices The social worker relates in different aspects with the clients. The nature of the relationship between the social worker and client is to build on purpose (Compton, Burt & Barry, 2005, p.144). The basic foundation of this nature of the relationship is brought about by the need of professional evaluation and advice from the social worker by the client (Abbott & Mayes, 2014). In this case, the client has to formulate a purposeful relationship with the social worker of who to trust in his or her confidential information. The relationship with social work practice is goal oriented in directing the change in activities. The social worker initiates and develops good relations with the client to achieve the goal and the objective. The major issue in this relationship is formulated on the specialist and client on a purpose of getting into the bottom of the matter (Graham, Bradshaw, Surood, & Kline, 2014). The social worker was not interested in other issues apart from the client's system and the change agent system. The form of communication that is initiated in the relationship between the social worker and client is essential for the determination of the professional objective and goal (Compton et al., 2005, p.147). In the communication, the social worker learns and understands the clients’ inner feelings. The methods of communications take verbal and non-verbal communication. The relationship between the verbal and non-verbal such as gesturing and facial expression gives more information about feelings and mood (Bliss, Pecukonis, & Snyder-Vogel, 2014). The reality that exists from the communication styles helps the social worker to know the nature of the relationship they intend to build with the client. Furthermore, the communication helps the social worker in understanding the context of response the client requires. Therefore, the foundation of the relationship depends on with the social worker and client demand to the healing process. In determining, the skills of the social worker in formulating and making decisions or application of intervention method are influenced by the nature of relationship initiated. The social worker depends on with the information provided in formulating and coming up with the decision. The appropriate approach is developing a good relationship through providing essential information to lead toward the healing process (Elias & Upton-Davis, 2015). It is the mandate of the skilled social worker in making decision basing on the available information provided. The practitioner has the mandate of initiating appropriate mechanism that would ensure the relationship to change in a client system that is purely maintained in a professional manner (Compton et al., 2005, p.144). The connection that exists between the social worker and client require remaining professional. Furthermore, there is need of understanding personal details, especially while making personal decisions. Therefore, the client and social worker must establish a viable relationship that would contribute towards the healing process. References Abbott, C., & Mayes, C. (2014). Action learning for professionals: a new approach to practice. Action Learning: Research & Practice. 11(1), 72-80. Bliss, D. (2015). Using the Social Work Advocacy Practice Model to Find Our Voices in Service of Advocacy. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance. 39(1), 57-68. Bliss, D., Pecukonis, E., & Snyder-Vogel, M. (2014). Principled Leadership Development Model for Aspiring Social Work Managers and Administrators: Development and Application. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 38(1), 5-15. Campbell, C. (2015). Innovations in Governance: Application to Social Work. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance. 39(4), 339-347. Compton, Beulah R, Galaway, Burt & Cournoyer, Barry R 2005. 'Relationship in social work practice', in Compton, Beulah Roberts, Galaway, Burt & Cournoyer, Barry, Social work processes, 7th edn, Brooks/Cole-Thomson Learning, Belmont, Calif., pp. 142-158. Elias, P., & Upton-Davis, K. (2015). Embedding peer support using social work values. Journal of Mental Health Training, Education & Practice, 10(5), 304-313. Goodman, S., & Trowler, I. (2012). Social work reclaimed: innovative frameworks for child and family social work practice. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Graham, J., Bradshaw, C., Surood, S., & Kline, T. (2014). Predicting Social Workers' Subjective Well-Being. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance. 38(4), 405-417. Hepworth, D. (2010). Direct social work practice: theory and skills. Belmont, Calif: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning. Irizarry, C. & Kleanthi, E. eds. (2004) Five Stories: Remembering Childhood Removal from Homeland, Australian Centre for Community Services Research. Nieters, J. (2012). Defining an Interaction Model: The Cornerstone of Application Design: UXmatters. Uxmatters.com. Retrieved 5 November 2016, from http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/01/defining-an-interaction-model-the-cornerstone-of-application-design.php#top Shulman, L. (2016). A Shifting Paradigm – Medical to Interactional Model: A Personal History. Journals.iupui.edu. Retrieved 5 November 2016, from https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/advancesinsocialwork/article/viewFile/16647/16979 Thyer, B., Dulmus, C., & Sowers, K. (2012). Human behavior in the social environment: theories for social work practice. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley. Walsh, J. (2006). Theories for Direct Social work practice. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Brooks/Cole. Read More