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.
Indeed, this is a tenuous path to tread. You risk incurring the wrath of funders who want you to justify interventions and assistance provided on one hand, and the burden of your conscience (and sometimes also the wrath of grassroots and members of the public who feel that we are giving too little) should we provide too little assistance.
One of the key questions in this area is: Are we working harder than our clients? If so, why?
In a collaborative relationship with our clients, it would definitely be weird if we do all the work for our clients and then expect them to take the credit for that work. By doing too much, we may also fall into the trap of adopting a position of certainty where we may take the expert position to expect certain changes in the client system without respecting the context and worldviews they live in.
Parry and Doan (1994:146)) pose some questions helping professionals can ask themselves with regard to the issue of working harder that our clients:
1. How has it come to be that I am more interested in the client's changing than the client is? How has it transpired that I care more about this client's life than she/he does?
2. If I worked less, would the client be invited to work more?
3. What dominant story in my past is suggesting that it is my job to work harder than my client? Where did that rule come from?
4. How has "working harder" become synonymous with "helping better"? What if "working less hard" meant that I would be a better helper? What form would I want working less hard to take?
That being said, I have to also acknowledge that there would be situations where we would be expected to work harder than our clients, as after all, we are social workers working within the perspective of ensuring social justice. Working harder than our clients, I feel is justified in the following situations:
1. There is an immediate threat to the client's life or to the lives of others.
2. A vulnerable person (e.g. child, older adult, person with a disability) is placed in an oppressive and unhealthy situation where he or she is not able to have access to the normative standard of living.
3. A vulnerable person or group is affected by systemic barriers, and may not have the necessary power to overcome these barriers.
At the same time, in all these situations we still look for the best possible alternatives to involve our clients in as collaborative manner as possible. Models of practice such as the Signs of safety model, the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality Models, and Narrative Community Work models represent innovative ways for collaborative intervention.
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