Social Work Issues and Challenge

Question: Discuss about the Social Work Issues and Challenge. Answer: Introduction: It is evident that Mia is facing several issues and challenges in her life. Before meeting her, I would Tune-in to Mia by considering myself in her position. I would try to analyze the issues, which she has faced until now, and the issues, which she is facing currently. After going through the referral information, which has been provided to me, it has been, understood that, she is really going through a bad phase of her life as she has been diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo surgery and treatment. The expenses of her treatment has affected her financial situation, predominantly she had limited earnings because of her degrees, which were not valued in Australia. She is living a life, which is not at all easy, and the worst part is that she has no one to take care of her. It is essential for a social worker to tune-in with clients before meeting them in order to understand the previous and current situation of the client. In my opinion, her statement something was holding her back reflected her dilemma as every time she was unable to get out of her bed and pack her suitcase. Though she desired to move to Melbourne and live with nearby her friends but she herself did not knew why she was unable to do it on a serious note. In my opinion, the reason behind her dilemma is related to her health, predominantly medical treatment. She felt that it would be beneficial for her as she will be able to continue her medical treatment in Adelaide since her symptoms were improving and she was recovering fast. Earlier she lived in Austria until migrating to Australia six years ago. She worked there as a lecturer in a vocational college before coming to Australia. The reason behind her migration is because of her previous married life, as she left her ex-husband and two late adolescent daughters. She had no other family members still living. After coming to Australia, she married an Australian man and after a year they both got separated. In addition, her English language skills were very poor and she had not made any friends at the time of separation from husband. She had desperate housing situations and that is why she had to rent a small apartment in the city. Anyhow, she managed to get a part-time job in an office for sustaining her living conditions, as she was all alone. However, she made plans to move Melbourne and start living close to her old friends but she was able to do that because she thought the reason behind this is her health concerns as she dreamt frequently that she floated alone across a large sea far from land. In my opinion, all these things were holding her back and that is she was not able to take a strong decision and that is why she needs help for making a decision either moving to Melbourne or staying in Adelaide. By analyzing Mias condition, I have found that she needs to be counseled and for that, I will employ the person-centered approach in order to deal with Mias condition. This approach will help in viewing her with respect to her experiences and will also evaluate her capability to fulfill her own potential for growth (Meyer, Stanley Vandenberg, 2013). This approach takes into consideration that all the individuals possess three internal resources which they require for growth. It controls the natural process of self-healing of the clients. The approach of person-centered counselling intends to offer three core conditions namely, congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard. These conditions assist that growth to take place. Congruence deals with the authenticity and genuineness of the counselor (Uhlmann, Pizarro, Diermeier, 2015). Empathy involves the understanding regarding the feelings and thoughts of the clients accurately and in their own viewpoint. In unconditional posi tive regard, a client is accepted by the counselor non-judgmentally and unconditionally. These three conditions are thought for enabling the clients for developing and growing in their own way, for strengthening and expanding their individual identities and for becoming a person, which they are in reality. Due to this, they also do not have pressure of the other individuals for acting or thinking in particular ways. In order to gain her trust, I will listen to her carefully and clearly. I will try my best to make her comfortable for sharing her thoughts with me, so that I can go in depth of the issue, which is making her dilemmatic. It is essential for a counselor to build a relationship of trust with the client and is mainly a skill. There can be several factors, which can reduce the acceptance of clients for including a new individual in their lives (Payne, 2014). In my opinion, when a counselor possesses the ability for supporting the clients, helping them for identifying the other systems of support, assessing their needs perfectly, understanding their unique situations non-judgmentally, then they would be able to build a relationship of trust with the clients effectively. The concepts of the Interactional Model that are relevant to Mias situation include non-verbal communication, emotional intelligence and listening. While working with her, I will apply these concepts in way for understanding the reason behind her dilemma and confusion. The concept of non-verbal communication will help in understanding her eye movements, facial expressions, gestures and hand movements, social space and way of talking. The concept of emotional intelligence will help in knowing the ability for perceiving, understanding, using and managing her emotions. The concept of focused listening will help in searching her strengths. According to Rubin and Babbie (2016), the most significant thing in communication is to hear what has not been said. With the help of these mentioned concepts, I will make my best efforts to know the reason behind her dilemma and confusion and will counsel her in way for boosting her with the confidence of making decisions regarding her own lives effec tively. In my opinion, it is correct that the five women who wrote about their lives as children felt they had recovered from their ordeal since they have been assisted with the restoration activities, which helped them to overcome the trauma, and suffering, which they have, experience during their childhood. The rationale behind this is concerned with the restoration activities that have resulted in betterment with respect to their social status and conditions of living. These activities helped them in establishing their worth, strengthening and shaping their image. They have been provided with the opportunities of participating in specific activities for discussing the sensitive areas that were difficult to talk about. In addition, these activities assisted them in inviting and including the associates and children in meetings regarding the past. Besides that, the government made efforts for public recognition in terms of these incidences. The community members with the State Minister of s ocial justice and discussed the issues regarding the former issues that have been faced by the British child migrants. The Government initiated activities for promoting an understanding regarding the past with the common people. They contacted more women who were isolated and were belonged to the category of Former British Child Migrants. In the orphanage, they were deprived of food due to misbehavior and were physically assaulted. In addition, they were alone locked in rooms all night. A number of girls were raped and experienced were brutally beaten (Tao, 2014). The factors that have helped them include the financial assistances to the branches of Child Migrant Trust in Perth and Melbourne in the year 1990 by the Government. This assistance persists for funding the caseworkers and the services intended for counseling (Becker, Bryman Ferguson, 2012). In the year 1997, an apology was made to the residents who formerly lived in the St. Josephs Home, Nerkool by the Rockhampton Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy. In addition, a public apology was issued in the by the Christian Brothers in the year 1993 for the abuses that had been faced by the former British child migrants. In addition, they gave the travelling expenses to the former British child migrants for making family reunions. Besides all these, an apology was made by the Western Australian Government to the former British child migrants for emotional, physical and sexual abuse in the institutions and orphanages of Western Australia (Lowenthal, 2015). In addition, the responsibility of all the matters associated with the wellbeing of the former British child migrants was accepted by British House of Commons Health committee. They made a scheme for the wellbeing and the benefits of the surviving migrants. The interventions helped them in overcoming with trauma (Irizarry et al., 2015). They were helped in classifying the traumatic experiences and validating the former experiences of trauma. The interventions helped them in recognizing and categorizing their strengths and weaknesses. Thus, all these factors have helped the five women who wrote about their lives as children and helped them in recovering from their ordeal effectively. The reading that has been selected from this semesters weekly readings and has influenced my thinking or knowledge is about social work is- Defining the helping relationship - Tuning-in as the beginning stage. In my opinion, the most important components of a helping relationship include trust, empathy, understanding, respect, acceptance, genuineness and warmth. Trust makes a client safe and helps them in understanding and believing that a counselor will not reveal their confidentiality to others and will remain connected to them ahead of the external level of daily conversations Houston, 2014). Empathy involves putting us ourselves in the clients place and trying to experience the life of the client (Northen Kurland, 2013). In my opinion, acceptance is essential for defining a helping relationship since it helps in relating to other individuals without judging them. Respect refers to a manner of offering dignity to individuals by being always nonjudgmental, open and pleasant (Lee, 2013).Understanding involves paying attention and giving a thought to the experiences of clients. Genuineness and warmth is concerned with the behaviour in which an individual communicates genuinely by facial expressions, voice tone and eye contact (Egan, 2013). The skill for helping includes questioning, encouraging, reflecting, listening and attending. In my opinion, questioning should utilize open and closed ended questions as a tool to gather information from a client and making a helping relationship with him/her. Closed-ended questions can answered with a simple response and include questions regarding a fact or an opinion (Northen Kurland, 2013). On the other hand, the open-ended questions are concerned with longer responses in comparison to the closed-ended questions (Carroll, 2014).Encouragement helps in letting a client know that the counselor listen and encourage him/her for continuing talking. Reflecting helps a counselor not only to listen to the concern of the client but also to keep them and feel the problem of the client (Houston, 2015). The counselor reflects the content by reaffirming or recapitulating the the key points of what has been said by the client. Listening is concerned with paying heed to the feeling, which is c ommunicated together with the content and concentrating on the meaning of the message. Attending is concerned with a constant and committed effort for hearing what other individuals are saying and predominantly by how the counselors orient themselves physically towards the clients (Houston, 2014). In my opinion, the counselors should interview the clients appropriately and the purpose of taking interviews is concerned with developing an understanding regarding the history of a client and his/her current situations. It helps identifying and defining the goals of a client. It also helps in recognizing the barriers as well as resources for attaining the goals (Northen Kurland, 2013). It assists in matching the needs of the clients with respect to the suitable services offered while counseling the clients (Lee, 2013). I will try to implement all these factors while counseling a client in the future and will make every possible step for addressing the concern of the clients. References Becker, S., Bryman, A., Ferguson, H. (2012).Understanding research for social policy and social work: themes, methods and approaches. Policy Press. Carroll, M. (2014).Effective supervision for the helping professions. SAGE. CHELLINE, G. J., Robison, J. T., Kommor, M. J. (2013). 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