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. 

scholarly journals Reply to “Do We Always Practice What We Preach? Real Vampires’ Fears of Coming Out of the Coffin to Social Workers and Helping Professionals.”

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Laycock
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
Established Order ◽  
Critical Social

This reply analyzes criticism of the article “Do We Always Practice What We Preach?  Real Vampires’ Fears of Coming Out of the Coffin to Social Workers and Helping Professionals” published in Critical Social Work (2015), 16(1) by DJ Williams and Emily E. Prior. That article was widely publicized and received a seemingly disproportionate amount of criticism from both religious and secular voices. This reply applies Peter Berger’s notion of anomie to suggest that critics of the article felt threatened by the implications of tolerating emerging identity claims, such as those made by self-identified vampires. By attacking Williams and Prior as unreasonable, these critics suggest that an individual’s ontological status is taken-for-granted rather than socially constructed. Paradoxically, their protests also suggest an awareness that ontological status actually is socially constructed and that helping professionals, such as Williams and Prior, are imbued with cultural authority that can alter the established order. This reply suggests that the ontological threat presented by helping professionals is what is actually at stake in these critiques. Critiquing the article appears to be not only a call for the continued medicalization of self-identified vampires as deviant, but more importantly a strategy of repressing the realization that norms are socially constructed and therefore susceptible to change.

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.

School-Age Coping: Themes Across Three Generations of Sexual Minorities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Simons ◽  
Melissa Ramdas ◽  
Stephen T. Russell
Keyword(s):  
School Counselors ◽  
Extracurricular Activities ◽  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Sexual Minority Youth ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
School Age ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
At Risk Student ◽  
Minority People

Sexual minority youth (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer) are at-risk student population, and school counselors are responsible for helping them cope in a heterosexist society. This article reports the qualitative findings of a study that examined the process of coping during the school-age years among 81 sexual minority people. Data were collected across three cohorts of participants (a Marriage Equality cohort, an HIV/AIDS epidemic cohort, and a Stonewall Rebellion cohort). The authors identified five themes across all cohorts from the interviews: influence of relationships; experiencing emotions; coming out; actions to cope with being a sexual minority, including involvement in extracurricular activities; and cognitive coping (younger participants). Implications for school counseling practice and research are provided for educators, researchers, and helping professionals.

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.

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.

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.

Meditation, Mindfulness, and Social Work

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadye L. M. Logan
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Spiritual Disciplines ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Contemplative Practices ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Effective Change

Research has shown that social workers and other helping professionals can make use of the contemplative practices from religion and spiritual disciplines. These practices can be utilized as tools that help social workers become more intentional and effective change agents as helpers in their work with individuals, families, children, and communities. This entry discusses the evolution and emergence of the practices of meditation and mindfulness within the helping context, starting with the historic roots in different religions to its usage in the early 21st century with children and families. Additionally, it addresses the limitations and benefits of meditation and mindfulness as practice tools.

Diabetes (Children and Adults)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Auslander ◽  
Elizabeth Budd
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Disease Management ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Psychosocial Functioning ◽  
Behavioral Interventions ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
Treatment Of Diabetes

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of: diabetes and its significance, the differences in types of diabetes, and landmark clinical trials that have resulted in changes in philosophy and treatment of diabetes. Second, a review of the various types of evidence-based and promising behavioral interventions in the literature that have targeted children and adults are presented. Social workers and other helping professionals are uniquely positioned to work collaboratively to improve psychosocial functioning, disease management, and prevent or delay complications through behavioral interventions for children and adults with diabetes.

scholarly journals Relational Autonomy and Service Choices in Social Worker–Client Conversations in an Outpatient Clinic for People Using Drugs

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsi Juhila ◽  
Johanna Ranta ◽  
Suvi Raitakari ◽  
Sarah Banks
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Outpatient Clinic ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
People Who Use Drugs ◽  
Relational Autonomy ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Ethical Point ◽  
Interactional Analysis

Abstract This article focuses on how clients’ self-determination is accomplished in social worker–client conversations when discussing choices of clients’ future services in a low-threshold outpatient clinic in Finland targeted at people who use drugs. Self-determination is approached from the point of view of relational autonomy, meaning that choices are never made completely independently but within certain societal and interactional contexts. The article applies interactional analysis to data from ten social worker–client conversations, which include forty-eight instances of ‘choice talk’. The results demonstrate how social workers work hard to promote clients’ self-determination, and how this is carried out with different emphases within the frame of relational autonomy. Social workers do not perform ethically questionable manipulation practices. Quite the reverse, their contributions in the conversations can be interpreted as endeavours to increase clients’ self-confidence and autonomy competencies. However, a concern from an ethical point of view is that real service options are rather scarce for the clinic’s clients. This considerably reduces the clients’ capacity for self-determination. Furthermore, it also reduces the autonomy of social workers, who have limited opportunities to organise the services their clients desire and that the social workers themselves consider are the best options.

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