Social Work and Karen Culture Essay

Vision

Social workers contribute to a just society by being compassionate and caring individuals that provide the kind of support and assistance that people need in times of need. They work with children, families, and adults to get them help in terms of food, shelter, get them into training programs, and even refer them to services to help with employment (Coady & Lehmann, 2016). They are the first lines of assistance when people are coming out of some emergency or tragedy. I myself, am most interested in becoming a Child, Family and School Social Worker. I feel like I would be able to help children and families deal with their hardships and be able to enable a positive growth in them. I feel I will be able to assist in the various problems and situations that can arise in life.

Being from the Karen ethnic group and my family dealing with the conflict in Burma, I had issues with self-identity, finding stability, and feeling okay in my own skin. It was a hard transition learning new experiences and coming to a new place. But these experiences have helped me to deal with the situation that the Karen community has faced and I feel as though these kinds of ordeals are best handled when someone can guide you that has experienced it. I can be that guide for children and families and work with them and schools to ensure children receive a quality education and gain the knowledge they need to move past their suffering.

So many young people in this world suffer needlessly and they don’t have or know where to get the resources needed to improve. These resources can be invaluable and sometimes it just takes one person to help someone see what they are capable of and what they can do. I feel I can be that kind of person. Part of my strengths is I love the idea of working with children and families. I feel the most change can be made in a child’s life because they are still at an age where they believe anything is possible. Without that feeling, it is often hard to break bad habits and so forth. To have someone there that understands and knows what it is like to struggle, I can be able to show them they can triumph and have a successful and fulfilling life.

The kinds of skills and knowledge needed to be a social worker especially in the Karen community is speaking their language of which I can. Although there are subsets of languages, I can communicate with most in the community. Second, I have the understanding of the political situation in Burma so I know what kind of help they are going to need. Third, I had experience working as a midwife in a refugee camp so I understand the need for medical assistance and sexual/reproductive health. These are things that can help me in the process of learning and self-reflecting.

Working with families involves a certain amount of understanding of theory and to use a theory like Bowens Family Systems Theory to understand the needs of families is a great way for me to develop professionally. Working with families, it is important to understand that the family is a unit, a whole and that the actions of one member could have negative consequences for the other. Children in particular do not have power over their lives and so working with parents and helping them understand their impact on their child’s life would be extremely rewarding for me.

Coming from the Karen ethnicity, I understand extended family can have a significant influence on a child’s life. I would try to assess the situation in the child’s home and see if there are ways to either incorporate or remove influence from extended family. Lastly, I feel like there are so many ways to enrich a child’s life and I enjoy the idea of working in a collaborative effort with families to ensure positive, healthy outcomes. Therefore, I want to be a school social worker.



Generalist Social Work Practice

Generalist social work practice entails looking at things from a holistic perspective and recognizing the right of the client to choose what he or she may need in terms of assistance and resources. There are so many things that are required in terms of understanding the needs of the client from cultural and social awareness to understanding of that person’s environment. One article highlights the need to learn certain key aspects of social work through group work to provide a foundation of understanding other people’s differences and similarities and how these can be used to form a connection and promote better awareness. “These range from the importance of mutual aid and the role of the group leader to multicultural competence and practice skills needed in the beginning, middle, and ending phases of group work. Group work is only one of four modalities that must be taught in the undergraduate practice sequence” (Knight, 2013, p. 23).

Although some may say social work has changed in recent times, moving away from social justice and towards the individual, some things remain the same such as the need to understand and communicate with the client. “Social changes and professionalization have moved social work away from advancing social justice and into the domination of individual therapies.” (Kam, 2012, p. 723). Just because there is more focus on the individual does not mean there is less focus on society and the social context of problems. Because environment theoretically, can play a role in how a person is and reacts to others, the generalist approach is designed to help one understand these multiple influences and treat accordingly using the perspective holistic integration.

One article introduces a curricular innovation. It is called the Integrated Health Scholars Program (IHSP). IHSP is developed to help master's-level social work students so they can work in integrated health care settings. Also, it is meant to help in presenting initial results connected to students’ self-reported program perceptions and competencies.

IHSP, implemented in a research-intensive school of social work in a large midwestern public university, includes specialized course work, interprofessional education across health science disciplines, and field practicum in integrated health care settings. Curricular components support stepwise learning and follows the British Columbia model of interprofessional education learning tiers: exposure, immersion, and skill mastery (Mattison, Weaver, Zebrack, Fischer, & Dubin, 2017, p. S72).

This is the kind of work that is needed to educate students on the multiple dimensions of social work and addressing client needs.

From my understanding, generalist practitioners work with families, communities, individuals, and organizations via an assortment of host and social work settings. The need is to recognize, support, and then build upon a person or people’s uniqueness including their natural skills. Generalist practitioners assess service results for continuous improvement of services and recognize whether client needs are being met or not. The NASW Code of Ethics guides generalist social work practice, promoting the commitment to improving and furthering the goals social justice and human rights in the world.

What does this mean? Simply generalist social work involves the micro and macro perspective and the encompassing of a multitude of skills and knowledge to properly help clients in need. So many people are in need of assistance due to the situations they endure. A recent example of this is Hurricane Maria and the Puerto Ricans that need to evacuate the island. These are pockets of culture and situations that require a better recognition and assessment of what will work and what will not to address the problems affecting people.

How has the following contributed to your understanding of generalist social work practice?

i. The profession is founded on the premise that there needs to be consideration for both the person as well as the environment in order to improve the functioning and life quality of people, communities, and groups (Birkenmaier, Berg-Weger, & Dewees, 2017). From my studies I found an interest in systems theories because it helps to address the impact that policies, groups, organizations, and communities can have on an individual. For example, policies on refugees in the United States can impact negatively or positively, how they receive care and what resources are available to them. I also find the ecological theory (systems theory subset), to be useful because it creates some major contributions to social work in the mezzo, micro, and macro viewpoints. This framework allows for a better understanding of a client’s situation because it serves as guidance for what to look for and understand within the context of the person and his or her life in relation…