- THE WORKER/CLIENT RELATIONSHIP
- Purposes and definition of the professional relationship
- Establishment and termination of relationship
- Professional versus personal relationship
- Characteristics of the professional relationship
- Transference and countertransference
- Relationships with diverse populations--class, race/ethnicity, sex, age, sexual orientation and other characteristics
- Use of the self in the professional relationship
- Communication
- Communication process
- Types of communication
- VERBAL AND NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR
- Attentive listening
- Communication Process
- Sender - Intent
- Receiver - Impact
- External environment: Noise and distraction
- Barriers and motivation to communication
- Enhancing communication with a diverse population
- Interviewing: Exchange information in order to illuminate and solve problems, promote growth, and plan strategies or actions aimed at improving people's quality life
- Worker responsibility in the interview
- Starting the interview
- The interview's setting
- Office door
- Home visits
- How to dress for the interview and for the job
- Nicely and relatively conservatively
- Type of agency
- Thinking ahead about an interview
- Specific information needed
- Time frame of interview
- Interview's purpose
- Diagnostic
- Therapeutic
- Initial introductions
- Be perceptive of the client's reactions
- Be perceptive of cultural differences
- Be brief with initial innocuous exchanges
- Alleviating the client's anxiety
- Portraying confidence and competence
- Acknowledge the truth
- Respond to the client with a question
- Share statements about your own competence
- Beginning statement of purpose and role
- Clearly explain the interview's purpose
- Explain the worker's role to the client
- Encourage the client's feedback on purpose
- State the usefulness of the intervention process
- DOING THE INTERVIEW
- Verbal responses to the client
- Simple encouragement
- Rephrasing
- Reflective responding
- Clarification
- Client's benefit
- Worker's benefit
- Interpretation
- Providing information
- Emphasizing client's strengths
- Reinforces client's sense of self respect and self-value
- Provide positive rays of hope
- Identify ways to solve problems by relying on the specific strengths
- Self-disclosure
- Information about your own professional role
- Feedback regarding your feelings and impressions about the client and the behavior
- Perceptions concerning your ongoing interaction and relationship with the client
- Relating aspects about your life or problems
- Summarization
- Eliciting information
- Closed-ended questions
- Seek simple yes or no answers
- Number of clearly defined answers to choose from
- Do not encourage an elaboration of thoughts or feelings
- Open-ended questions
- Seek the client's thoughts, ideas, and explanations for answers
- Encourage elaboration and specifics
- The use of "why"
- Can be very threatening to clients
- Use action when using "why"
- Overlap of techniques
- Specific Skills for Intervention
- Differential diagnosis
- Timing
- Partialization
- Focus
- Establishing partnerships
- Structure
- Basic Techniques
- Small talk
- Ventilation
- Support
- Reassurance
- Confrontation
- Conflict
- Manipulation
- Universalization
- Advice giving and counseling
- Activities and programs
- Logical discussion
- Reward and punishment
- Role rehearsal and demonstration
- Audiovisual devices
- Issues and Hurdles in Interviewing
- Confidentiality
- Absolute - All that transpires between client and worker goes no further
- Relative - Worker does best to ensure the confidentiality but can't guarantee it
- Silence in the interview
- Client-initiated silence
- Client may come to a point where s/he needs time to organize thoughts
- Client may be trying to pressure the worker to give some answer or solution to a problem
- Client may be resisting
- Negative worker-initiated silence
- Worker who demonstrates a quiet, non-involved, non-assertive personality style
- Worker's mind becomes blank and s/he can think of nothing to say
- Focusing on the client instead of yourself
- Therapeutic worker-initiated silence
- Pacing the interview
- Silent focusing
- Sensitivity to cultural differences
- Confronting clients
- Involuntary clients
- Suspicion of untruth
- Terminating the interview
- Mention exactly how much time is left in the interview before the interview termination time
- Share ending feelings
- Ask for a review of the learning
- Reach for ending feelings
- Social Work Roles with Micro Systems
- Broker
- Enabler
- Mediator
- Educator
- Evaluator
- Case manager/coordinator
- Advocates
- A. Tasks groups: Exist to achieve a specific set of objectives or tasks
- Boards of Directors
- Task forces
- Committees and commissions
- Legislative bodies
- Staff meetings
- Multidisciplinary teams
- Case conferences and staffings
- Social action groups
- Treatment groups: Exist to create change in individual group members
- Growth groups
- Remedial groups
- Educational groups
- Socialization groups
- Mutual aid groups
- Worker Roles in Groups
- Broker: Assists client in obtaining needed resources
- Mediator: Helps group members with conflicts or other dissension
- Educator: Provides group members with new information, structures the presentation of that information, and uses modeling to help participants learn new skills
- Facilitator: Eases or expedites the way for others
- Basic Group Dynamics
- Group development
- Stage 1: Most groups display a strong reliance on the leader
- Stage 2: Group members begin to assert themselves
- Stage 3: Group productivity increases and there is greater attention to achieving group goals
- Stage 4: Separation
- Group culture, norms, and power
- Establish a climate of trust and safety
- Model appropriate behavior
- Support group members
- Group size, composition and duration
- Heterogeneous: Members with different problems and personality characteristics
- Homogeneous: Members with similar problems/personalities
- Decision making in groups
- Decision making by consensus
- Decision making by compromise
- Decision making by majority
- Rule by an individual
- Persuasion by a recognized expert
- Averaging of individual opinions
- Persuasion by a minority
- Nominal group technique
- Brainstorming
- Parliamentary procedure
- Group roles
- Task functions: Help to keep group on task and working toward agreed upon ends
- Maintenance functions: Ensure the needs of members of the group receive attention
- Task roles
- Instructor: Clarifies and reminds other members about what they have agreed to do
- Information seeker: Frequently questions the leader and other members on various topics
- Opinion seeker: Wants to know what other members think about an idea before expressing his/her own thoughts
- Evaluator: Makes judgments about ideas presented and often comments on the appropriateness of any ideas
- Elaborator: Expands on ideas proposed to the group
- Energizer: Serves as the spark plug for the group
- Recorder: Keeps a record of decisions or actions
- Procedural technician: Ensures the group will act according to rules previously agreed to
- Maintenance roles
- Harmonizer: Emphasizes harmony
- Compromiser: Emphasizes compromise
- Encourager: Encourages other members to participate
- Follower: Follows the directions of others
- Tension reliever: Relieves rough moments in a group, often through humor
- Listener: Listens carefully
- Individual roles
- Aggressor: Attacks others, puts them down
- Blocker: Always has a reason why an idea will not succeed
- Recognition seeker: Engages in behaviors designed to focus attention on him or her
- Dominator: Has personal needs not being met
- Help seeker: Seeks help of group for his/her own problems
- Confessor: Embarrasses the group by inappropriately disclosing personal or other behaviors
- Nonfunctional roles
- Scapegoats: Draw the wrath of other members, serve as someone to blame when things aren't going well
- Defensive members: Do not accept blame for anything and deny responsibility for their actions
- Deviant members: Engage in behavior they know the group will oppose or find annoying
- Quiet members: Do not participate
- Internal leaders: Vie for leadership and attempt to get control from the designated leader
- Micro Skills in Groups
- Task and Treatment Group Skills
- Conflict resolution
- Modeling and coaching
- Team building
- Confrontation
- Consultation
- Coordinator
- Using structure
- Social work practice geared toward bringing about improvements and changes in general society
- Four additional dimensions:
- Usually targets one of three tasks:
- Changing or improving policies and procedures which regulate distribution of resources to clients
- Developing new resources when what client needs in unavailable
- Helping clients get their due rights
- Targets "the system" to determine where and how changes need to be made
- Frequent need for advocacy on behalf of clients
- Agency's policies or constraints which limit workers' behavior
- THE ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
- Professional-organizational conflicts
- Limitations and risk assessment
- Types of change
- Social reform: The development and improvement of social conditions
- Social action: Overlaps social reform but emphasizes greater involvement by intended beneficiaries
- Three types of activity:
- Advocacy around specific issues and populations
- Working in local and national elections
- Networking with other groups pursuing a similar agenda
- Cause advocacy: Related to an issue of overriding importance to a group of clients
- Case advocacy: Refers to activity on behalf of a single case
- Three methods of community organization
- Social action
- Social planning
- Locality development
- Micro Skills for Organizational and Community Change
- Conflict resolution
- Developing win-win outcomes
- Team building
- Public speaking
- Consultation
- Coordination
- Macro Skills for Organizational and Community Change
- Building and maintaining organizations
- Fund-raising
- Managing a budget
- Gathering information through surveys
- Using specific tactics to accomplish goals
- Evaluating outcomes
- Practice evaluation: Evaluating the effectiveness or results of what individual social workers do
- Program evaluation: Addresses the effectiveness and results of entire programs
- Fund-raising
- Individual donors
- Corporate donors
- Foundations
- Membership dues
- Benefits
- Church organizations
- Service clubs
- Budgeting
- Line item budgets
- Program budgets
- Incremental budgets
- Zero-based budget
- Negotiating
- Mediating
- Influencing decision makers
- Petitioning
- Using the Media
- Educating
- Persuading
- Issue consensus
- Issue difference
- Issue dissensus
- Confrontation
- Action system--people and resources to help achieve desired changes
- Target system--individual, group, or community to be changed or influenced
- Two most difficult forms: Legal action and public embarrassment
- Collaboration
- Letter writing
- Needs assessment: Estimate extent of demand for particular service or program
- Key informant
- Community forum
- Rates-under-treatment
- Social indicators
- Field study
- Planning
- Working with coalitions
- Worker Roles in Organizational and Community Change
- Initiator: Call attention to an issue
- Negotiator: Try to find middle ground
- Advocate: Decide what client is entitled to and what problem is keeping client from receiving it
- Spokesperson: Present the organization's views and position without bias
- Organizer
- Mediator: Maintain neutrality
- Consultant
I. Micro Practice Skills
- Kirst-Ashman, Karen K.
and Hull, Grafton H. Jr. Understanding Generalist
Practice, Nelson Hall Publishers: Chicago, 1993.
Chapter 2.
II. Mezzo Practice Skills: Working with Groups
- Kirst-Ashman, Karen K.
and Hull, Grafton H. Jr. Understanding Generalist
Practice, Nelson Hall Publishers: Chicago, 1993.
Chapter 3.
III. MACRO PRACTICE SKILLS: WORKING WITH ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMUNITIES
- Kirst-Ashman, Karen K.
and Hull, Grafton H. Jr. Understanding Generalist
Practice, Nelson Hall Publishers: Chicago, 1993.
Chapter 4.
