My Journey In Social Work

Superior Essays
Throughout my journey of discovering my role and beginning my work in the field of social work, I have slowly begun to unravel and mold the type of professional I would like to be. While shadowing, supervision, schooling, and in my own personal experience I am forming the way I would like to be. It is important to keep in mind the way one communicates, responds, and places boundaries with not only our clients but with colleagues. Starting the relationships on good terms is important because this will set the tone for the rest of your relationship and time with them. Schulman wrote that there are four phases to working with clients: preliminary, beginning, middle, and ending and transition (2015). In the preliminary phase it is important to …show more content…
In the beginning phase, you review the case plan given to the clients based on the court orders; you also continue to identify any needs that haven’t been met. Schulman continues to write that there are certain skills that should be addressed and met during this phase: clarifying the worker’s purpose and role, reaching for the client’s feedback, partializing the client’s concerns, supporting clients in taboo areas, and dealing with issues of authority (2015). By allowing the client to elaborate on what it is they need as individual we are able to create case plans that are specific and unique to each individual client. Although many clients receive the same overall case plan (i.e. individual counseling, substance abuse counseling, parenting classes, etc.) I need to make sure that as a clinician I am able to use various skills to help a client elaborate on their needs. Once I know the contract set in motion we move on to the middle stage, which is addressing the issues and applying intervention. I know that I am not going to providing the therapy for my client because that is beyond my current scope of practice. I can though use tools …show more content…
My supervisor is constantly encouraging us and showing us that we need to help clients reach the finish line but it is up to them to actually make it across the line. There will be many times where clients just want to their social worker to do everything for them but we cant do that. We have to constantly empower them to seek out those resources and to ask for help when they have tried everything. Although I am still not ending my time with my client, prepping my client for the department not being involved for longer then necessary has been difficult. I’m someone who loves to hand hold people and get them through whatever they are going through with me helping them. I 'm working on being able to not do that, I can walk along side the client and meet the client half way but I can not hand hold them because then I am not teaching the client to be self sufficient. Through out entire time working with clients we have to be reminding them that our involvement should be for forever, we need to be preparing them for the ending of our relationship. Due to certain circumstances that have risen with my case these last two weeks, it is very likely that the case will be ongoing even when I complete my internship. Therefore it will be important for me to keep open communication with the clients and

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Boundary Dominations in Dual Relationships Social work is a profession of justice and compassion where the development of dual or multiple relationships are established. Dual relationships are both influenced by the social worker and the client because of the different types of roles that can occur from business partner to sexual partner. Social workers should caution on developing a dual relationship with their clients because of the boundaries that can be crossed or violated. Boundary violations occur when social workers engage in dual relationships that are exploitative, manipulative, deceptive, or coercive, while boundary crossings are harmful when the dual relationship has negative consequences for the social worker’s client or colleague…

    • 1362 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Faith Harper Case Summary

    • 807 Words
    • 4 Pages

    I have learned that I can never assume things about a person or situation. I also learned that I should do research on my clients background and try to gain understanding about what goes on in their lives and why they react the way they do. One major mistake the social worker made was over stepping her professional boundaries. This in particular showed me that I have to be always mindful of agency policy, and not get too attached to a client. Faith Harper’s story gave great insight into social work practice, and I will attempt to go above and beyond to help all women in Faith’s…

    • 807 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ethical Self-Awareness

    • 1418 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Ethical Self-Awareness What are my core beliefs? This is a question that I have struggled with for the better part of my life. If we get our core beliefs from our parents, then I wouldn’t believe in much.…

    • 1418 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    ARMY ASAP2 How I will use the information learned to assist me in fostering a strong therapeutic alliance between me and the client Arguably a therapy session cannot be successful if a good alliance does not exist between the therapist and the client. As such, in order to foster a strong therapeutic alliance between me and the client, I would: Establishment of whether the client is interested in what is troubling them and the therapy session. This would be achieved through being attentive to what the client is saying, asking relevant questions, remembering details and making them feel that they are welcome. Give the client room.…

    • 242 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Unit 3 Assignment

    • 260 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Also as part of my client caseload the paperwork that could be involved can become overwhelming. Having a supervisor that is not supportive or co-workers that are not willing to help mentor would also be an environmental challenge that I could potentially have to face. I have seen…

    • 260 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article “Non-Profit News: Easy Ways to Lose Clients and Your Reputation” written by Dr. Warren Corson III was about how certain things, although they may seem insignificant can affect you and your clients in a negative way. An example would be focusing on making money. When a clinician is only focused on making money their clients may feel as if they are a meal ticket. Immediately asking to have clients pay their co-payment and fill out paperwork before asking the clients why they are there, may cause a negative impact on the clients’ perception of the clinician. Corson stated that smiling, making eye contact, and asking clients why they are there is extremely important.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In this stage the therapist takes all the information shared throughout the stages and make a plan to go over with the family. An example of this stage includes if Brenda or Kay mentioned at the end of therapy that they would like a “100% supportive environment” we could work on the behaviors that support a supportive environment like communication styles, rules, roles,…

    • 1309 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I feel like I am professionally ready for my senior year placement. I am looking forward to being able to spend much more time and actually see what a social worker does and interact with a social worker on a much different level than previous service learning’s. I believe that being able to interact with individuals at this last site will help me tremendously when it comes to interacting with clients and employees at my senior placement. This service learning helped me to acquire social skills, which will be extremely helpful when it comes to next year. I would like to build on my learning for the next academic year by understanding and reading more about interviewing, assessment, intervention, and evaluation of practice.…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    The interplay of the social worker and client relationship is an essential piece in meeting the needs of those who are being served. Be it physical, emotional, social or otherwise and affirming the social work value of the importance of human relationships. Regardless of ones assumptions regarding the focus of social work on macro vs. micro, all should be looked at through the lens of the core values of social work. The six core values set forth to guide the practice of social work are essential to help ensure the fidelity of social work practice.…

    • 1774 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    1. What stood out to you in this weeks content material, and why? The thing that stood out, in this week’s content is the “Strengths or Resiliency Perspective”. For some time now, I have been working with homeless Veterans, it is wrong to think that homelessness is a permanent condition, I have come to learned of homeless veterans who emanated from homelessness to owning a house.…

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Boundaries In Social Work

    • 1516 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Boundaries Within social work, professionalism is key in earning the respect of your clients and forming a firm foundation of the context of your relationship. These boundaries reflect upon what not only your clients expect from you as a case worker, but how they as the clients should treat you. Moreover, if you do not exemplify these ideals then clients have the ability to take advantage of you.…

    • 1516 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As I was making my Ecomap I came to realize that my priorities are not completely met and that I might need to change my routine in order to feel satisfied with the goals I want to accomplish in life. As I look at my elements I see that I am focusing my energy mainly in school, which is acceptable since this will help me fulfill my goals of having a successful career one day. School is a positive energy and it brings me satisfaction when I finish a term with a good grade, but at the same time it can be depleting. I have to focus and give most of my time to school in order to fulfill my goal and receive good grades. School is a lot of dedication and at times I have to sacrifice other activities (such as family time, gym, friends) in order…

    • 2342 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Often, they chose not to. I realized that I could not solve their problems, I could only be ready with a helping hand for them to chose to receive help. Social workers experience mental and physical exhaustion as they deal with difficult situations, but they can see small glimpses of success when clients choose to help…

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I have learned a lot about myself while completing the self-assessment questionnaires, and taking the time to self-reflection about my learning style and therapeutic mode. I have always thought my learning styles was an accommodating style, but since taking the Kolb’s learning styles questionnaire. I scored the following; 42 in reflective observation, 34 in active experimentation, 23 abstract conceptualization, and 20 in concrete experience. I discovered that my style of learning is diverging. After reading the definition about diverging style it does sound like how I like to learn.…

    • 1540 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    While managing to present the client with certain challenges that allow them to see the action that needs to be taken, and what can they do in order to bring about change. It is also very necessary to help the clients pinpoint their own personal strengths, understand what’s hindering them from using available resources, and to have them specifically state what they want they want in life and how they want to live it. Professional boundaries/roles on the therapist behalf is to be explicitly stated before the therapy is in session. Maybe also a little clarification of the rules of therapy and what therapy is exactly since individuals tend to have misconstrued information about therapy in general. Some important characteristics that a good counselor should have is the willingness to listen, to provide encouragement, to be empathetic, to be nonjudgmental, to have patience, and to most of all uphold the promise to keep things confidential unless that client is at risk for harming themselves as well as others.…

    • 1762 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays