Definition of Social Work
Social work is the professional activity that involves the acts of helping individuals, groups or communities to enhance or resolve their capacity for social functional; risks as well as creating conditions that are conducive for this goal (Hearly, 2001). The primary mission of social work is promotion of human wellbeing of all people with special attention to the needs and empowerment of vulnerable and oppressed people.
Fundamental to social work is attention to environmental forces that impact on, create, contribute, or address issues in living. Social work seeks social justice and change with and on behalf of clients (individuals, families, group’s organizations and communities) in the form of direct peace, community organization, supervision, consultation administration, advocacy, social and political action policy development and implementation, education research and evaluation (Hearly, 2001).
Social work enhances peoples’ capacity to address their own problems by promoting their responsiveness of their organization, community and other social institutions to individual needs and social issues.
The mission of social work is embedded in core values that are unique to the purpose and perspective of the field. Such include service, social justice, dignity and worthy of the person, importance of human relationship, integrity and competence (Weiss, 2003).
My Engagement Style as a Social Worker
The main task of a professional social worker include providing services such as case management, counseling and psychotherapy, human care management, social welfare policy analysis, policy and practice development, community organization, international social and community development advocacy and social political research (Weiss, 2003). Hence, as a professional social worker, the driving force behind my efforts has always been the desire to help others to grow and improve their life circumstances. For me to achieve these noble dreams, I personally feel that there is the need to keep a clear boundary between my personal life and feelings in relation to my professional work Hearly, 2001). This ensures that there is professional integrity and responsibility. Such a limit calls for a safe connection based on the client’s needs. Thus, I keep a clear boundary to assure professional integrity and responsibility. Boundaries are the limits allowing for a safe connection based on the client’s needs especially in intimate relationship, pursuit of personal benefit, emotional needs, altruistic needs and responses to unanticipated circumstances.
Thus for better engagement, with the clients, the best strategy that I prefer in facilitating a client’s growth is to earn their trust, confidence and respect. This allows me to culture and build a client rapport by sympathizing and empathizing with the client’s experiences and/ or pain without jeopardizing the social worker client rapport (Weiss, 2003). Thus, always, I do my best to clearly identify and manage my emotional issues that the profession generates so that the scope and nature of client social worker rapport remains well focused not to hurt the client by uncalled for interference such as disclosure or sharing of my own personal experiences.
Building client rapport and trust by a social worker.
First, the social worker should value the worth and dignity of all clients. Therefore, if one is working with foreign born clients, it is advisable to acquire a certain level of understanding their country of origin their social norms, family values and their immigration acculturation issues (Weiss, 2003). This is because; different people have their different stories to tell which in most cases are influenced and determined by their cultural backgrounds (Weiss, 2003). Thus they always hope and expect the social worker to be equipped enough to understand their lives as they live them, interpret them and find solutions to their hard situations.
Values,Ethics and Attitudes of a Social Worker
The ethical and value issues that impact and are interwoven with social work practice, research and theory development are the development of models for analysis and resolving value and ethical conflicts, discussion of ethical and value dilemmas in relation to the development of new technologies, research studies as well as the impact of values and ethics in the field of social work practice decision mailing and in a genuine program development, delivery and analysis, scholarly and practice books, monograph articles written on the topic of social work values and ethics (Hearly, 2001).
My Preferred Attitudes, Values, Ethics and behavior in relation to Concepts of Professional Social Work
My desire for creation and maintenance of professional boundaries enables me to keep high standards of professional integrity thatin turn allows me to win the trusty and confidence of the client (Weiss, 2003). In effect, this leads to a sense of respect between me and my client thus safeguarding civil as well as human rights of the client such as self determination, rightto privacy, confidentiality and use of the information as there is no trespass in to clients personal life unless the client deems it alright to share details of their private life.
The Hypothetical Client
The selected hypothetical client is called john Roberts. He is a sharp contrast to me in terms of values and social norms and cultural ethical values as he is from a different racer with me. He is white while I a m black.
Up on speaking to him I discovered that he holds different values and ethical concerns on the issue of social work. To him the field of social work has to be based on the respect for inherent dignity and worth of persons, pursuit of social justice, and service to humanity, integrity professional practice, and confidentiality in professional practice and competence in professional practice.
According to him, a client social worker rapport can be build and developed by application of the core missions of the field to enhance the human wellbeing by helping others to meet their basic human needs such as empower ring the vulnerable, the oppressed living in poverty since to him, the defining feature of social work is the profession’s focus on the individual wellbeing in their social context and that of the society.
He alleges that social work should focus on the environmental forces that create more contribute to addressing the problems in living. Hence, social work should strive to promote social justice and social change on behalf of vulnerable individuals, familygroups organizations and communities (Hearly, 2001). Due to this, social workers have to be sensitive to cultural and ethnic diversity and strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty and any other form of social injustice. They achieve this by direct practice, community organization, supervision, consultation, administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy development, research and evaluation,education and political action
They should also strive to enhance the capacity of the people to address their own needs in addition to promoting the responsiveness of organizations, communities and any other institution or individual needs and social problem.
The Values,Ethics and Attitude of the Hypothetical client Towards Social work as Field of Study
John Roberts believes the mission of social work to be build around the core values as has been embraced by social work professional world over. He says they give the fundamental purpose and unique perspective to the field (Hearly, 2001). Such include source, social justice, and dignity of the person, importance of human relationship, integrity and competency.
A comparison and contrast of the differences and similarities between the hypothetical client and myself
John Roberts put emphasis on the pursuit of social justice by the social worker on behalf of the vulnerable groups of the society (Hearly, 2001). Which I disagree as I belief the as a field of social practice which should be used to create facilitation of the link up of people with help to enhance problem solving, coping and development capacity of the people. His views sound more or less as the arrogation of political duties to the social worker
However, on the other hand, we do agree that the primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human wellbeing by attempting to help them meet their basic human needs for all the people with particular focus and attention on the needs and empowerment of the vulnerable, the oppressed and those living in poverty (Weiss, 2003).
In addition, we both agree that the core defining feature of social work is the profession’s ability to focus on the wellbeing to the society in the social context of that society since the key to a successful social work is the attention to environmental forces that t create and contribute to the issue of addressing the problems under which the society lives.
Again, we both believe that social workers should striveto promote social justice and social change on behalf of clients or the vulnerable groupsin the society. On another issue, we both do agree that, professionalism and ethics are the core values of social work whereby, the profession has an obligation to articulate its basic values, ethical principles and ethical standards which summarizes the broader ethical defining features that reflect the profession’s core values and establishes a set of specific ethical standards that should be applied to promote social wellbeing to the people (Weiss, 2003).
Finally, we both agree and recognize that, social workers should be trained professionally and be bound and guided by formulated set of codes developed specifically for the field in designing and identifying the relevant considerations when professional obligations conflicts or when they are faced with ethical uncertainties.
References
Hearly, L. (2001). International Social Work: Professional Action in an Independent World. New York, Oxford University Press.
Weiss,I. (2003). Professional Ideologies and Preferences in Social Work. US: Greenwood, Publishing Group Inc.