Reference no: EM132432512

Tools for Practice

• As an intern, even in your concentration year, it is common and expected to be nervous and unsure when you begin to work with clients. Working one-on-one with a client requires many skills that take years to learn and a feeling of mastery over these skills is a misguided goal. As a social work professional, even after you graduate, you will learn many lessons from your clients. You will consistently be challenged to obtain new skills and knowledge to best assist your clientele. Further, you will constantly be asked to look at yourself and your own reactions when providing care to your clients. The use of self-reflection and self-awareness is required of a good social worker who recognizes his or her own potential biases and personal experiences in and out of the room. This week you will consider some potential barriers to successfully working with a client and some potential strategies to address them.

Objectives

1. Explain the importance of identifying internal and external barriers
2. Analyze barriers to a therapeutic relationship
3. Apply self-disclosure as an intervention strategy

Self-Reflection and Awareness

• Exploring the reasons for wanting to be in social work and examining your motives for choosing a career of helping others is very important. Your background, including childhood experiences, may be instrumental in bringing you into the field of social work. Understanding the possible connection and working to resolve any underlying unresolved issues is essential to becoming an effective social worker. While working with a client, you must strive to be objective, but in the end we are all human with past hurtful experiences that can impact our ability to effectively work with clients. While complete objectivity is impossible and not expected, it is necessary to self-reflect and become aware of when a situation or a certain personality type causes you to react in an unprofessional manner. Understanding potential internal and external barriers you and your client bring to the room will assist you in balancing an appropriate empathetic response with proper objectivity.

Question 1: Post your explanation of the importance of identifying internal and external barriers of the client and social worker. Then describe the barriers experienced by Helen and the social work intern. Finally, suggest ways the intern could overcome these barriers.

Question 2: Respond to at least two colleagues and suggest alternate ways the intern might overcome barriers.

• Support your responses with specific references to the Learning Resources. Be sure to provide full APA citations for your references.