As social workers, one way we can understand a person is through a multidimensional approach that specifically looks at a person through different dimensions. These dimensions are who they are as a person, the impacts of their surrounding environment, and the effects of time. A case study has been completed on Manisha. Her life and human behavior will be examined by the multidimensional approach.
The first dimension of Manisha’s life that will be explored is the dimension of a person. Hutchison (2015) states that one aspect to evaluate Manisha as a person is to examine her from a biological aspect that enabled her to have four sons and be able to work on the farms for her family as a child and then as an adult living with her husband. (p.7) This points to the assumption that Manisha
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Manisha’s emotional resiliency was an integral part of her survival when her husband was sent to prison for eighteen months leaving her solely responsible to care for her children and her home and when her and her family moved the UN camps. The emotional resiliency that Manisha demonstrated during the imprisonment of her husband and living in the camps was observed again when her family moved to the United States and had to embrace a new culture and customs. (Hutchison, 2015, p.8) At the moment her family moved to the United States, her living environment would now be altered for the rest of her life.
The environmental dimension of human behavior can be understood by looking at many different elements of Manisha’s life such as her culture, involvement with organizations, and her
The job of a child welfare worker appears to be a demanding profession that promotes the child’s safety, but also strengthens the family organization around them in order to successfully raise the children. This child welfare workers work in the system known as the Child Protective Services whose initiative is to protect the overall welfare of the child. The short novel From the Eye of the Storm: the Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker by Cynthia Crosson-Tower demonstrates the skills necessary to deal with the practice of social work along with both its challenges and its happy moments. The novel consists of some of the cases involving Tower’s actual career in social work. In reading the book, I was able to experience some of the actual cases in which children dealt with physical and mental abuse from their families that caused them to end up within the system. Also, some of these children had issues in adapting to foster and adoptive families based on the issues they faced earlier in life. As we have learned earlier in the course, the violence that a child experiences early in life has an overall affect on the person they become as they grow into adulthood. When children deal with adverse childhood experiences, they are at a higher risk for abusing drugs and/or alcohol, increased likelihood of abusing their own child or spouse, higher rates of violent and nonviolent criminal behavior, along with several other issues throughout their lifespan.
Being aware of what life course one’s on and the impact of transitions within a person’s life course is important for social work practice. It is important that social workers reflect on both their own and other’s experiences throughout the life course and support this understanding within the various theoretical frameworks. It helps us to understand the common themes which have affected people through the age and helps us understand why people behave the way they do in certain situations.“Understanding of life course aims to encourage us in the flexibility of imagination which is required in order to enter into the lives of people at different ages and to see the world from their point of view” (Sudbery, 2010, p.231).
Precious’s case is unique and layered with many factors that affect her ability to grow into a healthy functioning adult. It is critical to make interventions that consider economic, cultural, psychological, biological and environmental factors that shape the client’s experiences. Providing a safe environment, and supporting Precious on making responsible decisions for the success of her future are my main objectives as her social worker.
Shostak, out of all the women in the tribe had made close connections with a fifty year old woman with the name of Nisa. The woman, Nisa, is what the book is about. The book is written in Nisa’s point of view of her life experiences while growing up in that type of society. Nisa’s willingness to speak in the interviews about her childhood and her life gave Shostak a solid basis on what to write her book on. Nisa’s life was filled with tragedies. She had gone through certain situations where Nisa loses two of her children as infants and two as adults. She had also lost her husband soon after the birth of one of their children. According to Shostak, “None of the women had experiences as much tragedy as Nisa…” (Shostak, 351).
It is almost unimaginable the difficulties victims of the holocaust faced in concentration camps. For starters they were abducted from their homes and shipped to concentration camps in tightly packed cattle cars. Once they made it to a camp, a selection process occurred. The males were separated from the females. Then those who were too young or too old to work were sent to the showers. Once the showers were tightly packed, the Nazi’s would turn on the water and drop in canisters of chemicals that would react with the water and release a deadly gas. Within minutes, everyone in the shower would be dead. The bodies would be hauled out and burned. Those who were not selected to die didn’t fair much better. Terrible living conditions, forced labor, malnourishment, and physical abuse were just a few of the things they had to endure. It was such a dark time. So many invaluable lessons can be learned from the holocaust and from those who survived it. One theme present in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night and Robert Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful is that family can strengthen or hinder one during adversity.
In order to formulate a thorough assessment or intervention a social worker must first evaluate all the contributing factors that influence a client’s life. Problems faced by clients are rarely a result of a single factor or influence. Many individual, interpersonal and environmental factors must be evaluated to fully understand the cause of problems. Multidimensional assessments must be used to determine biological, psychological and environmental issues that contribute to problematic outcomes (Hepworth, Rooney, R., Rooney, G., & Strom-Gottfried, 2013.). Along with conducting multidimensional assessments, social workers must also evaluate stages of development, and assess how age can influence behaviors (2013). All contributing factors must
Resilience is having the motive to go through hard times and ‘bounce back’ from them and learnt how to deal with certain situations. To be resilient you must have a positive point of view on life. Anh’s book ‘The happiest refugee’ He was born into a 1970’s Vietnam, He and his family were forced to leave their country due to seeking safety and freedom from war. Anh uses resilience through his comedic, selfless actions. Resilience has allowed Anh to improve the quality of his life, and the lives of those around him.
Political prisoners and criminals alike were subject to brutal conditions in the Soviet gulags at Kolyma in the 20th century. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the stories of many different prisoners are told and much is revealed about how humans react under these pressures, both naturally and socially. Being in an extreme environment not only takes a toll on one’s physical well-being, but on one’s mental and emotional state as well. The stories show that humans can be reduced to a fragile, animalistic state while in the Kolyma work camps because the extreme conditions force many men to focus solely on self-preservation.
Resilience and hardiness has long been a topic of research and discussion within different paradigms and fields of study, for example, in military psychology, psychiatry, health statistics and measurement, medical anthropology, education, medicine and organizational settings. Resilience means the skills, abilities, acquaintance, and insight that accumulate over time as people struggle to conquer adversity and meet challenges. It is an ongoing and developing fund of energy and skill that can be used in current struggles (Saleebey, 1996; Liebenberg, 2005).Most commonly, the term resilience has come to mean an individual's ability to overcome adversity and continue his or her normal development.
The person-in-environment approach views a client’s problems by how they react to the environmental contexts within their environment and how they occur. According to Gordon and Richmond, it has been stated that the person-in-environment approach is the “cornerstone” of social work practice. (as cited in Rogers, 2016, p.24). A clients’ systems are the interrelated aspects of a clients’ lives where all parts come together to function. Social workers utilize and focus on a clients’ systems when applying the person-in-environment. A clients’ system is anything that they interact with and hold roles in their lives. These systems can be on a micro level which is the individual and their biology, personality, and genetics. The individuals’ mezzo level would include their immediate environment, family, school, friends, or work. A macro level would include the larger social aspects of a clients’ life such as government policies, discrimination, oppression, or social class. Social workers incorporate these interactions and how they impact clients’ and their presenting problems. This theory and approach are beneficial as it allows a social worker to find out what resources are available to the client during their time with the worker (Rodgers,
Some reearchers carried out studies to examine the association between resilience and positive emotion (Tugade, Fredrickson, & Barrett, 2004) Examining the role positive emotion plays in resilience, Ong et al. (2006) reported widows with high resilience levels experience more positive such as peaceful and negative anxious) emotions than those with widows with low resilience levels. The high resilience group showed greater emotional complexity which is ability to sustain the differentiation of positive and negative emotional states while underlying stress. They also suggested that the adaptive development of resilience is a function of an increment in emotional complexity while stress is present (Ong, Bergeman, Bisconti, & Wallace, 2006).
book remains a true testimony to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.
...r lives were like. They found that 86% of the resilient children seemed to doing well as adults and compared with non-vulnerable children had a higher rate of reporting to be happy. However, they did record high amount of health problems such as dizziness, back problems for men and pregnancy, childbirth for women. In addition, other children from the vulnerable group reported significantly better results compared to their teenage selves e.g. going back to school, getting a job etc. the study proves to show that children can grow up to be competent members of the society even if born into impoverished environment and under stressful situations as long as there is a balance between the environment, stress and support. she suggest early intervention programs and nurturing environments for children in vulnerable conditions to improve the child’s development in future.
Wilson, K. et al. al., 2011 - p. 78. Social Work: 'Introduction to Contemporary Practice'. 2nd ed.
Resilience; the word may seem foreign but it actually shines in some of the most difficult times. Resilience strikes courage into the heart of the most anxious person, and it makes the most difficult task turn into the easiest. Now, the question may be asked: if a difficult task, that seems impossible to overcome is presented, why might it seem so hard to be resilient? Well, although it may seem that resilience depends on the difficulty of the adversity, it depends on the strength of the person affected by the adversity and it’s their own choice they make whether they overcome it or not. In the articles How People Learn To Become Resilient, The Deafening Silence, 15 Common Defense Mechanisms, and Jericho, the contrast is show that while people