Bay Area Women's Center Case Study

The Bay Area Women’s Center (BAWC) is an emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. The shelter serves men, women, and children of all ages. The mission of the agency is to eliminate domestic violence and sexual assault. Additionally, a goal of the agency is to provide every individual with the right to live free of fear and violence. The BAWC has a number of objectives, which include the following (Bay Area Women’s Center, 2014):
• Promote self-determination and empowerment to all service users.
• Promote a peaceful, nonviolent resolution to conflict.
• Recognize domestic and sexual abuse as crimes.
• Cooperate and work with the social systems that come in contact with victims of domestic and sexual abuse.
• Work

It can be difficult working with domestic violence survivors due to the emotional turmoil that many have faced. I feel that pulling on the strengths of an individual is a positive way to build rapport and motivate them to work through the issues that they feel are present. It is important to allow the clients to feel in control of their situation since in reality they probably have not had the opportunity to control their situation for some time. I enjoy utilizing the strengths based approach and feel it will be useful in my future as a social

Seay (2012) offers that minority populations tend to underutilize counseling services and have higher dropout rates. Additionally, it is added that counselors who are able to build good rapport have better client outcomes (Seay, 2012). While working with the client, I never pressed for more information than she was willing to disclose. I did not want the client to feel like she had to disclose all her deepest, darkest secrets in the initial session, but did gain more information as the sessions progressed. Additionally, I utilized empathy, and active listening skills when talking with the client. James and Gilliland (2013) assert that providing empathy includes five techniques; attending, verbally communicating empathic understanding, reflecting feelings, nonverbally communicating empathic understanding, and silence as a way of communicating empathic understanding. I made sure to use paraphrasing skills, as well as nonverbal communication to make the client aware that I was listening and understanding the situation she was dealing with. I feel that utilizing these various techniques helped to develop a solid working relationship with the client. I feel that I gained her trust and made her feel comfortable so that she felt that I was there to help her, not judge