Foundations
When considering if or when to self-disclose or share your perspective, helpful questions to ask might be “what purpose will this serve?” or “what is the motive behind the self- disclosure?” Consider, then, when might it be appropriate to self-disclose to a participant? In what instances or situations would you be less inclined to self-disclose or share?
open ended
It may help the person
By presenting and sharing aspects of our self and our experiences with the participant, we move away from being “clinical, detached and distant professionals”
sharing your own feelings, ideas, attitudes, perspectives, and experiences with the participant conveys
understanding of others’ experiences and allows spontaneity. It can indicate that speaking about particular issues is safe within this relationship
self-disclosure also mitigates the participants’ feelings of dependency evoked by taking help.
The social worker’s self-disclosure may also present new ways of viewing a situation and envisioning possible outcomes
In the teaching and learning phase of working with participants, continuing ______________ serves as an anchor for collaboratively assessing the participant’s situation. There are three approaches to _____________ in this phase:
■bringing past experiences to bear on the unique problems presented by the participant
using reflection creatively to develop new ways of perceiving the problem
■creating new opportunities to experiment in reframing the problems, that is, trying to secure a fit between the person’s problems and the way of reframing them.
This also allows the participant to transform information into knowledge and can be used to explore the power dynamics of one’s situation, as well as one’s behaviors, assumptions, and interactions.
CRITICAL SELF-REFLECTION
The social worker and participant work together to explore the participant’s definition of the presenting issue, they work to identify inner resources (strengths) and other useful resources that exist in their living situation. One way to collaboratively identify needs and resources:
Use of Questions
Leading questions: These could shape the participant’s response to match what they believe the social worker wants to hear.
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Excessive questions: These could place the social worker in control of the dialogue and cause the participant to feel interrogated.
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Multiple questions: These could be confusing because the participant will not know which one of two or more questions should be answered.
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Irrelevant questions: These could cause confusion because they are not connected to the conversation or dialogue
In what phase of the problem-solving process does social workers explore structural inequality by: making direct links between participant’s’ economic and social positions in society and their emotional and physical health, assist the participant in obtaining a critical understanding of the connection between their personal problem within a social context, in order to move beyond an individualistic understanding of problems and solutions.
Teaching and learning
What are the stages of the planned problem-solving process?
Engagement
Teaching and Learning, or Assessment
Action and Accompaniment, or Intervention
Evaluation
What is the difference between cultural competence and cultural humility?
Many social workers are challenging the assumption that one can achieve “cultural competence.”
Instead, we urge social workers to approach their work from a place of not knowing about people’s cultures, histories, and experiences in life (Dean, 2001). This standpoint replaces cultural competency with “cultural humility” and a commitment to ongoing learning and understanding. The focus is “open exploration and negotiated understandings, rather than the acquisition of specific expert knowledge”
What does commitment to uncertainty mean?
Taking a position of not knowing entails genuine curiosity, dedication, and open-mindedness to alternative views. A commitment to uncertainty opens spaces for learning, trans-formation, and possibility. Coming from a place of not knowing also breaks down hierarchy and creates conversational spaces that do not perpetuate the myth of the social worker as the expert
What does resistance reframed/reframing resistance mean?
Some participants may use resistance as a survival strategy to protect against further oppression or maintain power over their lives. It is critical that we respect and honor resistance and reframe it as a form of agency and self-determination.
What are explanations for a clients silence?
The participant may be reflecting on the discussion, gathering and organizing their thoughts.
■ The participant may be taking a break from the work at hand.
■ The participant may be struggling to find a way to express a painful or buried emotion. ■
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The participant may be angry with the social worker and showing this emotion through silence.
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The participant may be demonstrating that the social worker was way off base in their response and misunderstood what the participant was expressing.
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The participant may be working to develop trust with the social worker, using silence to provide a sense of dignity and control over their lives and the conversation or using it as a way to avoid rejection.
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The participant may be a quiet person, so perhaps more open-ended questions may assist with creating dialogue.
■ The participant may have achieved closure on the topic
Name at least 3 roles of a social worker.
advocate, broker, collaborator, enabler, facilitator, learner, mediator, teacher
What is reflexive listening?
entails listening for and reflecting on the participant’s choice of language. Incorporating the participant’s words, terms, and phrases into the dialogue is critical so that professional language and jargon do not override and distort the participant’s meanings (Clarke, 2003). One effective method for reflexive listening is echoing participants’ key words (Jong & Berg, 2002).
Key words are often emotionally charged and given special emphasis. Repeating or emphasizing them to participants is a way to go deeper into what they mean and their representation or relevance in the participant’s life. Listening to their words shows that you are reaching for meaning and clarifying understanding. Summarizing and paraphrasing are also important in reflexive listening. In summarizing, the social
worker restates the participant’s thoughts, actions, or feelings. Paraphrasing involves extrapolating the essence of what the participant said. Paraphrasing demonstrates that you are really hearing the participant and provides them with an invitation to clarify and expand their stories (Jong & Berg, 2002). Accurate paraphrasing and reflections are part of active listening.
listening through social consciousness: being emotionally, mentally, and physically responsive to the complexities of the participant’s life; taking a genuine interest in and seeking to understand their experiences through their intersecting identities
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attending: focusing entirely on what the other person is saying, as well as what they are not saying from their subjective experiences in life
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immersing: fully entering the space when you are with the participant; entering a mental zone in which you fully bring yourself to enter the participant’s world and deeply focus on their stories
Are the 3 skills involved with what skill?
Radical Listening
Within engagement, we notice clients nonverbal communication, as well as pay attention to our own while keeping in mind cultural considerations. What are some examples of non-verbal communication/body consciousness?
tone of voice that matches the participant’s voice eye contact
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occasional head nodding to show that the social worker is following what the participant is saying
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varying facial expressions in response to what the participant says smiling at appropriate points to demonstrate warmth and understanding gesturing occasionally
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sitting close to the participant using a moderate rate of speech
■ leaning slightly toward the participant to indicate interest and concentration
What is the definition of empathy?
Empathy is a way of “hearing” what another person is “saying,” both verbally and nonverbally, at the emotional level. It means being in touch with yourself (your feelings and emotions) while at same time engaging with the feelings of the other person (Hennessey, 2011). It entails feeling with the participant (empathy), rather than for them (sympathy; Kadushin & Kadushin, 1997). Empathy involves the social worker’s ability to convey a sense of being present while understanding the participant’s words, emotions, experiences, and layers of meaning (Jong & Berg, 2002). Empathy can take the form of silent listening or verbal questioning (Hennessey, 2011), whichever works better to let participants know that you are listening and understand what they are saying
What are some qualities of a social worker that are important for relationship building?
Warmth
Unconditional
positive regard for participant
Genuineness and authenticity
Mutuality
Humor
Caring and connectedness
What are we doing when we are practicing self-awareness?
Practicing awareness of self involves the act of self-reflexivity, or self-reflection. It is critical to gain better insight into ourselves by focusing attention on the details of our personality, behavior, and values:
It requires going beyond surface content to contemplate meanings, to submerge oneself in thoughtful reverie, to question taken-for-granted assumptions about reality, to consider the
What are we doing during the Teaching and Learning phase?
also referred to as the assessment stage of our work with participants. Instead of using a traditional model of assessment, whereby social workers act as “experts” through the questioning of participants or simply by following agency procedures, teaching and learning involves a mutual exchange of information, in keeping with anti-oppressive practice. This phase of the interaction is the opportunity for participants to tell their story and to situate themselves and their concerns. Together, social workers and participants coconstruct an understanding of the participant’s situation as partners in the process of assessment
What are some efforts social workers can make to manage unequal power dynamics with clients?
Use first names
Employ simple language, avoiding jargon and diagnostic or medical terminology ■
Use self-disclosure to demystify your values and identities
Explain the limits of your role
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Point out participants’ strengths and encourage participants to help themselves
Explain the rationale for interventions
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Ensure that participants see what is written and hear what is being said about them
Protect participants’ confidentiality
What is Intergenerational trauma?
Intergenerational trauma can also be the result of systemic oppression, such as racial trauma resulting from discrimination, violence, slavery, or incarcer-ation. For example, if someone’s parents or grandparents experienced trauma, their DNA coded itself to have a survival response that helped them get through those events, which then passed down through generations (Curry, 2019). This survival response mode remains coded in the individual’s DNA and is passed down for multiple generations, even in the absence of additional trauma (Bezo, 2015). Given the ways marginalized people are exposed to multiple forms of individual, social, and systemic oppression, it is critical to acknowledge the ways intergenerational trauma plays a role in participants’ lived experiences.
What are the uses of reframing, revisioning and restorying?
Reframing, revisioning, and restorying involve helping the participant see life in new ways. Social
workers can ask helpful questions in coconstructing new stories or frames of reference that make solution building possible. This form of sharing invites the participant to experiment with different possibilities that they may not have previously considered.
What are social workers doing in the Action and accompaniment phase?
Instead of intervening, we encourage social workers to accept an invitation from participants to
accompany them as they take action toward change. A commitment to solidarity, equality in the rela-tionship, and a focus on the process are called for. This process of taking action and accompanying our participants challenges the top-down approach of traditional social work practice. Accompaniment entails walking alongside our participants and allowing ourselves to be led by them,
from a perspective of not knowing and curiosity.
Planning collaboratively
4 tasks:
Fostering participatory decision-making and Supporting, creating alliances and Activating resources..
What is Trauma-informed care?
(1) “realizes (2) recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved in the system; (3) responds by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, proce-dures, and practices; and (4) resists re-traumatization”
What is the difference between TIC and the healing centered approach when thinking about trauma?
healing-centered approach emphasizes that a person is much more than their trauma and highlights the ways trauma and healing are experienced collectively. Healing-centered engagement is an approach to trauma that uses a resource orientation to center repair and resilience rather than pathologizing damage
4 Points:
Healing centered engagement is explicitly political, rather than clinical
Healing centered engagement is culturally grounded and views healing as the restoration identity
Healing centered engagement is asset driven and focuses on well-being we want, rather than symptoms we want to suppress:
Healing centered engagement supports adult providers with their own healing
5 principles:
Culture
Learning about our respective identities
Agency -Supporting the ability to act and create, as well as change the root causes of trauma, providing opportunities for civic engagement
Relationships -Creating, sustaining, and growing healthy connections with others, practicing empathy, and fostering a culture of connectedness
Meaning- Identifying your own assets and connecting to your purpose
Aspirations-Focusing on possibilities and the ability to dream, providing opportunities for dreaming and imagination building, embedding opportunities that reinforce asset-driven language
Name 2 Major types of evaluation
1) Formative or process evaluation: Carried out at regular intervals (or different points in time) in our work with the participant. The information can be used as continuous feedback to inform and reshape the process (Dalrymple & Burke, 2006; Parsons, 1998). The focus is on what is happening in the interaction or intervention.
2) Summative or outcome evaluation: Concerned with the outcomes, effectiveness, and impact of the interaction or intervention.