The author of this personal critical incident paper is a 26-year-old African American female she was born in a two-parent middle-class home she is the eldest of two girls. She graduated in the top 15 percent of her high school class. She was able to secure a great score on her ACT and her college tuition was paid for. She attending McNeese State University where she obtained bachelor 's degree in psychology. She enjoys working with families and children and assisting them with the community resource. She is currently employed as a foster care social worker at Department of Children and Family Services. Her job roles consist of working with parents that temporarily lost their children and they are placed in state custody. She identifies herself as being a big, beautiful, healthy, African American woman.
Her parents are both 1 of 5 siblings and both had a very modest childhood. Her parents would be considered a part of the working lower-middle-class. “The number of African Americans considered middle class varies widely depending on what indicators are used. For example, about 30% of African-American households earn between $35,000 and $74,999, and about 17% of African Americans over age 25 have a 4-year college degree (Wheary 2006). Most studies utilize variants of traditional measures of income, education, and occupation either separately or combined to assess socioeconomic status or as criteria for membership in a particular social class”... Her parents were married for 23 years before deciding to divorce in 2013. Her mother worked several jobs before she decided to complete her nursing degree. In 2005, her mother began working as a nurse at the local hospital in town. Her father had several janitorial jobs and he has worked as a blinding maintenance man for 25 years. The family roles in the home were reverse because her mother made 3 times the amount of money that her father made. The family struggle throughout her childhood, they could not receive governmental assistance because they made to much money, however, there have been many times when food and holidays were scares. Both parents completed high school and her mother completed some college coursework. Her maternal grandparents are both deceased and have been deceased for some time. Her grandfather was shot and killed when her mother was 9 years old by his alleged mistress. Her grandmother passed away when she was a sophomore in a college of due to stress and trauma from being sexually abused. “According to Wiest et. all in “2012 approximately 17.7 million women have been assaulted as a child or an adult about sexually abused African-American women are less likely to receive mental health treatment and it often less likely to disclose the events to a therapist” (Breslau, 2005, p.). Shortly after the abused occurred her grandmother never fully healed. Her grandmother physical and mental health declined and after she had to testify against her rapist it triggered the abuse again. Her grandmother shut down and became depressive. Her grandmother was placed in a mental health facility. Her grandmother was release but she did not want to live alone. Her grandmother spent her last years living in a nursing home facility. Her paternal grandfather passed away due to several health complications. Her grandfather had many heart problems, smoked cigarettes for thirty years, diabetes, and had a prosthetic leg. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, African Americans display a higher number in relations to serious health problems in adults. African Americans are more likely to die from diabetes, asthma, lung cancer and research shows black people develop higher blood pressure early in life. With much higher levels than their white counterparts nearly 42% of black men and more than 45% of black women age twenty and older have high blood pressure. Heart disease is the leading cause of death among African-Americans and in 2005 roughly about 1 million African Americans died due to Cardiovascular Disease complications. Research shows