Reflections social work journal6/19/2023 I am comfortable confronting people, but I did like the delineation of feedback vs incongruity confrontation. One skill I need to work on is confrontation. I can also sit with or companion difficult emotions. I was pleased, in all these first interviews, to receive feedback that I have some good active listening skills courtesy of my journalism background and peer counselling work. I took advantage of each opportunity to try out these skills. Because of my lack of formal training in this area, I was pleased to discover the phases of a counselling relationship (beginning, action and ending), and logistical elements such as how to structure and begin an interview, develop relationship, sessional and anticipatory contracts, and the other fairly logistical aspects of this work. While I know we go into more depth in later courses, it’s clear to me that it’s my individual responsibility to identify which modalities work best for my client groups and seek additional, in-depth learning, through readings and workshops.Īs far as general skills development, our class time and standardized client interview work gave me my first opportunities to try out new skills. But the biggest “a-ha” of all is that a degree in social work is just a foundation for a practice of lifelong learning. I had multiple “a-ha” moments in the readings and the class as Professor Gibson rolled out a series of tools like the bio-psycho-social assessment, strengths approach, Motivational Interviewing, Narrative Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and more. undergrad in psychology, where we studied the history of psychology, neuroscience and the DSM-III R in great detail, yet could not have helped a real person dealing with actual suffering. This was the piece that was missing for me during my B.Sc. As a lifelong feminist, I am encouraged every time we are reminded to consider our clients as not only individuals with their unique challenges, but also as part of families, communities and society. To begin, I continue to find the path of social work an incredibly meaningful one. To that end, I have imagined my future practice by drawing on journal articles and, primarily, Colleen McBride’s 2015 MSW Thesis describing her placement in hospice palliative care. Because I can’t yet connect it to a lived practice, I had a bit of extra work to do to scope out what my future practice might look like, and how it will be informed by the current material.
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