DO NO HARM

Musings of the local Social Worker

I'm a Social Worker in the Sunny Island of Singapore. Being in a people's profession, I work with individuals and groups in the community. My love and passion for the work I do is fuelled by the amazing stories and experiences I have in working with clients and groups in the community. Valuable lessons this colourful life has taught me, lessons which may be futile if I don't take the effort to document them in some way (hence this blog). 

This blog is about my personal views, thoughts and ideas. Most of them relate to my work and experiences with people and the community. Some probably won't.

A part of me feels that some information may be useful to at least someone out there. Feel free to share your own stories with me.

I'm a social worker, hear me roar!

Fareez

 

Working Harder than our Clients

 

Let's face it, the main reason why we wanted to be social workers was for the very fact that we want to be able to help others. The part about empowering persons and facilitating change only came later once we started our social work education. We had experiences where we found that friends and people could depend on us for help, and we decided that social work was probably the best job which suited this ability and skill we have. 

Difficulties, however, arise when we realised that what we defined as helping others, is actually different from how social work officially defines help. There is that bit about "client self-determination" that we have to consider. To what extent is the help in line with what our client needs, and are we providing help that would make our clients dependent on us for future survival. In the context of caring for a family member or friend, we can provide unconditional support over many years, but this might not useful within a professional social work context, where our interventions have to strike a balance between helping enough to engage our clients, and not helping too much that our clients become overly dependent on us to resolve their problems.

Doing Good

 

I was enjoying my usual Sunday game of Floorball, and was preparing to leave the courts in Kallang area, when I saw a fellow floorballer (you might want to google floorball if you are not sure what this sport is about) leaving the area.

Thinking of wanting to do some good, I called out to him and found out that since he was going to the MRT train station, I could give him a lift.

What I didn't realise however, was how different the area now was, with the spanking new Sports Hub being recently opened and all. I managed to get myself lost in a sequence of multiple roundabouts, and almost entered the expressway.

I was rather apologetic to the guy, and he was really nice about it. After some discussion i realised that the station was actually nearer to the floorball court area than I previously though, a u turn and another sequence of roundabouts later, we finally found a place that he could alight. Unfortunately he still had to walk some distance to the station.

He was really nice about it, thanked me and got on his way. As I sat in my car, partly due to my strained thighs, but mostly to reflect on what happened, I thought a bit of some "life lessons" I could draw from this incident:

Narrative Responses to Children's Trauma

 

Angel Yuen (2007) proposes the exploration of responses to trauma as opposed to delving too much into the effects of the said trauma in children's lives. The re-experiencing of a traumatic event may actually re-traumatise the persons we work with and may not necessarily be a collaborative agenda for intervention. 

Dear Yayi,

 

 

You left us on a Tuesday. Only two days before that I saw you lying in your bed, in pain. You were sleeping when I was about to leave, so I did not want to wake you. As if you knew, you grunted at me as I turned my back, reaching out your hand. I held it as I kissed your forehead. That would be the last time. I will treasure that simple memory. 

Conducting Interagency Case Conferences

 

 

 

The conducting and facilitating of interagency case conferences has been an undeveloped (and possible ignored) activity in the local Singaporean Social Service Scene. This is interesting, considering the Person in Environment perspective that social workers adopt as their grand philosophy, and the multiple systems that interact with the people we work with. Training programmes (and even literature) on collaboration have usually tended to just focus on how important collaboration is, and only 2 years back, I had the opportunity to attend a training workshop by Barbara McKay (From the Institute of Family Therapy in London). This was where conversations started on how social workers who facilitate case conferences should move away from promoting monological discourses (where each system would just be pushing their own agenda) towards a dialogical one, where dialogue and discussion is promoted towards the aim of supporting the people we work with.

Narrative practices when working with Family Violence

 

 

Mimi Kim's website Creative Interventions  provides an interesting and alternative way of tackling interpersonal violence in the community. Instead of focusing on individualised services and state intervention, the focus is on mobilising the community to take up responsibility in addressing violence. 

Education and resources are shifted back to families and communities to address violence at various stages of abuse. A user-friendly tool kit is also made available for free! This for me, is refreshing in a world where some pockets of practitioners tend to keep important knowledges away from others in the interest of maintaining copyright. 

 

The Community Work Conundrum

 

Social Service delivery in Singapore is currently undergoing what one might call a realignment of spirit (as opposed to a cosmetic facelift). There is a concerted state led effort towards reorganising and recalibrating social services to ensure quality service, whilst at the same time establish key benchmarks for family service centre social workers to aspire to. This shift represents the emphasis for social workers to focus on social work. Social work as it should be practiced, and social work as aligned to the proficiencies expected of one armed with a 3-4 year degree from a reputable university. 

This version of social work defines 3 main activities that undergird practice: Case management, Group work and Community work. The first two activities are clearer in the sense that they focus on supporting behavioural and situational change for vulnerable populations such as ex-offenders, youths, women affected by abuse, etc. These are two activities that have been practiced regularly in Singapore. 

It is the last activity (which is the focus of this article) that may cause confusion: What exactly is Community Work? Could it be an extension of group work, where instead of working with a closed (or open) group of 12 persons with addiction issues, we work instead with an open group of 50 - 100? Most likely not. Does it involve working with the grassroots leaders and residents' committees? Would it involve social action?

My 1st Ever Birthday Message

Hi Everyone!

 

 

 

Today is my first ever Birthday! I might not know it now, but I would think that I am pretty proud of having survived it out here so far. Some adults (including my Dad and Mom) tell me that this world could be a hard place to live in. I'm not too sure about that - I've been happy getting my regular hugs and kisses from my loved ones, and a regular supply of milk really helps! So, since its my first birthday (and I've gotten plenty of gifts), I thought I might be helpful to you adults by sharing 4 tips I found useful during the last 12 months. They certainly helped me, and also helped me spread cheer into the lives of my Mom, Dad, my two Grannies, Grandpa, Aunts and Uncles

Reflection Paper: The Narrative Metaphor, Externalising Conversations

 

   When reading about externalising conversations, I experienced a profound shift in the way I look at problems. As a social worker, I had been trained to somewhat diagnose client’s problems and hypothesising the various ways that these problems could have possibly manifested. A common habit when adopting this way of looking at things is the tendency to look at the problem as inherent in the client, either in individual character traits, or in patterns within the family system. It is a great irony to me, when as helping professionals, we work towards reducing the impact of the problem on our clients, but we insinuate that the problem and the person are one of the same, an action that may further increase the influence of the problem with our clients. We do this through the language we use with our clients, and the beliefs we have about their relationship with these problems.

 

A Strengths Based Model of Practice

Dennis Saleebey (2006) talks about how  the strength based approach is more of a perspective when working with clients, as opposed to being specific model of working with clients. A perspective he argues, is a position we take when looking or trying to understand any experienced phenomena. In the latest edition of his book, he identifies 5 main principles that guide the standpoint of the strengths perspective: 

1. Every individual, group, family, and community has strengths
2. Difficult and traumatic experiences can cause injury and pain, but they may create new opportunities and challenges
3. Work from the assumption that we can never know the full capacity of the ability to grow and change, and take the aspirations of individuals, groups and communities seriously
4. We should collaborate with clients towards helping them achieve their goals 
5. Every environment has resources that can be tapped upon
6. Understand the context of behaviours and situations to draw strengths; and caring takes precedence over technique when working with people.