Chapter 5: Multidisciplinary Practice

Question 1

What types of forensic settings do social workers work in?

Answer 1

Jails, prisons, courts, halfway houses, rehabilitation facilities for offenders, hospitals, labs, clinics

Question 2

Describe professional challenges with multidisciplinary practice.

Answer 2

philosophical beliefs of members of different disciplines conflict sometimes.ie. how team members define a problem and the strategies they use to solve it.
When there is a lack of respect in interdisciplinary practice, conflict and a lack of collaboration often results. For example, the systems dealing with child welfare and substance abuse differ in terms of primary interventions and have been known to have difficulty with collaboration in their interdisciplinary work.

Question 3

Describe ethical principles involved in multidisciplinary practice.

Answer 3

Explicate what info will and will not be shared among the forensic team members
When initiating contact with a client in the social justice system it is critical that the social worker makes it clear that although the client may be required to receive social work services, the social worker is not personally requiring it

Question 4

Describe the collaboration skills used by forensic social workers.

Answer 4

Negotiating: often role of social worker to serve as a negotiator on behalf of the client, always remembering the importance of both the clients’ interests and the broader society’s interests, while keeping social work values and ethical principles in mind
Sharing Power: social workers develop a shared power in partnership with clients, helping them to cultivate a greater sense of personal power to participate in, share control of, and influence events that affect their lives
Role Awareness: it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of one’s role as a social worker, particularly if the social worker is not an employee of the legal system, but is source of assistance to which the client is to referred by the legal system
Adapting and maintaining a strengths- based perspective: social worker assumes client competence and therefore provides for a leveling of the power relationship between social workers and clients
Empowering the Client: to advance a sense of personal power with clients, it is important to recognize that the client’s own behavior is what can reclaim her/his autonomy and personal power
Advocating: serve as an advocate for clients in situations where they do not have equal power and may feel powerless to defend him or herself
Communicating: essential to collaboration