STOREEZ

Preferential Flexployment

 

 

 

In 2013, a number of us from my organisation coined the term "Preferential Flexployment" as a viable alternative to structured forms of employment in Singapore (we skilfully played on the terms flexible employment, combined them to create flexployment! Get it? No?)

As mentioned by the newscaster (smugly I might add), it is essentially the idea of part time employment with greater flexibility. Take for example Bakery Hearts, a Social Entrepreneurship wing if you may call it as such (you can find out about Bakery Hearts here, here and here). 

The Non-Suicide Contract

 

The practice of getting our clients to fill up a non-suicide contract is common in risk management work. Whenever there is a risk of suicide, we tend to be compelled to get our clients to fill up this form, which states that they would not be attempting suicide as it is illegal in Singapore. Often, there is a generic form that social workers would be able to use. 

My grouse with the non-suicide contract is that it seems to be a practice that is more focused on "covering our backsides" as opposed to ensuring that our clients are safe. We work towards filling up the forms, and then develop a false sense of safety as long as the form is filled up, because we feel that we have done our part. If anything were to happen, at least we can show others that a non-suicide contract had already been done between the social worker and the client. 

Foster Care Film Snapshots

In this "Snapshots" series clip from the Foster Care Film and Community Engagement Project (fostercarefilm.com), Charell Charleston discusses what one caseworker did to make her feel special as a young child in foster care.

Foster Care Film Snapshots: Charell on Caseworkers from Foster Care Film on Vimeo.

 

Lessons from Fikri: Storytelling

 

I was attempting to play the role of the normative (TV-defined) father to my 17 month old boy, placing him securely in my lap with the book "Little Bear won't sleep" (a 9-month-birthday gift from his mother). I was happily reflecting on the aptness of the title, especially since this little bear of mine fights and struggles to stay awake each night. This culminates in a process where he has to be led bawling by me into a darkened room, and treated to a 30 minute to one hour exercise of carrying and lullabye-singing to put him to sleep (another story for another time). 

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:

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?

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.