503 exam flashcards
Limits of Confidentiality
- supervision/consultation
- signed waivers
- child/elder abuse
- danger to self/others
- subpoenas
Professional Boundaries of Competence
- level of licensure
- supervision
- peer consultation
Macro/Meso/Micro
- Macro: policies/greater society
- Meso: families and communities
- Micro: individuals
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
- Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.
- Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, etc.
- Belongingness and Love needs - work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.
- Esteem needs - self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.
- Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
EPAS Competencies (10)
Include:
- Identity as SW
- Knowledge of HBSE
- Applying ethics
- Applying critical thinking
- Engaging in diverse practices
- Advance human rights
- Do process recordings
- Engaging in policy practice
- Responding to contexts to shape practice
- Advancing practice
Ecosystems Theory
- person:environment - fluid and interchangeable, evolutionary, goodness of fit
- transactions are reciprocal interactions - can be productive or inhibitive
- empowerment focused - both people and environments can change.
- All behaviors make sense when considered in context
- race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, gender can be stepping stones for power elite OR roadblacks for those who are oppressed
- removes blame from individual - no terms of dysfunctional/maladaptive, environment has impact on behavior
- nurturing environment can compensate for system’s limitations
- focus on strengths in systems
NASW Code of Ethics (7)
- Help those in need
- Challenge injustice
- Respect inherent worth
- Recognize importance of human relationships
- Be trustworthy
- Practice within areas of competence
- Maintain and build levels of licensure, supervision and peer consultation.
NASW Code of Ethics
(Overall)
- Established set of guidelines and principles that guide practice
- 155 Ethical standards
- violation = sanctions and/or revoked license.
Dual Relationships
Multiple roles of therapist/client.
- Not allowed
- must limit relationships with people close to clts.
- not all societal interactions are limited
- NO sexual relations with current/former clients.
Developing Cultural Knowledges Needs
- cultural empathy toward individual and traditions
- intercultural sensitivity - take into acct. clts's norms/values
- undersatnd values systems may differ.
- open-mindedeness - be open and unprejudiced attitude toward other groups
Stages of Cultural Sensitivity
- Denial - only know own culture, avoidant.
- Defense - limited engagement w/other cultures, own culture is "right"
- Minimization - "we're all the same", refuse to see differences.
- Acceptance - acknowledge that cultural differences are real.
- Adaptation - use cross cultural knowledge in interactions with other cultural grousp
- Integration - high degree of fluency and adoption of multiple worrld news.
Informed Consent
- inform client of student status
- mandated reporting
- breaking confidentiality - exceptions
- expectations for the process
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
- protects privacy of clients receiving mental health services
- requires clients to receive disclosures on privacy practice.
Intentional Use of Self as Therapist
- authentic & genuine in reactions
- purposeful and intentional (questions/focus)
- paying attn to self - reactions & impact on clt., recognize countertransference or unresolved issues
- aware of values and belief systems and impact on view of clt.
Middle Phase of Tx (4 principles)
Key aspects:
- Tx planning
- intervention
- evaluation of process
- continued assessment
Beginning Phase of Tx (5 principles)
Key aspects:
- engagement
- building trust/confidentiality
- information gathering
- developmental assessments
- concept of termination
Strengths Perspective
- positive psychology
- concerned w/individual well-being
- aim: broaden perspective beyond suffering
- shift from what is NOT working to what IS working
- validating strengths for clt.
Characteristics of Clinical Interviewing
- intentional/structures
- warm & empathetic
- respectful
- strengths-based
- relational
- focused on goals
- reciprocal influence - how impacts clt.
- person-in-environment
- informed by theory
Benefits of services
- support
- learn to manage/cope
- normalize feelings
- education
- process feelings
- build trusting relationship
- broaden perspectives
- develop insight and awareness
- provides explanation for behavior
- offers objective viewpoint
- provides framework and structure
Barriers to service (7)
- cost
- stigma
- time limit (insurance)
- transportation
- motivation
- fear of being Dx
- risk of feeling worse
6 Types of silence
- thinking
- confusion
- painful feelings
- issues of trust
- quiet nature
- closure on topic
Open-ended questions
- 5 W's (who, what, where, when, why, how)
- magic wand question
- what happened next
- short, focused and non-directive
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Self Awareness in therapy
- Review notes
- Own triggers
- State of mind in moment
- Counter transference
- Discuss safety issues with supervisor
- Understand safety policies of agency
Expanded Maslow Hierarchy of Needs
- Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.
- Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, etc.
- Belongingness and Love needs - work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.
- Esteem needs - self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.
- Cognitive needs - knowledge, meaning, etc.
- Aesthetic needs - appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.
- Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
- Transcendence needs - helping others to achieve self actualization.
Characteristics of Self-Actualizers
- They perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty;
- Accept themselves and others for what they are;
- Spontaneous in thought and action;
- Problem-centered (not self-centered);
- Unusual sense of humor;
- Able to look at life objectively;
- Highly creative;
- Resistant to enculturation, but not purposely unconventional;
- Concerned for the welfare of humanity;
- Capable of deep appreciation of basic life-experience;
- Establish deep satisfying interpersonal relationships with a few people;
- Peak experiences;
- Need for privacy;
- Democratic attitudes;
- Strong moral/ethical standards.
Behaviors leading to Self-Actualization
(a) child: Experiencing life like a child, with full absorption and concentration;
(b) New things: Trying new things instead of sticking to safe paths;
(c) Listening to your own feelings: evaluating experiences instead of the voice of tradition, authority or the majority;
(d) Avoiding pretense and being honest;
(e) Being prepared to be unpopular if your views do not coincide with those of the majority;
(f) Taking responsibility and working hard;
(g) Trying to identify your defenses and having the courage to give them up.
Confrontation in Therapy
- used to highlight discrepancies
- use sparingly
- don’t use when clt. is emotional
- be realistic and allow time for change
- note clt. reaction and releases
Social Constructionism Theory
- meaning/knowledge is constructed through social interactions.
- cultural identity and social position influence who you are and how you see the world.
- Our perceptions “construct” our view of the world
Constructivism Theory
- Questions assumption of fixed/objective reality
- People can interpret same event differently because each experience is personalize, idiosyncratic view on what happened.
- Idea of individual’s creation of reality
Feminist Perspective Theory
- gender organizes power for all levels of society
- the personal is political
- promotes collaboration, networking and relationship building
- egalitarianism
- extending focus beyond gender and white middle class perspectives to eliminate all forms of oppression
- understanding transformational nature of change for all who experience oppression & discrimination.
- oppressed position of women results from patriarchal construction of reality
Life Course Theory
- view of sociological influences on human development across life span
- history shapes life choices, relationships, social relationships and resilience
- bridges micro/macro - helps to view context of how those influence personal trajectories
Historical Context
opportunities and restraints that expand/limit life choice
Linked Lives Theme
networks of social relationships and intergenerational connections influence human development
Human Agency
Our personal decisions are influenced by boundaries of contextual opportunities and restraints
Critical Theory
- relationship between human actions and social structures is fluid, both influence each other
- repetitive actions stabilize structural arrangements
- patterns of culture and power are products of interactions
- access to privilege and resources influenced by social location –> marginalization, oppression and scarcity of opportunities/resources
- sociopolitical and economic arrangements impact defining human identity, beliefs, and interactions
Critical Race Theory
- social structures and everyday patterns of action –> racism
- racism is everyday experience of most people of color because of social structures
- race is socially-constructed, not biologically determined
- dominant groups racialize members of minority groups due to self-interest/economics
- no one has single unitary identity
Critical Multicultural Social Work
uses principles of critical race theory to understand power, privilege, oppression, diversity and inform a multicultural education
Resilience
ability to manage positively, even in the face of adversity.
System (general def.)
an organized whole made up of components that interact in a way distinct from their interaction with other entities and which endures over a period of time
Holon
- social system
- each system part of a larger system and at the same time, composed of smaller systems
Subsystems
smaller systems within every system
environment
the larger system that encompasses a social system
Structure of a system
the organization of the system at a point in time
Interaction of System
putting an organization in motion to show how system operates
Biopsychosocial dimension
biological, cognitive and affective characteristics of person
Cultural View
influence of ethnicity and culture on human functioning
Closeness of System
closed or open nature of system boundaries
Boundaries of system
- distinguish the interior of the system from its environment
- vary in permeability
- differentiate people within given system
Hierarchy of System
which individuals and subsystems in a particular system have status, privileges and power
Interactional view of systems
the way in which people relate within system and with environments
Equilibrium
the tendency of system to interact in ways that maintain its balance
Feedback of system
continuous flow of information in a system
Circular Causality
AKA: Mutual causality
Individual beh’r is in a network of circular feedback loops. Everyone’s beh’r affects everyone else’s.
Wholeness of system
change in one part of a system will precipitate changes in other parts of the system
Ecosystems Schema
- Indentify focal system
- what’s happening in the system?
- what’s happening outside the system?
- how do the inside/outside connect?
- how does the system move through time?
Strengths Perspective
- everyone imbued w/abilities, capabilities, talents and competencies
- people have inherent capacity for growth and change
- life’s truama’s might have negative impact, but can also serve as source of growth
- The upper limits of people’s ability to grow and overcome adversity is unknown and unknowable
- Problems do not reside within person, but occur in the transactions within and across systems
- People are experts on their own lives
- People’s friends, family and communities are reservoirs of resources that are or can be made available.
- Growth is future focused on what is postiive
- Mastery and competence are best attained within a supportive process.
- People generally know what will and won’t be helpful in overcoming the challenges they face.
- “half glass of water = half empty. if fail to see it’s half full, might go thirsty
- Meet clt where they’re at
Interpersonal empowerment
Ability to influence others
Sources:
- power based on social status: race, gender, class
- power achieved through learning new skills, securing new positions
Power
The ability to obtain resources one needs to influence others and effect changes in how resources are distributed in systems such as families, organizations or communities
blocks to power at one level impede accress to power at another level
Ethical Preferences for Empowerment SW
- Care: focus on indiv. care
- Autonomy: personal initiative, free choice
- Power: Helping disenfranchised to access/exercise power
- Change: change is continuous and multidimensional
- Critique: Challenge assumptions and question hierarchy
- Justice: Confronting issues of justice
- Contextual practice: widened lenses put things in context
- Inclusion: include clt in plans, etc.
- Respect: validity of clt. identity and worth
- Critical Thinking: examining issues as multidimensional
- Praxis: reflection–>action–>reflection
- Disourse: exchange of ideas, beliefs and practices
- Anti-Oppressive Practice: understanding of how those in power stay there, helping overturn status quo
- Advocacy: championing rights of individuals or causes
- Collaboration: working in partnership with clts.
- Politicized Practice: assist with policies, political isses
Assumptions about Human Systems
- all people deserve acceptance and respect
- clts. know situations best
- all human beh’r makes sense in context
- all human beh’r is motivated
- challenges emerge from transactions between human systems and their physical/social environments rather than only clts.
- strengths are diverse - personal feelings of worth, cultural pride, successful relationships, resource independenceness within community
Assumptions about Change
- change is possible and inevitable
- small change in one part of ecosystem can initiate chain of beneficial changes
- challenges are likely to have many solutions
- don’t need to solve a problem to find a solution
- enduring change builds on strengths
- strengths and potential for growth characterizes all human systems
- human systems cultivate competencies given niches/opportunities
- collaborative relationships stimulate feels of power and lead to actions
- cultural differences are resources offering broader perspectives, add’t options, possibilities of synergistic solutions
Engagement: The Dialogue Phase (6 steps)
- build partnerships based on acceptance, respect, trust
- define respective roles
- discuss clt experiences w/challenging situations
- define purpose of work together
- activate clt motivation for change
- address crisis needs
Articulating Situations
mutual understanding of what prompts clts to seek SW assistance
Defining Directions
practioners and clts orient their work to achieve a specific purpose
Assessment: Discovery Phase (7 steps)
- Explore clts’ strengths
- Examine resource possibilities in clt environ
- collect relevant info from collateral sources
- assess capabilities of avail resource systems
- specifiy outcome goals and concrete objectives
- construct a plan of action
- negotiate a contract for change
Identifying strengths
Presumption that clt strengths function as cornerstones for changes and should be noted early and often
Assessing Resource Capabilities
Adding transactional dimentions to the understanding of clt situations
Framing solutions
SW and clts develop plan of action
Intervention & Evaluation: The Development Phase
(8 steps)
- create plan of action
- increase power w/in clt system
- access resources necessary for goals
- create alliances
- enhance opportunities and choices
- evaluate ongoing progress and outcomes
- identify and generalize achievements and gains
- wrap up the professional relationship
Activating resources
workers and clts collaborate to put agreed-upon plan into action.
Creating alliances
SW & clts align efforts of clts in empowerment groups, strengthen functioning of clts w/in natural support networks and organize the service delivery network.
Expanding Opportunities
SW and clts team to create resources that redress social injustice
Recognize Success
Eval process that highlights the numerous ways to measure the achievement of goals and evaluate service effectiveness.
Integrating Gains
Final intervention stage, emphasizes that clts grow, develop and change even after efforts w/SW end.
Qualities of Prof. Partnerships
- genuineness
- acceptance and respect
- trustworthiness
- empathy
- cultural sensitivity
- purposefulness
Client Rights
TO:
- be treated w/respect
- privacy through confidentiality
- participate as collaborative partners
- receive culturally-sensitive Tx
- have an equitable share of resources
- view challenges from own perspective
- participate info gathering/analysis
- set their own goals
- resist what SW want
- choose alternative interventions
- negotiate the roles/responsibiltiies for themselves and SW
- collaborate on eval processess
- help determine time frames and know costs involved
Dual relationships
Secondary-roles with clts.
Social Workers’ Ethical Responsibilities
- to clients
- to colleagues
- in the practice setting
- as professionals
- to the SW profession
- to the broaders society
7 Ethical Principles Hierarchy
- Protection of Life
- Equality & Inequality
- Autonomy and Freedom
- Least Harm
- Quality of Life
- Privacy and confidentiality
- Truthfulness and full disclosure
Systems Theory
Understanding complex interactions of individuals the components of their systems
4 Goals of SW Practice
- To enhance people’s problem-solving, coping, and developmental capacities
- To link people w/systems that provide them w/resources, services and opportunities
- To promote the effective and humane operation of systems that provide ppl with resources and services
- to develop and improve social policy
Life Model of SW Practice
- Promote well-being, growth and expression of one’s potentials
- Make changes to the environment that will promote and sustain growth and well-being
- Improve the person-environment fit
Person-Environment Fit
The relationship between an individual/group and physical/social environment within a historical/cultural context.
When environment supports growth/healthy - then “good fit” between person and environment exists.
Adaptations
Internal or external changes to self or one’s environment that maintain/enhance the goodness of fit between individual and environment.
Life Stressors
Critical life events or issues that disrupt the goodness of fit between an individual and the environment.
Stress
An internal response to life stressors that produces negative emotions such as guilt, anxiety, depression, despair or fear resulting in person feeling less competent, producing a lower level of relatedness, self-esteem and self-direction.
Coping Measures
Behaviors that individuals initiate to respond to life stressors in ways that restore or heighten the goodness of fit between and individual and environment.
Relatedness
One’s ability to form attachments to friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors and attain a sense of belonging in the world.
Competence
When individuals are provided with opportunities to shape their environment from infancy on, they have the opportunity to develop a sense of efficacy which lead to feeling competent.
Self-Esteem
An assessment of oneself as worthy of love and respect.
High SE= competent, valued, respected
Low SE= inadequate, unlovable, inferior, unworthy
Self-direction
The capacity to make decisions, take control of one’s life, and direct it in desired paths, while taking responsibility for one’s decisions and navigating one’s life with respect to others’ rights and needs.
Habitat
The nature and location of the person’s “home” territory or where he or she feels most at home.
Niche
Social position or ranking within one’s community, or the status one holds within the family, with coworkers, or in the community.
NASW 10 Standards for Cultural Competence
- Ethics and Values
- Self-Awareness
- Cross-cultural knowledge
- Cross-cultural skills
- Service delivery
- Empowerment and advocacy
- Diverse workforce
- Professional education
- Language diversity
- Cross-cultural leadership
Theory of Intersectionality
Theoretical framework for understanding complex interplay of dimensions that shape individual identity.
Cultural Empathy
Ability to empathize witht he feelings, thoughts and behaviors of members from different cultural groups.
Intercultural Sensitivity
Taking in account the client’s norms and values, understanding that the clt’s value system may be quite different from therapist’s own.
Open Mindedness
An open and unprejudiced attitude toward different groups and toward different cultural norms and values
Countertransference
An emotional reaction to clts where the SW is overly involved in the clt’s life, seeing the clt as a sexual object, friend, adversary or extension of themselves.
Integration of Theory and Practice Loop
Repeating, flowing process in which SW’s do:
- Retrieval
- Reflection
- Linkage
- Professional response
Epistemology
Perspective
Morphostasis
AKA: homeostasis
The ability of a system to maintain its structure in a changing environment.
Morphogenesis
The formation and development of structures in a system; delineates the system-enhancing behavior that allows for growth, creativity, innovation, and other change.
Feedback
A circular message, indication
Rules
Overtly or covertly agreed-to relationships patterns that organize a system.
Boundaries
Emotional barriers that protect adn enhance the integrity of individuals, subsystems and families.
Linear Causality
Event A causes event B.
Dominoes in line, fall in sequence.
Content vs. Process
Content: concrete issue being discussed, the “what”.
Process: how the issue is portrayed in the family interactions
Narrative Therapy
An approach to therapy in which the belief system of an individual or a family is the focus of change.
Problem-focused Therapy
An approach to therapy in which behavior patterns are seen as problems that need to change.
Solution-focused therapy
An approach to therapy that mobilizes the family’s strengths to increase desired behavior.
Skeptical social realism
The belief that there are facts that are empirically research-based and have explanatory power.
Roles
Individually-prescribed patterns of behavior reinforced by the expectations and norms of the family.
Enmeshed Boundaries Characteristics
- family members speaking for one another
- a parent telling a child what they really think and feel or telling them what they should think/feel
- guilt used as a means for controlling others
- hints that neither parent has psychologically separated from his/her own parents.
Closeness-Caregiving Dimension
Expressions of warmth, caring and physical affection.
Family members seek and enjoy time together and support one another emotionally.
Intrusiveness Dimension
Possessiveness and jealousy within family. Individual, alone time threatens family system. Decisions based on who is dominant and individuality is not valued.
Disengaged boundaries
Overly strong boundaries that rigidly divide the system’s subsystems.
Enmeshed Boundaries
Overly weak or diffuse boundaries that poorly delineate the system’s subsytems.
Intimacy
Caring, expressive, affective bonds formed with another while respecting individual boundaries.
Triangulation
A way to diffuse dyadic conflict by expanding the relationship to include a third person.
Joining
Therapeutic technique emphasizing the therapist’s actions in accepting and accomodating to various families; types of joining techniques are:
- Maintenance: therapist confirms/supports individual’s position
- Tracking: Therapist tracks/follows a series of events
- Mimesis: Therapist adopts family’s style and tempo of communication.
Family Life Cycle Stages (6)
- Leaving home: single young adults
- The joining of families through marriage: the new couple
- Family with young children
- Families with adolescents
- Launching children and moving on
- Families in later life
Family paradigm
A family’s construct of the social world that guides individual family members’ thoughts, feelings and actions.
Fundamental attribution error
Attributing personality characteristics to an individual’s beh’r while underestimating the influence of social role restraints.
Therapeutic alliance
Therapist and family form a new system to facilitate the Tx process; reflects a basic level of trust and a shared agenda.
Evidence-based practice
Use of best practices strategies based on research for intervention and Tx.
