Chapter 4: Social Work with Individuals and Families Flashcards
What did friendly visiting become and what was its aim?
became known as social casework—aimed to systemically gather information on an individual and a family’s situation, formulate inferences of the source of their issues, and develop a treatment to help improve their circumstances
Three ways people become involved with social workers?
- initiated their own request for services,
- been referred for services by a third party (such as a teacher, physician, friend, or neighbour), or
- been legally required to seek services.
What is clinical work?
Focuses on working with thoughts, interactions, behaviours, and emotions of an individual or family.
What is case management?
Focuses on helping individuals and families navigate their way to resources.
What can case management be divided into?
Service navigation and advocacy
What is service navigation?
Focuses on facilitating connections to resources and following up to ensure that needs are met.
What is advocacy?
Involves acting as an intermediary between individuals/families and service systems to protect rights to service access and met needs.
What is an example of an organization focused on clinical work?
a short-term counselling department in a health clinic for individuals and families managing difficult life events
What is an example of an organization focused on case management?
uch as a community-based mental health team that focuses on helping people with severe and persistent mental health challenges remain in the community by locating appropriate housing, ensuring resources are in place to monitor medication use, and assisting with access to social programming, vocational counselling, and financial resources
How is SW distinguished from other helping professions?
is its focus on both clinical work and case management despite the organizational setting or presenting issue.
What are the four key skills to support effective communication for direct practice?
- Attending
- Questioning
- Reflecting
- Summarizing
What are attending skills?
Non-verbal aspects of communication that convey interest.
What are open ended questions?
Questions that require more thought than a one-word answer.
What are closed ended questions
Questions that can be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” response.
Why is it important to ask important questions?
Bombarding clients with a series of questions, no matter how well constructed and pertinent, can feel confusing, distracting, and disruptive.
What is reflecting?
Paraphrasing what a worker thinks a client is trying to communicate.
What is parroting?
Repeating what a client says verbatim.
Difference bettered reflecting and parroting?
While reflecting communicates interest and effort, parroting does little to further the conversation.
What is summarizing?
is an effort to pull together the key themes, feelings, concerns, and issues expressed in an encounter.
What are common factors?
A term used to emphasize the common relational elements in all approaches and techniques informing direct practice with individuals and families.
While terms used vary, the components of relationship valued by social work practitioners and clients across settings tend to cluster around four related aspects, which are?
- Care and concern
- Genuineness
- Empathy
- Collaboration
What is care and concern?
Expressed when social workers seek to understand individuals and families out of a genuine desire to help.
What is genuineness?
Being open, real, and sincere with individuals and families.
What is empathy?
The capacity to understand and respond to another person’s subjective experience.
What is collaboration?
The development of mutually agreed on goals and tasks between a social worker and individuals and families.
What are the three processes ‘Bogo’ highlights that underlie the previous discussed components of the social work relationship?
- Social work with individuals and families is client-centred
- Social work with individuals and families is dependent on worker self-awareness as social workers must be acutely aware of their own reactions, beliefs, and experiences.
- Social work with individuals and families requires attunement to how each individual is experiencing the relationship and the focus of the interactions.
What is client-centred?
An approach that places individuals and families at the centre of the helping relationship, honouring their perceptions and experiences and supporting their active involvement in solutions.
What is self-awareness?
Refers to social workers’ insight into how they affect or are affected by others.
What is attunement?
Social workers’ attention to how individuals and families are reacting to them and the work they are doing together.
What is self disclosure?
Typically described as an intentional attempt at revealing something about the self of the worker.
In general terms, when can self disclosure be appropriate? 3
- convey empathy,
- strengthen the relational bond, or
- help a client gain insight into a particular situation
How can hope be nurtured?
Through expression of compassion and by seeing and pointing out signs of strength and resilience and offering additional support and information.
4 Phases of the helping process?
- 1: Exploration/Assessment
- 2: Contracting/Planning
- 3: Implementation/Intervention
- 4: Ending/Evaluation
What is the exploration and assessment stage?
The initial collection and analysis of information is central to the first phase of the helping encounter as it forms the template that guides the work the social worker and individual and family will do together.
What is a product?
Refers to the written assessment.
What is a process?
Refers to the manner in which a social worker gathers information.
What is voluntary request for services?
Requests for services wherein clients have self-referred or agree with those referring them that social work services are warranted.
What is involuntary request for services?
Requests for services wherein clients have been pressured to seek the services of a social worker either by a court mandate or by facing a sanction for not seeking service.
How are most SW assessments informed?
By verbal reports and observations during client interviews.
What does the Guidelines for Ethical Practice of the Canadian Association of Social Workers stipulate about records?
that social workers are obligated to ensure individuals have “reasonable access” to the official written records that concern them (Section 1.7.5). An empowerment approach to practice would suggest that it is
What is the contracting/planning phase?
During the process of eliciting information that provides both the social worker and client with an understanding of the issues or challenges being faced, a social worker also helps to develop a focus for the work that is agreeable to the client and that falls within the mandate of the social worker’s organization. This process of developing a shared understanding of the issues to be addressed within the social work encounter is referred to as contracting or planning.
What are the 5 components to planning to contracting?
- Purpose
- Target problems
- Goals
- Time limits
- Actions, activities and responsibilities
What is Purpose?
The rationale for service
What is target problems?
Issues or challenges clients face that they wish to change.
What are goals?
Future desired end states for the client
What are time limits?
The time parameters social workers and clients establish for the work that they do together.
What are actions, activities and responsibilities?
The negotiated expectations workers and clients establish for the work they will do together
What is the implementation phase?
shifts from exploring needs and issues and developing collaborative goals and plans to actively working toward change within the individual or family, the environment, or both. When lack of resources or services has been identified as part of the problem, the social worker focuses on helping the client access those services either through referral, supporting a client’s efforts to obtain services, or advocating on the client’s behalf. Once services are attained, a period of monitoring is required to ensure the services requested and attained match client needs and preferences.
What is the ending/evaluation phase?
In the best scenarios, endings are negotiated and anticipated by workers and clients when the goals identified during planning or contracting appear to be achieved. In other circumstances, endings are forced because clients elect not to continue engaging with the social worker or because workers leave an organization. When endings are forced by circumstance, they can be more challenging and emotionally charged.
What are the four processes that facilitate good endings?
- 1: Renewing process,
- 2: Consolidating gains,
- 3: Planning next steps,
- 4: Processing the emotional bond.
What is the reviewing process?
Facilitated by the worker to help clients reflect back on their initial concerns to elicit insights about progress made.
What is the consolidating gains process?
Involves reinforcing the capacities within clients that led to positive change.
What is the planning next steps phase?
A process of exploring and anticipating future needs and potential resources to address them.
What is the processing the emotional bond phase?
Refers to facilitating the expression of emotion associated with ending the work between worker and client.
How do SW work to engage each family member?
Working to engage each family member involves inviting all members to express their feelings, apprehensions, and perceptions about their engagement with the social worker, and helping the family consider presenting issues in relational terms
What is tracking?
Involves observing patterns of interaction between family members while listening to the issues they are discussing.
What is family structure?
Refers to the way the family is organized, including roles family members hold and closeness and distance between members.
What is a genogram?
A visual representation of family that illustrates a family’s history, structure, demographics, functioning, and patterns of relating to one another.
