Reflection On Social Work Interview

I am employed as an on-going social worker by the MA Department of Children and Families (DCF). DCF is a child protection agency, which is responsible for protecting children from abuse and neglect and strengthening families. The Department has offices throughout the Commonwealth; I am located at the New Bedford area office. As an on-going social worker I am assigned families after a report of abuse or neglect has been reported, investigated and supported. It is the on-going social worker’s responsibility to provide professional child welfare social work services, through home visits, to the family. This is done by assessing the family’s strengths and needs, developing

First of all, I had the opportunity to interview Kim Bartells who’s a Licensed Social Worker (LSW) in Michealsen Health Center and learn more about her role as a social work. Before I started interviewing Kim, I asked her if it was alright with her if I recorded the conversation and she said it was fine with it. I started the interview with asking what type of population Michealsen Health Center serves and she told me it was mostly elderly people. Kim works in a “Microlevel intervention involves working with individuals--- separately, in families, or in small groups---to facilitate change in individual behavior or in relationship” (DuBois and Miley 69). This types of individuals she is working with are elderly residents “who utilize long-term care experience a combination of physical or cognitive limitation that require some level of assistance in activities of daily living” (DuBois and Miley 314-315) and their families as well.

A famous film star, Katherine Hepburn once stated, “Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.” Even though Hepburn was probably interviewed too many times and asked many questions, most social workers must utilize the interview process to make assessments of their clients. An accurate assessment is critical and significant first step in the social work process. Information about problems or situation needs to be gathered, analyzed and interpreted (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2010). BJ is a 69-year-old male, born in Rhode Island. He met his wife at a Jazz Club in Providence, Rhode Island and they have been married for 33 years. BJ still resides in Providence, Rhode Island with his wife, oldest daughter with her three children

Driscoll (2000) model) consists of three stages (What, So what & Now what) completing one cycle help me to improve my caring practice continuously and learning from those experience for better practice in the future. The cycle starts with a description of the situation (“What”), which include analysis of the incident. “So what” evaluate the experience, including the analysis to make sense of the experience, and the final stage “Now what” is a conclusion of what else could I have done better and an action plan to prepare for, if the similar situation arose again. Baird and winter (2005) gave some reasons why reflection is required in the reflective practice. They highlighted that a reflection could generate the practical knowledge, help to adapt

Observation of the environment, the children and our own practice and feelings is at the heart of reflective practice. Observation requires a particular mindset and skill set.

Prior to starting this course the MA Social Work course and the PPSWP module I felt very confident in the aspects of communicating effectively and working with a diverse range of people, and after the reading the professional capabilities framework I believe that I hold the same personal values which is expected of a social worker. The PCF6 talks about the importance of critical reflection and reflective practice explaining that it helps improve accountability, professional development and helps to you understand your own tacit knowledge and gain new knowledge, which improves outcomes and experiences for social workers. (Capabilities within the PCF, 2016)

Reflection is like looking in a mirror and describing what you see. It’s about thinking back to an experience and questioning what I did, and emotions that I felt during the experience, and then reflecting on a better and more sufficient way of doing it in the future (UNISON, 2016). Gibbs Reflective Cycle is the model that I have chosen to use while reflecting back on the module “Learning from service users and carers”, Gibbs believes that this module is useful for helping people learn from what that they experienced. He calls this “Learning by Doing” (Mind Tools, 2016).

T. S. Eliot (1943) once wrote, “We had the experience but missed the meaning”. We can have all the experiences in the world, but if we missed out on reflecting, how would we be able to find the meaning? In this reflection of an interview we were tasked to complete, I will be adopting Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle to help me in the describing, exploration of feelings, evaluating analysing, identifying implications, before concluding and writing the action plan.

Who I identify as, including identifying as a social worker once I graduate, will have some level privilege and power attached to the chosen identities. Gelfand, Sillivan, and Steinhouse (2002) noted that there are may dimensions that influence our personal and professional relationships with others, and these dimensions shape how we see and interact with, include or exclude them, and ways that we oppress or discriminate against them. As a social worker whose clients share my same identity, we may benefit by my having a shared understanding of cultural norms and expectations to reach a common goal. For clients who share commonalities with me, we may benefit by being able to work more collaboratively and possibly a more trusting relationship than one that must be built over time. However, just as similarities can be empowering, I must remember that the client knows best despite our shared identities that may speak otherwise. In addition, challenges can arise when there is no commonality in identities or when identities between myself and a client are radically different. In these times, as a social worker who has a degree of power in a relationship with people seeking help, that I must acknowledge to myself that my power can impede on inclusively practicing and remain self-aware (Gelfand, Sullivan, & Steinhouse,

Social workers work hard to protect children from deplorable situations. They require certain skills to help them do their job. “Essential skills include communication, compassion, organization, problem-solving, and time management” (What). Being a social worker is a career where is it important to have the ability to communicate with adolescents and adults who need services. This job requires interpersonal

This is a key framework of sociological theory. It depend on symbols and their meaning. The words we use to describe our behaviour and the behaviour of others is very important. To elaborate further and get into detail about this theory, firstly the theory and key terms have to be defined, secondly the major proponents and tenets, thirdly the history of the theory, fourthly the purpose of the theory, fifthly the significance of the theory for social work practice, followed by the epistemology, consistency with social work values and ethics, implication of the theory, position of the theory on the population served by the social worker, strength and weakness, relevance of Intersectionality, critical perspective on contemporary issues

Social worker is a profession that help in enhancing and maintaining social functioning. Social workers are guided by knowledge, an array of skills and method together with values and ethics. The values that have been imposed on determined how we see things around us, our perspective. It also determined how we act in certain situations. As a social worker, values are important for us to fully engage with our clients. Building rapport may not as easy if we did not apply any values that are suitable or accepted by our clients. Cynthia (2014) agreed that knowledge and skills are not enough if there are no values and moral as those three elements are crucial for the profession itself. There are many values that social worker could

Make a critical reflection on any two areas of knowledge (knowledge base) in International social work practice.

Reflection is a part of daily process of learning and thinking. As stated by Jasper, (2003), the reflection is “…the way that we learn from an experience in order to understand and develop practice”. It is useful in dealing with challenges and can be used as a tool for personal and professional development. Moreover, a convoluted process of writing experiences and learning from any event and understanding of its usefulness in future is, defined as Reflective writing. The theoretical model which is often used as a framework for reflective writing was created by Professor Graham Gibbs (1988) and is known as Gibb’s reflective cycle. Gibbs’s reflective cycle has 6 phases.

In this paper, I will assess my identity and my personal history and how it relates to social work professions. I first address my personal history and cultural background, where I came from, as well as my experience in working in the community. I then talk about my overall strengths, both in personal and professional lives. My strengths are listening skills, open-mindedness, respect for diversity and eagerness to learn and improve my weaknesses. Afterward, I discuss my weaknesses, such as nonassertive communication skill and low self-esteem problems, and how I plan to address these issues. Next, I explain why I seek a BSW degree, how my personal values align with the professional values, and how it is related to my interest in working in the