Monday Today was an interesting day. I thought that today was going to be an easy day because it’s the first of the month but that did happen. I can 't remember how many clients I served today because it was a complete madhouse in Feed My Sheep. The clients were over talking the case workers, the phone was constantly ringing, we ran out of printing paper, it was like a stock market in there. As soon as we opened we were busy; I felt like I was at work for only an hour. Out of the dozens of people I met with today I only approved three applications for utility assistance. I know it sounds harsh, but most of the clients didn 't meet the criteria for services. Every time I deny a client, I can’t help but have the feeling like I was destroying …show more content…
It seems like the people who are trying to be independent aren’t able to receive help, but the people that want to remain dependent can receive help at any time. I brought this issue up to my supervisor, and he said that it’s just the rules, and that’s how it has always been. Clients that I turned away had the look in their face that read you have no idea how much you just screwed me over. Whenever I realize that, I stop and think about what I am thinking about and tell myself I’m over thinking things. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that I’m human, and that means whenever I think of something not going the way that I want it to I think about the most horrible situation imaginable. Once I remind myself that it’s out of my control, and I can only do so much my frustration disappears. What the clients don’t know is that denying them of services hurts me probably more that it hurts them. I also noticed that everything I told a client that I couldn’t help them they were immediately ready to leave, they didn’t want to hear anything that I had to say after …show more content…
Even though I didn’t see as many clients as I did yesterday, I was still busy the entire day. I saw a total of three clients today, and ironically they all needed the same services. All of my clients needed a place to stay because they were homeless. Placing a person in a homeless shelter isn’t hard to do, but it can be difficult when all of the local homeless shelters are full. I was panicking because I didn’t know what to do, the homeless shelters were full, and I didn’t want the gentlemen sleeping on the street. While I was calling around looking for a shelter for the men they all told me horror stories about sleeping on the streets in Temple, Texas. Even though their appointments were all at different times, they all said similar things. Something’s that they all said were that the police harass them at night, they are often robbed while their sleeping, they fight off rats and females are likely to be raped. It’s hard for me to concentrate, because while I’m in my social work mode, these clients are telling me stories about their personal experiences. It’s a completely different perspective when a person tells you a story that they witnessed compared to reading about a story in a book. Fortunately for the gentlemen I was able to get them all a spot into a shelter, but this was not a traditional shelter. This was a church ministry called New
As a social worker I respect the decisions of the Sanchez family, after all they have the right to make their own choices when it comes to services. As suggested by Deci and Ryan (2012), all humans have a desire to be competent and have a sense of control over their situation. In this family, Mr. Sanchez is making most of the decisions and as a social worker it is important that I accept this because he knows what is best for his family. The members of the Sanchez family have goals they would like to achieve and as a social worker it is my job to guide them in achieving their goals while allowing them to be in total control of their
Both my personal values and the social work values want to help people in whichever way that they can. I will encourage my clients to take advantage of The Affordable Care Act if they need to. Eric Lindberg wrote an article outlining the effects of The Affordable Care on the profession of social work. What he discovered is that it is valuable to the field, because: “the profession’s increasingly holistic focus on clients in the context of their families and communities, rather than simply in terms of their specific physical or mental ailments, is a major advantage for social work” (Lindberg, 2013). By opening the door to clients that are using the Affordable Care Act as a social worker, I will be allowing more clients to my services. The Affordable Care Act will make it possible for more people to seek out help and be able to have enough money for whatever help they may
Being given the opportunity to intern with the staff at the Family Resource Center in the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) has been a tremendous learning experience thus far. The opportunity has truly surpassed my expectation of what I imagined the journey of internship would be like and how it would help me to evolve into the professional arena as a social worker. I see myself transforming and viewing the community in which I live, the clients served, those deprived, and the tremendous job that we as social workers are tasked with to advocate for those in need from a more open-minded perspective. By enhancing and developing my personal and professional skills, such as active listening, observation, and professional comportment, I will be
Youth homelessness is a global social issue that is rapidly increasing. Shelton & Bond (2017) divulged how accurate data on the prevalence of youth homelessness in the United States are significantly lacking. It could be due to the challenges of collecting data and variance in definitions of what constitutes homelessness for youth. Often times there are multiple levels of oppression evident amongst vulnerable individuals. Homeless transgendered youth are susceptible to intersectionality. As stated in Competency 6, it is imperative for the ethical profession of Social Work, to be engaged and understanding of the multitude of social issues that impact individuals. Thus, Social Workers are expected to be agents of change, and it is an professional responsibility to challenge unjust policies, systems, and ideologies on the behalf of marginalized, oppressed, and vulnerable populations.
Many people face obstacles every day of their lives, but when it comes to getting assistance around these obstacles many people do not have a way to do that. A client for human services will put up their own barriers to avoid having to deal with asking for assistance and until they work through some of those barriers they are not going to be able to get the assistance they need. Some of the barriers that they face include not having money to pay for the services, not having transportation to get to the place where the services are provided, and not having time to be able to travel to receive the services (Woodside & McClam, 2015). Clients in the United States are not the only ones facing these barriers it is happening worldwide
Overall this semester, I believe my writing in this course has been one of my strongest areas and I am excited to keep getting better at this skill. With my mother’s help during middle and high school, my papers have improved significantly and now I think I have a firm grasp on writing for various disciplines, but particularly professional settings like social work. I picked up on APA format quickly after doing MLA for several years and it now feels like second nature to me. There are certainly still formatting areas to improve upon and learn more about, but at this stage, I think I am progressing steadily. Thirdly, I am able to find appropriate sources easily to reference in my activity analyses, which is crucial as I advance in the program.
After meeting with our patient twice, I believe we have set into place a relationship where the patient is very open to us about her health. This is helpful for my partner and I as an open and honest patient is beneficial as we assist them in their health. Goals for next semester include reducing our patient’s blood sugar as well as reducing our patient’s fibromyalgia pain. Our patient has expressed to us that her glucose is high but she is ok with the high number as long as she is feeling relatively healthy. We hope to give practical ways to reduce blood sugar throughout next semester so hopefully we can reduce that number by semester’s end. Our patient is going to see her physician soon, so we hope to get an update on the patient’s fibromyalgia
The understanding and respect I have gained from the interview with John Doe will be everlasting. I have a refreshing faith in humanity and I will continue to do my part for the good of society. I know now that it is my responsibility and moral obligation to bring awareness to those who may be left behind by society. I must continue to give a voice to the voiceless, and aide to those in need. I wish to separate the homeless people who want stability from those who do not. I will help those who wish to become better and make it so that they have a fighting chance. “While circumstance may vary, the main reason people experience homelessness is because they cannot find housing they can afford” (National Alliance to End Homelessness). I will fight to make all resources available to those in need and increase awareness. “564,708 people are homeless on any given night in America” (National Alliance to End Homelessness). And these numbers are only growing. There is no reason why that number should not decrease in the United States of America. While feeding the homeless and temporary shelter is only a short-term fix, I believe we can implement more permanent solutions. Funding to build homeless programs and help mainstream them back to stability is something I aim to work towards as a Social Worker. After my experience interviewing John Doe, I know that there is a massive amount of deserving individuals who could use our help. I wish to bring awareness to those
This week at my internship I joined a majority of the staff attending a training called Bridges Out of Poverty and Effectively Living and Working within a Diverse World. The training also had an emphasis on ending sexual and domestic violence. It was a great training that lasted two days and was presented by Jodi Pfarr of Minneapolis, MN. She was an excellent speaker who held my attention the whole time. She also had the participants split into groups and discuss, which allowed me to hear about real-life experiences and hear from people of other counties. In evaluating myself this week, I would say that I did well. I was on time for the meetings and presented myself in a professional manner.
client is making the most of the social services other social workers have worked so hard to
Throughout this term I have learned a lot about my values, attitudes, and beliefs, and I feel confident in my growing skills as a counsellor. In my first journal, I discussed how I am in the process of discovering my own triggers and how I am surprised that my triggers do not necessarily correlate with what I would deem as the most distressing experiences of my life. As I have started the process of self-reflection and awareness, I have learned more specifically what my triggers are, my physiological and psychological reactions to them, and ways that I can overcome them to not impact the session. Throughout this term, other
The field of social work is one that requires much self-reflection on the part of the worker. In doing so, it helps the worker better understand his or her own emotions and the thought processes that these emotions come from. The goal of this paper is to provide my own self-reflection, relating it to my own emotional intelligence in the domains of relationships, tolerance, flexibility, self-management, and emotional awareness, and my future plans and goals in Widener University’s MSW program.
However one conversation I had with a social worker from another agency was disturbing. Wanting to be helpful, she cautioned me not to give too much support to these homeless men because “They will never change.” Her remark triggered me because as an alcoholic who had checked in for help many times before I stopped drinking, I had heard professionals say the same words about me. I responded to her in anger but later in the day I had to acknowledge that I was more sensitive about this issue than I had thought. Her words brought back my own feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness from my past and reminded me of the oppression the men would experience when a worker has certain
families, and communities to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social workers are change agents and because of that, they aim to help people develop their skills and abilities to use resources provided to them to strengthen and improve their lives and communities to resolve problems. One of the main goal of social workers is to improve the well-being and lives of the most vulnerable populations, fight against poverty, unemployment, domestic violence and the underserviced population by emphasizing on the person-in-environment and social justice model. The social work profession, considerers the individuals’ internal and external struggles, while working with the individuals to examine their relationships, family, work environment, community, and other things that might impact them and identify ways to help address problems and challenges.
Over the summer my friend and I decided to join the Coalition for Homeless Women. I learned a lot while visiting the numerous women shelters and I can admit that I too had very stupid and naïve perceptions of some of these women. Even though I was not as “rotten” as some of the girls I attended school with, my parents sheltered me. I will always remember walking down the street one day and as I passed by a homeless woman I handed her my dollar. My father immediately looked at me funny and said “Sonia, you shouldn’t have given her your allowance, she will only use it to buy drugs or alcohol. She will not use it for anything good!” At the age of ten those words resonated in my head for some time. My perception of homeless people was somewhat flawed until I was old enough to understand the world for myself. I was really happy when I visited shelters and spoke to some of these remarkable women. They weren’t on drugs, they weren’t alcoholics, and these are wo...