Social Worker Strengths

The importance of understanding the community cannot be overstated. Most people access resources at the community level, regardless of whether the program funding originates at the local, state, or national level. It is at the community level that government is potentially most responsive to individual citizens. Quality-of-life issues are most profoundly confronted at the local level.

The first competency that I was able to complete easily and successfully is number one, demonstrating ethical and professional behavior. Within this competency, I was to make good ethical decisions, use reflection and self regulation, demonstrate professional demeanor within communication, use technology ethically and appropriately and finally use supervision and consultation to guide professional judgment and behavior. This competency was important because it grounded the NASW, ethics, and professionalism into my field placement and ensured that I was following these important aspects of the social work field.

The client scored a positive four on the Rathus Assertiveness Scale showing that he is appropriately assertive when needed. This indicates to the social worker that Mr. Wallace is able to affectionately meet his needs and describe his purpose. The social worker can assess that he is able to take into account his own needs and others. Mr. Wallace shows through his scoring a need to please himself without harming others. This is a positive characteristic for him and will become helpful in future sessions with the social worker.

I haven’t lived anyone else’s life, but I always do my best to walk in their shoes. This is a skill, however it can be my struggle as well. Without proper self care, the empathy I feel can become a burden and I won’t be able to leave anything behind, and in social work it is often something we are faced with. Another skill I have is advocacy. I have developed this advocacy from the empathy I feel.

When assessing clients a specific skill that I identify with is empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share feelings of others. To effectively display empathy requires certain characteristics. Some of the characteristics of empathy that I employ are; having the innate ability to put myself in the other people’s shoes. This allows for a better understand toward the experiences the family has gone through. For empathy to be displayed accurately, effective communication is essential. Effective communication is asking the right questions and providing reflective listening so the family knows the professional truly understands their circumstances. Effective communication allows for an accurate assessment of the family. Effective communication is a vitally important component of empathy. Empathy can be displayed though effective communication, such as, effectively

Core competency nine states that social workers are required to respond to contexts that shape practice. The specific practice behavior associated with this competency is analyzing context and demonstrating the ability to initiate innovative and resourceful action with regard to emerging local, regional, and societal trends and needs. I will demonstrate my mastery of this skill through an intern manual that I updated and created at my internship. The artifact will consist of a table of contents page that will represent the information that I included in the intern manual.

Kelly greets the client politely and does a good job of providing empathy to the client upfront.

The following is a critique and analysis of Mel Grey, PhD’s Back to Basics: A critique of the Strengths Perspective in Social Work which originally appeared in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services Volume 92 (1), 5-11. The purpose of this analysis and critique is to demonstrate proficiency in understanding the strengths perspective while applying critical thinking to various theories in regard to the strengths perspective, including systems theory and the ecological perspective; which are presented by Dr. Grey in the aforementioned article, while focusing on the strengths perspective.

I was in grade 10 when I thought of becoming a social worker. As social worker practitioner the fields that interest me to work in is domestic violence and child abuse because I want to make change to the society. Also Mahatma Gandhi was my major inspiration through this quote “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”. Than an idea came to me, why not involve my contribution to the wide variety of communities. My communication with school counsellors and social workers has impacted my choice of desiring to study social work. I realised that if I have had a chance of seeing a social worker when I was young, things would have been much easier and less stressful. I want to provide opportunities that I did not encounter to other people. This essay will reflect my past experience, motivation and why I want to be a social worker, values, beliefs and theory of practice.

Everyone can help one another but it is not everyone that has the necessary skills to help people properly. Competency is very important when working with people and being in the school of social work, we are taught the nine competencies and how to use them. Poulin & Matis, S. (2015) wrote, “According to Drisko (2014), competence refers to “the ability of an individual to perform a task,” further adding that “the task must be performed fully and properly” (p. 416)” (p. 1). Not everybody can call themselves a social worker because for them to be able to do that, they have to be able to perform the tasks of a social work to properly and in order to do that they have to go through different sets of training and course for them to be able to execute the job right. Training is not just a one-time thing; it is an ongoing processes that professional have to go through in order to grow in the field. Poulin, J., & Matis, S. (2015) also wrote that “McKnight (2013) proposes that competence is an “ongoing ability” to “integrate knowledge, skills, judgment, and professional attributes in order to practice safely and ethically” within one’s professional scope (p. 460)” (p. 1). It is a way to build on to what you have already learn and by doing that your knowledge will increase, judgment call will increase and you will be able to “practice safe and ethically.”

Through empathy, one can learn about others situations and potentially not jump to conclusions. As a social worker, attempting to educate all parties on the beliefs of others is key to a solution. Through a clearer understanding of the depth of meaning required for each individual, will encourage open resolution. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, to understand what they feel.

I strongly believe that I will not be an effective social worker unless I gain the proper knowledge, skills and experience in that subject. The Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) Master program in Health and Social Care will provide me with the required skills to build and shape my character, enrich my educational background, fulfill my professional ambitions and develop a future career path in consultancy business. The MMU program will allow me to understand the variations in health and social care context between national and international as wells as individual versus organization, analyze and solve health and social related issues and problems and to enhance my research skills in terms of literature review, research methodologies

The Social Work Department here at the University of Tennessee at Martin has allowed me to grow and learn, in ways that social work students from other universities may have never had the opportunity to, and I believe because of that, it has contributed to my student successes in college. In correlations with my learning experiences, the most significant skill the program has given me is the ability to become self-aware. As a senior social work student, quickly approaching my intern semester it is important that I am aware of personal challenges, which may impact my field placement.

Aside from wanting to leave Norfolk, I came to Virginia Commonwealth to start my journey to a professional career as a social worker. I had many goals coming into the fall semester, some of which were maintaining a grade point average of 3.5 or higher to make the dean’s list, make friends outside of those from my hometown, express and develop my independence even more, and get a start on networking within the social work field. As of right now, I have met two of the four goals, meeting friends from different locations, and further develop my independence. Coming into the 2016 fall semester, I didn’t have many expectations. I feel like I was just going with the flow of everything because I have always believed that having expectations for certain

One of the most important skill to have as a social worker is to identify your client’s strengths. All social workers should have knowledge of an effective leader that are identified by their strengths or limitations in order to improve the one’s they identify. There are several evidence-based assessments that help identify the strengths and limitations of any individual. Thus, it is also necessary to obtain other perspective based on your leadership strengths or limitations in order to improve or strengthen those qualities. The self-assessments used through this paper will help me develop a plan that points out my challenges, help expand and improve on my strengths (Human Services Guide, 2015).