Generalist social work practice: applications and theoretical foundations

Vision
Social workers contribute to a just society by being compassionate and caring individuals that provide the kind of support and assistance that people need in times of need. They work with children, families, and adults to get them help in terms of food, shelter, get them into training programs, and even refer them to services to help with employment (Coady & Lehmann, 2016). They are the first lines of assistance when people are coming out of some emergency or tragedy. I myself, am most interested in becoming a Child, Family and School Social Worker. I feel like I would be able to help children and families deal with their hardships and be able to enable a positive growth in them. I feel I will be able to assist in the various problems and situations that can arise in life.
Being from the Karen ethnic group and my family dealing with the conflict in Burma, I had issues with self-identity, finding stability, and feeling okay in my own skin. It was a hard transition learning new experiences and coming to a new place. But these experiences have helped me to deal with the situation that the Karen community has faced and I feel as though these kinds of ordeals are best handled when someone can guide you that has experienced it. I can be that guide for children and families and work with them and schools to ensure children receive a quality education and gain the knowledge they need to move past their suffering.
So many young people in this world suffer needlessly and they don’t have or know where to get the resources needed to improve. These resources can be invaluable and sometimes it just takes one person to help someone see what they are capable of and what they can do. I feel I can be that kind of person. Part of my strengths is I love the idea of working with children and families. I feel the most change can be made in a child’s life because they are still at an age where they believe anything is possible. Without that feeling, it is often hard to break bad habits and so forth. To have someone there that understands and knows what it is like to struggle, I can be able to show them they can triumph and have a successful and fulfilling life.
The kinds of skills and knowledge needed to be a social worker especially in the Karen community is speaking their language of which I can. Although there are subsets of languages, I can communicate with most in the community. Second, I have the understanding of the political situation in Burma so I know what kind of help they are going to need. Third, I had experience working as a midwife in a refugee camp so I understand the need for medical assistance and sexual/reproductive health. These are things that can help me in the process of learning and self-reflecting.
Working with families involves a certain amount of understanding of theory and to use a theory like Bowens Family Systems Theory to understand the needs of families is a great way for me to develop professionally. Working with families, it is important to understand that the family is a unit, a whole and that the actions of one member could have negative consequences for the other. Children in particular do not have power over their lives and so working with parents and helping them understand their impact on their child’s life would be extremely rewarding for me.
Coming from the Karen ethnicity, I understand extended family can have a significant influence on a child’s life. I would try to assess the situation in the child’s home and see if there are ways to either incorporate or remove influence from extended family. Lastly, I feel like there are so many ways to enrich a child’s life and I enjoy the idea of working in a collaborative effort with families to ensure positive, healthy outcomes. Therefore, I want to be a school social worker.

Generalist Social Work Practice
Generalist social work practice entails looking at things from a holistic perspective and recognizing the right of the client to choose what he or she may need in terms of assistance and resources. There are so many things that are required in terms of understanding the needs of the client from cultural and social awareness to understanding of that person’s environment. One article highlights the need to learn certain key aspects of social work through group work to provide a foundation of understanding other people’s differences and similarities and how these can be used to form a connection and promote better awareness. “These range from the importance of mutual aid and the role of the group leader to multicultural competence and practice skills needed in the beginning, middle, and ending phases of group work. Group work is only one of four modalities that must be taught in the undergraduate practice sequence” (Knight, 2013, p. 23).
Although some may say social work has changed in recent times, moving away from social justice and towards the individual, some things remain the same such as the need to understand and communicate with the client. “Social changes and professionalization have moved social work away from advancing social justice and into the domination of individual therapies.” (Kam, 2012, p. 723). Just because there is more focus on the individual does not mean there is less focus on society and the social context of problems. Because environment theoretically, can play a role in how a person is and reacts to others, the generalist approach is designed to help one understand these multiple influences and treat accordingly using the perspective holistic integration.
One article introduces a curricular innovation. It is called the Integrated Health Scholars Program (IHSP). IHSP is developed to help master's-level social work students so they can work in integrated health care settings. Also, it is meant to help in presenting initial results connected to students’ self-reported program perceptions and competencies.
IHSP, implemented in a research-intensive school of social work in a large midwestern public university, includes specialized course work, interprofessional education across health science disciplines, and field practicum in integrated health care settings. Curricular components support stepwise learning and follows the British Columbia model of interprofessional education learning tiers: exposure, immersion, and skill mastery (Mattison, Weaver, Zebrack, Fischer, & Dubin, 2017, p. S72).
This is the kind of work that is needed to educate students on the multiple dimensions of social work and addressing client needs.
From my understanding, generalist practitioners work with families, communities, individuals, and organizations via an assortment of host and social work settings. The need is to recognize, support, and then build upon a person or people’s uniqueness including their natural skills. Generalist practitioners assess service results for continuous improvement of services and recognize whether client needs are being met or not. The NASW Code of Ethics guides generalist social work practice, promoting the commitment to improving and furthering the goals social justice and human rights in the world.
What does this mean? Simply generalist social work involves the micro and macro perspective and the encompassing of a multitude of skills and knowledge to properly help clients in need. So many people are in need of assistance due to the situations they endure. A recent example of this is Hurricane Maria and the Puerto Ricans that need to evacuate the island. These are pockets of culture and situations that require a better recognition and assessment of what will work and what will not to address the problems affecting people.
How has the following contributed to your understanding of generalist social work practice?
i. The profession is founded on the premise that there needs to be consideration for both the person as well as the environment in order to improve the functioning and life quality of people, communities, and groups (Birkenmaier, Berg-Weger, & Dewees, 2017). From my studies I found an interest in systems theories because it helps to address the impact that policies, groups, organizations, and communities can have on an individual. For example, policies on refugees in the United States can impact negatively or positively, how they receive care and what resources are available to them. I also find the ecological theory (systems theory subset), to be useful because it creates some major contributions to social work in the mezzo, micro, and macro viewpoints. This framework allows for a better understanding of a client’s situation because it serves as guidance for what to look for and understand within the context of the person and his or her life in relation to the influences they may encounter and the environment they live in day to day.
People experience a multitude of problems that can come from things like addiction or a troubling household that can create mental stress and lead to mental health problems (Burton, 2015). If, for example, a client comes in and has depression, this does not just signal the person has depression. Not taking consideration of his environment, someone would just refer him to a therapist. But, asking about his home life and speaking with for example, a school counselor or teacher, one can see he may have a learning problem and need additional tutoring. Then coordination with his school would take place along with a referral to a doctor to see what potential learning disability that person may have. This is something that cannot be done if there is no prior understanding.
ii. One assignment in particular about self-identity was extremely eye-opening to me in the sense that I could reflect on my own experiences, my culture, and all the changes in my life. I was born in the capital city of Yangon, Burma in 1990. My family had to endure a ruthless military dictatorship that oppressed several groups. One of which was my people, the Karen. If I apply some of what I learned to my own situation, I can see that through the political unrest and the horrible leadership of the dictator, my people endured immense suffering and had to deal with many struggles. These struggles of which were exacerbated when having to leave to a new place. Although where I am now, is much better than where I was born, my family still has ties to their homeland and their culture.
The assignment also enabled me to experience again what it was like and what it took for me to get to where I am. Being able to see the journey as a whole through this self-reflective assignment showed me how important it is for people to self-assess. My clients need to self-assess. There needs to be a time when people can understand and see what they are going through and be aware of how they feel and what they feel. This step is often ignored to the detriment of the person as these thoughts and feelings could be beneficial to understand. Had I not gone through with the assignment, I would not have felt that much more passion for what I want to do now, which is help the Karen community.
iii. The assignment helped me realize the pain of being displayed and the kind of feelings that surface when people are around you that cannot relate with you. The Karen people endured torture, jail, death. This is something that will stick with my people for years. Although I grew up away from that, I have had to live learning how to survive by being quiet. My time as a midwife in the refugee camp and having to be patient for entry into the United States also made things difficult so I can now understand how to approach situations that can be complicated because of culture and experiences.
With my new job working as a case manager in the Karen community I could serve my people and understand my purpose. Because I have similar experiences to some in the Karen community, I can understand how things like environment and barriers can play a role in how people seek and get help. I can connect to those in the Karen community because I was a refugee. It helped me understand in many ways that social work is complex job that involves more than compassion to effectively execute.
iv. Going back to the status of midwife in the refugee camp, I had to deal with several things at once to perform my tasks. Although I had wanted to become a nurse, my experience as a midwife was more about connecting with the person rather than the medical aspect of the task. This prepared me for the various ways I would be able to handle and go forward with my social work. By connecting with others and communicating with them, I can build the kind of professional relationship that can create better outcomes for the person I am helping.
It also helped me understand what people needed even in emergency situations. I had to deal with several things from the woman’s health to communication with her family. These kinds of things can be hard to do in a refugee camp as there are not as many tools readily available. But, it taught me about flexibility and the ability to understand what to do with very little options. I am thankful even though the experience was arduous because it taught me patience with others and patience with myself. I could not be able to do what I do now without that experience in the refugee camp.
Apply your understanding of generalist practice to one of the following:
The social work generalist practice is defined as introducing students to a basic understanding of concepts in social work that encompass promotion of well-being and application of intervention and preventative methods to social issues at the community, group, and individual levels while following critical thinking and ethical principles (). With this in mind, if I had to choose one aspect to apply my understanding of generalist practice, it would be a particular client population like Karen Refugees. I have firsthand experience being from the Karen ethnicity and know how hard it can be to be part of this population and feel a lack of self-identity because of it. The stress of displacement, the stress of adaptation and assimilation is a constant problem for refugees and needs to be addressed in a way that is compassionate and understanding of their unique experiences and specific culture.
Research has shown that refugees experience distress from the previous and current state of being. They may have endured torture, starvation, threats, rape, and physical injury back in their homeland. “Frequencies of primary and secondary torture were 27.4% and 51.4%, respectively. War trauma was reported by 86% of the participants. Torture, older age, and female gender were significantly associated with increased total distress, posttraumatic stress, depression, and somatic complaints” (Shannon, Vinson, Wieling, Cook, & Letts, 2015, p. 577). When they are placed in a new country like the United States, their understanding of everything changes. They must relearn how to live. They must learn a new language, eat new food, and interact with vastly different people and places than what is familiar. The Karen population from Burma have experience tremendous upheaval due to the political situation in their homeland. I know, I am from the Karen ethnicity and culture.
Some themes I myself have experienced and am sure others similar to me have experienced are resettlement issues, significance of community, need of supportive services and hope. Social workers working with the Karen refugees need to do so in a way that minimizes challenges and maximizes sources of resilience. Some of these women need help in learning skills that can help them get jobs and independence. Many need language learning assistance and tutoring services if they are in school. These are things that require a collaborative effort with schools, doctors, and family members.
When attempting to understand a person within the Karen ethnicity who is a refugee from Myanmar, it is important to research the kind of conditions in Burma and see what they may have experienced there. As a generalist, one would research the level of healthcare they received there and see if it was adequate or not to then refer the client to a doctor for tests and assessment. Interestingly, one 2014 research study stated the border of Burma/Myanmar has programs in place that provide decent healthcare services.
Despite the lack of skilled medical professionals, the EHOs and CBHOs have been serving the population along the border through task shifting to less specialized health workers. Clinics and mobile teams work in partnership, focusing on primary care with some aspects of secondary care (Low et al., 2014, p. 1).
Working with clients, there is also a need to allow for self-determination. Essentially, the client has the right to pick and choose what help they would like to receive. That is why someone that can speak their language will make it easier because they can connect and build that trust and communication that may be absent due to language and culture barriers. So many barriers already exist for people when they move to a new country or experience a new culture. Therefore, it is important to make it easier by removing some of these barriers that can contribute to the problems these clients may already experience. By doing so people can learn to understand how to approach a wide-variety of situations and people, leading to an improvement over all of the individual and society.
References
Birkenmaier, J., Berg-Weger, M., & Dewees, M. (2017). The practice of generalist social work. New York: Routledge.
Burton, J. (2015). Practice Learning in Social Work.
Coady, N., & Lehmann, P. (2016). Theoretical Perspectives for Direct Social Work Practice(3rd ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
Kam, P. K. (2012). Back to the ‘social’ of social work: Reviving the social work profession’s contribution to the promotion of social justice. International Social Work, 57(6), 723-740. doi:10.1177/0020872812447118
Knight, C. (2013). Teaching Group Work in the BSW Generalist Social Work Curriculum: Core Content. Social Work with Groups, 37(1), 23-35. doi:10.1080/01609513.2013.816918
Low, S., Tun, K. T., Mhote, N. P., Htoo, S. N., Maung, C., Kyaw, S. W., … Pocock, N. S. (2014). Human resources for health: task shifting to promote basic health service delivery among internally displaced people in ethnic health program service areas in eastern Burma/Myanmar. Global Health Action, 7(1), 24937. doi:10.3402/gha.v7.24937
Mattison, D., Weaver, A., Zebrack, B., Fischer, D., & Dubin, L. (2017). Educating Social Workers for Practice in Integrated Health Care: A Model Implemented in a Graduate Social Work Program. Journal of Social Work Education, 53(1), S-72-S86.
Shannon, P. J., Vinson, G. A., Wieling, E., Cook, T., & Letts, J. (2015). Torture, War Trauma, and Mental Health Symptoms of Newly Arrived Karen Refugees. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 20(6), 577-590. doi:10.1080/15325024.2014.965971