Self-awareness and self-development work hand in hand with one another, as do personal and professional development. ‘Conscious bringing into awareness of a greater understanding of both who, and how, we are in the world is known as the process of personal development’ (Parfitt, 2006 as cited by Share & Lalor, 2009, p233). By actively working on our self-development we can advance and progress and not be stuck at a certain point. ‘The social care worker is not practising to his or her full potential if they are not engaged in awareness and development of the self’ (Share & Lalor, 2009, p123). ‘Self-awareness, self-management and self-care are critical elements of emotional and professional competence’.
During evaluation on clients, counsellors are required to reflect regularly at where to which they have helped in promotion of client change and growth, shown empathy and encouragement towards distressed clients. These are acknowledged as indicators of counsellors’ benevolent actions (Jungers & Gregoire, 2013). Counsellors must avoid to assume their clients with a paternalistic stance or in another word parentalism. It is because this will lead to assumption in prior by which they know better than the clients in the cases. Counsellors must balance their decisions in order to influence the client in their professional judgment.
These are my own personal cultural resources and I have an understanding of how these resources can affect my mood, my wellbeing and my mental health and also how I can access these resources when required. Because I find it extremely easy to access my own personal cultural resources I began to think about how difficult it could be for a client who has serious issues going on in their life such as depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts to even contemplate accessing their own cultural resources. The question arises how can we, as counsellors actively encourage and facilitate our clients’ cultural resources through their agency and pre-existing resources, knowing that they can be of great benefit to their wellbeing, mental health and general mood? As I commenced working as a trainee counsellor in placement, I found that clients tended to look at me to provide them with cultural resources, and it became quite clear to me that in order for a client to access their own cultural resources they must have some agency within the counselling relationship. The competent skills required to enable this I feel, are lacking and could be an area for future research in the training of counsellors in a pluralistic
They also keep their personal issues away from clients. Effective psychotherapist form working alliances with a range of clients. These alliances are used to form therapeutic bonds and trust between the client and therapist during the initial stage. Effective psychotherapists also seek to improve themselves and their skills at all times (Wampold,
I am great at listening, able to judge situations fairly and accurately. As a social worker, I know I may have to face some tough situations like child abuse, drug abuse, etc. which I am willing to learn the skills to handle these situations
Additionally, expressing empathy with our clients can be used to help clients feel comfortable and encourage them to open up by building trust (Shebib, 2017). With a friendship, empathy may be expressed differently such as crying with our friend or using more self-disclosure than you would in a professional relationship. Thus, in a professional helping relationship, it is important to not lose perspective and keep our emotions appropriate (Heinonen and Spearman, 2010). Likewise, in a professional social work relationship, we must empower our client’s self-determination. For example, we must be able to acknowledge our client’s capacity for change and provide them with choices and resources to do so.
As I regard my client as a person I cared about, I might be easily to get influence by my client emotions. This in turn may cause me to be subjective rather than objective as a counsellor. Nevertheless, to not be affected by the emotional issue, I must have high self-awareness with better understanding of myself. It is important to have counsellors to regularly examine their own issues and hone their counselling skills to prevent their personal biases from interfering with their counselling session. In such case, to have an effective counselling, certain strategies could be used.
The community has symbols that creates meaning, also contributing to their identification, because of those symbols a social worker get to be able to work with clients. STRENGTH The relationship between meaning of symbols and a person’s behavior, this theory provides a bond between how an individual behaves is related to the meaning of objects and events. Provides the ability to understand small scale human interaction, it enables the understanding of family interaction. Recognizes that beliefs and opinions of reality are changeable, the belief people have on something can actually change and become part of reality. Considers the social environment in which learning takes place.
It means thinking about how you could have done something differently, what you did well, what you could have done better, how could you improve what you did. It also means reflecting on your own values, beliefs and experiences which shape your thoughts and ideas. I am responsible for providing an equal , non-discriminatory and inclusive service to all individuals no matter what a person’s personal beliefs and values may be. Reflective practice is exploring why and how you practice, thinking back over a situation or activity and then developing a different approach to gain insight into a new way of learning. I believe that reflective practice is a very important tool the adult social care setting as I have found that I am faced with new challenges and obstacles in the clients home each day.
Within services like White Meadows a person centred approach is about planning and delivering care and support with the input of the service user, by doing this the rights of the service user are being adhered too and they are being treated equally. In conclusion, organisational culture can have a severe impact on the quality of care given to service users, and in this case the impact was not good for those who seemed to need more support in development. But by the senior manager instigating change with the help of HIQA guidelines and PCP, care can be improved and developed in a way that there is a feeling of inclusion and individual support, where all service users are treated equally. References D’Eath, M. (2010). Social care theory and practice 2.