Examining How Professionals Describe the Strengths Perspective in Their Practice

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Struhsaker Schatz ◽  
Marita Nika Flagler
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Supported Employment ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Strengths Perspective ◽  
A Value ◽  
Practice Approach ◽  
Helping Process

Agency-based human services workers (N= 17) were asked to describe five central principles they believe direct their practice with those they work with. All these workers are employed in an agency that embraces the strengths perspective as its overarching agency mission and practice approach when working with adults with disabilities in supported employment. The results from written surveys reveal that their practice principles are organized around two major tenets. First, the working relationship between their consumers and themselves is an essential component of the intervention and is characterized by mutuality, collaboration, and partnership. Second, an adherence to a value of consumer self-determination makes the consumer the director of the helping process. Components of these tenets or principles are addressed in the findings. This study contributes to our understanding of how a practice approach guides practice for social workers and other helping professionals in agencies that promote a strengths perspective.

scholarly journals Do we Always Practice What we Preach? Real Vampires’ Fears of Coming out of the Coffin to Social Workers and Helping Professionals

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Williams ◽  
Emily E. Prior
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Clinical Context ◽  
Human Diversity ◽  
Poetic Representation ◽  
Creative Analytic Practice ◽  
Cap Method

Helping professionals in multiple disciplines, including social workers, are commonly taught to embrace human diversity, think critically, empower clients, and respect client self-determination. Indeed, much of clinical practice with clients is predicated on such professional values, which are important to the establishment of a strong therapeutic alliance and an effective treatment outcome. This study applies qualitative measures, such as  an open-ended questionnaire and creative analytic practice (CAP) strategy in the form of poetic representation, to provide insights into how people with a specific nontraditional identity, that of “real vampire,” feel about disclosing this salient identity to helping professionals within a clinical context. As a CAP method, poetic representation is valuable in acknowledging participants’ subjective realities and preserving emotional intensity in participants’ responses. Results suggest that nearly all participants were distrustful of social workers and helping professionals and preferred to “stay in the coffin” for fear of being misunderstood, labeled, and potentially having to face severe repercussions to their lives. 

The Helping Relationship Inventory: A Clinical Appraisal

1998 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Young ◽  
John E. Poulin
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Clinical Utility ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Helping Relationship ◽  
Client Relationship ◽  
Helping Process ◽  
Student Workers ◽  
Msw Student ◽  
Market Pressures

The Helping Relationship Inventory (HRI) is a newly developed measure of the strength of the helping relationship. It is designed for use by social workers and their clients in a variety of helping contexts. An appraisal of its clinical utility, based on nine pairs of clients and their MSW student workers, showed that the HRI worked well in a number of different settings and that using it can improve the worker-client relationship and facilitate the helping process. Three case examples are provided, and the significance of differences between ratings of clients and workers are discussed. For those helping professionals and agencies facing managed market pressures to provide briefer, more effective services, the Helping Relationship Inventory provides an easily administered means of assessing and improving the working relationship between consumers and their providers.

Purchasing Power and Self-Determination: Social Worker Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Bailey ◽  
Debbie Plath ◽  
Alankaar Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Purchasing Power ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Management Approaches

Abstract The international policy trend towards personalised budgets, which is designed to offer people with disabilities purchasing power to choose services that suit them, is exemplified in the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This article examines how the ‘purchasing power’ afforded to service users through individualised budgets impacts on social work practice and the choice and self-determination of NDIS service users. Social workers’ views were sought on the alignment between the NDIS principles of choice and control and social work principles of participation and self-determination and how their social work practice has changed in order to facilitate client access to supports through NDIS budgets and meaningful participation in decision-making. A survey was completed by forty-five social workers, and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with five of these participants. The findings identify how social workers have responded to the shortfalls of the NDIS by the following: interpreting information for clients; assisting service users to navigate complex service provision systems; supporting clients through goal setting, decision-making and implementation of action plans; and adopting case management approaches. The incorporation of social work services into the NDIS service model is proposed in order to facilitate meaningful choice and self-determination associated with purchasing power.

A university sport coach community of practice: Using a value creation framework to explore learning and social interactions

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Bertram ◽  
Diane M Culver ◽  
Wade Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
National Collegiate Athletic Association ◽  
A Value ◽  
Coaching Strategies ◽  
Division 1 ◽  
Practice Approach ◽  
University Setting

Coaches often identify social learning situations as the most valuable and influential to their learning. Thus, researchers have proposed implementing social learning initiatives, in particular, the community of practice approach. The purpose of the present study was to explore how an existing coach community of practice was created and sustained in a university setting, and to assess what value was created by participating in the community of practice. Participants included four National Collegiate Athletic Association Division 1 coaches from a university in the Southwestern United States. Data collection included an individual interview with each coach. Interviews were analysed using a value creation framework. The findings revealed that the coaches created value within all five cycles of Wenger et al.’s framework. In particular, the coaches learned a number of coaching strategies, some of which they were able to implement, and as a result, observe benefits in their coaching and athletes’ performance.

Formation of a Personal-Professional Position as the Basis of Technology Design Career Guidance Practices

2021 ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Valery Ilyich Tarlavsky ◽  
◽  
Marina Viktorovna Shakurova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Career Guidance ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Vocational Guidance ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Family Identity ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Family ◽  
Professional Self ◽  
Research Analysis

The article considers the need for a broad view on the technologization of career guidance practices, the importance of which is increasing due to the spread of early professionalization in modern society. The purpose of the article is to identify and substantiate the semantic foundations for the technologization of vocational guidance practices, determined taking into account the process of forming a personal-professional position in the conditions of early professionalization. Research methodology: systemic personality-developing, subjective and technological approaches; methods of theoretical research (analysis, synthesis, generalization, analogy, interpretation, concretization). Attention is drawn to the essential features of personal-professional positioning, the focus is on the attitude to work, profession, personal and professional self-determination. Semantic supports for the design of vocational guidance technologies are identified and justified: the differentiating basis of the stage of life activity; immersion in accessible roles in the field of professional and labor activity and the formation of a value attitude to them; attention to work, the pattern of work of any profession, the formed attitude to work as a value; professional and labor traditions of the family, related features of family identity and family socio-professional trajectory; definition and implementation of personal and professional prospects; preservation and strengthening of personal-professional position.

No Gain, No Pain: Ethics and the Genomic Revolution

2008 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin T. Hall ◽  
Anna Scheyett ◽  
Kimberly Strom-Gottfried
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Continuing Professional Development ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Prevention And Treatment ◽  
Genetics Knowledge ◽  
Genetic Science ◽  
Genetic Contributions ◽  
Genomic Revolution

The mapping of the human genome and scientific discoveries regarding genetic contributions to disease hold great promise for the prevention and treatment of an array of conditions. Social workers and other professionals must keep abreast of these developments and the ethical dimensions of such progress. Familiar ethical provisions such as confidentiality, informed consent, self-determination, and social justice take on new meaning in light of innovations in genetic science. This article reviews ethical issues and practice implications emerging from advances in genetics knowledge, and it suggests mechanisms for continuing professional development and involvement in this important area.

scholarly journals IS NATURAL SELECTION A CHIMERA? REFLECTIONS ON THE ‘SURVIVAL’ OF A PRINCIPLE

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gláucia Oliveira da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
A Value ◽  
Great Divide

Abstract My objective is to discuss the persistence of the notion of natural selection in the biological sciences, exploring the fact that: (1) this notion, just like the term culture in anthropology, is historically an inaugural concept in its particular scientific field, and, insofar as both possess a value of heuristic delimitation, both thus came to be considered as explanatory concepts, although today they may be more widely accepted as descriptive in kind; (2) this persistence seems to be equally linked to the fact that the term combines randomness and teleology, but without foregrounding the inherent contradiction; (3) the anthropomorphic metaphors generally used in the description of biological processes, by attributing intentionality to beings lacking in self-determination, presume the existence of a nature defined by processes oriented towards precise ends, endorsing the finalism that, I believe, underlies the idea of natural selection; (4) and, finally, I think that ‘culture’ and ‘natural selection’ correspond to disciplinary labels - for social anthropology and biology respectively - that arose in Victorian Britain, as defined by the Great Divide, but they no longer have explanatory power.

Social Workers and Self-Determination

Social Work ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-287
Author(s):  
Corrine Muldoon McKinney
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Self Determination

Around ethical dilemmas in the work of a family assistant

2021 ◽  
Vol 597 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-17
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Ciczkowska-Giedziun
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Assistance Programs ◽  
Helping Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Right ◽  
Voluntary Cooperation

The purpose of the article is to describe selected ethical dilemmas in the work of a family assistant, based on the typology of ethical dilemmas of Frederic Reamer. In accordance with the typology adopted in the article, in the area of cooperation with families, ethical dilemmas regarding direct work with families, implementation of social assistance programs and relationship between representatives of the profession arise. The information presented in the text is based on publications, studies and reports on family assistantship. The first group of ethical dilemmas is revealed when constructing supportive and helping relationship between assistants and families. It refers to such areas as: voluntary cooperation, limits of cooperation, the right to self-determination or limits of responsibility. The second group of ethical dilemmas is related to the planning and implementation of various solutions in the field of social policy and also support and assistance programs offered to the family. The last group of ethical dilemmas results from a different understanding of family assistantship in the structures of the social assistance system. They are also revealed in the construction of relationships with social workers. The text also includes solutions how to cope with these dilemmas.

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