COIT20249 Professional Skills in Information Communication

What is your understanding of how your family and life experiences contributed to who you are today

• What factors have contributed to your decision to become a social worker

Awareness of and ability to deal with our own personality patterns and with the “stuff” that tends to cloud our perceptions 

• What are some of the patterns or ways that you conduct your interpersonal relationships and life that work well for you (areas of strength) 
• What are the barriers that get in the way (patterns that you conduct your interpersonal relationships and life that don’t work so well for you (areas for improvement).

What is your understanding of how your family and life experiences contributed to who you are today?

From the very childhood, I have grown up in a joint family where I have noticed unconditional love for every member towards each other. I used to live along with grandparents, father, mother, three sisters and a brother. Form that very tender age, I have seen my father to provide help to the underprivileged people by making us visit charities, helping us communicate with differently-able children and so on. My mother used to share unconditional love for animals. Every now and then, I along with my sisters would collect dogs, cats, hamsters left on road purposely in a victimised situation. We were always taught to extend our help to anyone who needed it.

Whenever we used to bring that unfortunate animal, my parent always encouraged us and never scolded for picking them up. Rather we altogether looked upon them until they are well and fit enough to leave. My mother was an admirer of Florence Nightingale and her motivational stories always infused in me a strong sense of love for human kind who are vulnerable to ill health and need help. In Year 8, I requested my parents to let me work in a community care as I used to love the way how the unhealthy individuals used to become happy with the very little help we provided them. Although I was not allowed at that time as I had no knowledge of proper care, they told me that If I am so keen in helping them, I should prepare myself mentally, emotionally and academically to help them. Since then I had always dreamt of being a social workers and help people during their most vulnerable times of their lives to make them happy.

What factors have contributed to your decision to become a social worker?

With the great ideals inculcated in me due to the influence of my parents and families, I always looked upon this career choice as the best option. My parents loved helping people and this love of them had hereditarily influenced me to take up the professionals I like them have also loved human being a lot. Besides, my familial and personal preferences, another factor that made me took the career is the opportunity for standing up for human rights as well as social justice. I personally use to feel sad when people faced inequality in care, poor suffered more than the privileges, homelessness of people when others resides in lavish homes, seeing them in pain, I decides to stand up for human rights as well as social justice.

I ensured that when I would become a social carer, I would provide a hundred percent everyday to help those who faced injustice, homelessness or others by giving them the best service. Practically working with social issues fills an individual with feeling of satisfaction and hopefulness as we are trying to develop the quality of lives for the unprivileged individuals providing them of better scope for living. Thirdly, the feeling that I could be a person who can change some one’s life for the better and the service user providing me a smile as a token of service made me focus on the career. Fourthly, being a social worker will expose me to different types of unique situations and often to extremes as well. It will help me to face challenging situations while handling patients who are aggressive, suicide prone, naïve, vulnerable to physical harm and many others. Handling them will help me to learn new insights of life every time and I will learn more about my weakness and strength and can work on them in a more polished way. Hence, I decided to be a social worker.

What are some of the patterns or ways that you conduct your interpersonal relationships and life that work well for you?

I have a proper set of principles that I usually follow in every of my activities and even while taking any decisions in my personal and professional life. The first principle that often acts as strength in me is the principle of acceptance. I accept all human beings as one irrespective of their riches, profession, liking, disliking, habits, lifestyles and others. I look upon them with equal eyes and I am never biased towards anyone. I believe that this principle would act as strength in my profession helping me to provide help to patients irrespective of their status. I also have a principle of following a non-judgemental attitude. I never form any strict judgemental idea about a patient and always try to understand the situation of a patient. Often different situation make people act in different ways and I try to capture the rationale behind the person’s behaving weirdly without passing judgements.

This principle would also help me in my social career as this would prevent me from being judgemental about patient for example like alcoholic patients, obese patients or others. This is indeed necessary for being social workers. Another very important factor that I possess is strong determination. Any assignment that I take up in my hand, I become strongly determined to complete them and never leave it halfway or undone. If I become determined, I can cross all barriers and challenges to reach the finish line. I have confidence in myself which help to guide me correctly through thick and thin so that I can complete the task fully. This would be a positive point in my career choice as it would help me to handle many adverse or strenuous situations with patients who are non compliant or difficult to handle. I hope these would help me to come out victorious form every patient case successfully.

What are the barriers that get in the way (patterns that you conduct your interpersonal relationships and life that don’t work so well for you? (Areas for improvement) ?

One of the weaknesses that I harbour in myself is my emotional aspect. I often get emotionally involved in a number of different situations which should be handed with more expertise and confidence. This might become a very negative point if I become a social worker. In my regular days of my profession, I might face several situations where the client situation may be highly emotional. At those times, it is very important to handle them with exercise with controlled emotional involvement with the right degree of attachment. Otherwise, it may affect my career and may harm me mentally and emotionally. Therefore I have to practice holding on my emotional in a proper manner and provide care with a controlled emotional involvement so that I can provide best care. Secondly, another negative aspect is that I like to complete my work by myself and cannot participate in proper team work.

In my team work assignment in academic career I did not have good experiences and therefore I try to avoid ay cooperative working systems. However, this behaviour would not help me and in turn may be harmful for patient who requires multidisciplinary team help. I have to participate in workshops in order to develop skills and knowledge about how I can participate successfully in teamwork. Another negative issue is that I do not have proper communication skills as I often become impatient listener and does not provide or take proper feedbacks. This might be an issue while communication with patients or family members as it would affect the autonomy and dignity of them. Hence I should also go through trainings session and different internet articles in order to develop my communication skills.

Consider ways in which you feel (or have felt) vulnerable, disempowered or oppressed

The greatest factor that often has affected me is the power struggle that exists in the multidisciplinary teams. Mainly, the doctors or surgeons practice autocracy and they dictate others including social workers about how to work properly. These had often affected my self esteem. Moreover, they also exploit the rights of the social worker like me stating that social workers are just helpers with least qualifications. Their pride had affected my respect and ego. I felt I was oppressed and my determination of work was gradually decreasing. With the help of my leader of the agency, I gained back my confidence and my self-determination. Moreover, they also do not allow us to provide suggestions or voice out our concerns and often tend to impress their interventions on us.

Another negative experience that I faced once was when I was appointed as a carer in my placement years in a remote village. Although I was trying my best to maintain their cultural preferences, I was failing again and again and the patient as well as the family members was continuously cursing me without complying with me or helping me in the activities. I have thereby decided to enhance my cultural competency before I handle any such patients in my life. Another negative incident was when in was placed as a carer in a home where several anti-socials were living. I was facing an ethical dilemma of whether to disclose their identities to police or maintain the confidentiality of the patient according to the principle of healthcare services. I was quite concerned about my own safety but I was brave and handled the situation courageously until I accomplished in making the patient recover.

If you dig deep, what are your stereotypes and prejudices? As a result, what are the two “groups” of people that you feel as though you may find it most challenging to work with as a social work professional?

From the very childhood I have tried my best to provide equal care and love to every individual. However there has been an atmosphere where I have seen people to develop negative feelings about people living in the remote places of Australia especially the aboriginal and Torres strait islander. Continuous hearing about search negative comments had instilled a negative feeling in me about them. I have seen that those people are usually very careless about their own help. Moreover they have certain cultural traditions which are very harmful for their help like tobacco smoking from the very early age in both male and female. I have also seen them to lack knowledge in maintaining proper hygienic lifestyle and their lack of education had made them backward in the society. All this had made me feel negative about them and this biases gets reflected in my treatment towards them.

However as I have taken the profession of social worker, I am gradually going through different workshop classes so I am trying my best to overcome this biasness and developed a culturally competent practice. Moreover after my suggestion from the mentor I have read the history of aboriginal peoples which has made me understand the main reasons behind their inappropriate behaviour. I have found that they have been exploited financially, mentally and physically for a large number of centuries by the British people which had made them  uneducated and poor. They have not been able to get the light of the modern technologies mainly due to lack of proper education and proper employment.

Therefore from my next case of handling aboriginal people I should be more careful so that I can provide cultural Competence in practice with them and at the same time provide care which is free of biasness. Another vulnerable group for me would be handling patients who are in the dying stage requiring palliative care. As already mentioned earlier I cannot control my emotions at the right time it might affect my practice and I might throw my emotions on the family as well as the patient as they are usually facing the grief as well as bereavement phase of the life. Therefore I should try to develop expertise for handling people with palliative care so that my care would make them happy and live the rest of the life with peace and less physical and mental strain. So the aboriginal people and the people who are living the last stages of their life are vulnerable groups with whom I should be careful while providing my interventions.

What are three key insights that reflecting on these challenging questions has sparked for you? (You may reflect on what has stood out for you, what surprised you, what confronted you, etc.)

While writing this reflection I had been able to inculcate three important knowledge about myself. This reflection had helped me to learn about my weakness as well as my strength at the same time which will in turn help me to develop and strengthen my skills. Those factors which are my strength have to be worked upon more so that they become the main foundations of my working procedure. Those factors which are my weakness, it also need to be worked by me in a planned as well as a scheduled way so that I can overcome the challenges and barriers and come out victorious. By the term victorious I mean that I have to provide the best care which would ensure the highest satisfaction of life by the patient. Secondly I have also noticed that through the help of the reflections I was able to recall many important incidents that used to happen in my early childhood which inculcated a feeling of empathy and compassion in me.

This reflection has helped me to collect all those childhood memories that I used to have with my parents as well as my grandparents and siblings which has helped me to reestablish my bond with my family and strengthen the bond for the future years to come. I have understood that all those principles instilled in me by my parents had helped me to reach the goal which I always dreamt of in my life point. Thirdly I was also able to understand the fear that I have while practicing with the aboriginals. This may be mainly due to my biasness towards them which had made me develop prejudices indirectly affecting my practice as well as my principles of my profession. As a social worker I should always practice the principle of justice where I should always look at the clients as human beings who need service rather than discriminating them on the basis of caste Creed religion and culture.

However in case of aboriginals my prejudices resurface as I feel that the lack culture in their life are purposely present and they have unhealthy lifestyles and practices. However with the recent knowledge that I am developing after reading their history I understand that they are main victims in the hands of the exploiters. therefore I should also be careful that I learn to develop a practice which is culturally competent and at the same time I should try to be more interactive with them so that I can understand their cultural preferences which would help me to maintain the autonomy and dignity and thereby make me a good social worker in life.