Social Work Reflective Essay

I felt that the conversation opened up nicely in set one as the client warmed up to me with some background information of what had been going on in her life recently. It started off as small talk, which I think is important in developing a relationship, especially with a new client. Towards the end of set one and most of the way through set two, I felt that I could have asked more questions of an exploratory nature and continued to probe into more details. Instead, I felt that I was actually responding more to what she said with short statements and one-word utterances. If I used more open-ended questions, I could have found out more what the client was truly feeling at the time. I realize now, that a social worker can use her skills to guide the conversation through the questions that are asked and help the client explore more detail of what they are feeling. In many ways, I feel that I let the client lead the conversation and just followed along with whatever she was talking about at the time. Although it is important to let the client lead, it is also important to know how to help the client explore his or her feelings more in depth. This is definitely an area that I need to work on for future interviews.

I used a lot more exploratory type of questions in this set. However, I again realized that I need to work on asking more open-ended questions to be able to get more of the client’s feelings and perspectives. I felt very relaxed when conversing with the client and felt that the client was also comfortable speaking with me. I feel that making people feel relaxed and comfortable opening up to me is a real strength of mine. My body language, I think, also made the client feel that I was interested in what she was saying. Empathy has always been a strong suit of mine, but I realize that there is a lot more to social work than just