Exploring Connections and Variations in Engagement Tactics with Customers - Coursework Example

Examining similarities and differences in engagement strategies with clients Introduction National Association of Social workers (NASW) advocates ten major standards for cultural competence in social work practice. (NASW Code of ethics, 2000a). These include Ethics and Values, Self Awareness, Cross-cultural knowledge, Cross-cultural skills, Service delivery, Empowerment and Advocacy, Diverse workforce, Professional education, Language diversity and Cross-cultural leadership. (NASW, 2000b) With the increase in the number of immigrants from different countries settling down in US, the social work professional face an enormous task in providing culturally competent and viable services to such ethnically diverse groups. According to available statistics in US, the social workers are dominated by white population (88.5 %) who are mostly females (78.0 %). Around 5.3 % are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans while 2.8% are the other hispanic groups followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders (1.7 %) and American Indians (0.5 %) (Gibelman & Schervish, 1997). Thus the NASW standards of self awareness and cross-cultural knowledge and skills becomes very important for social workers such as myself (From Korea) who belong to an ethnic Asian minority group. Myself as a Client As a prospective client, I would like my social worker to be more sensitive and culturally aware of my background and values. The cultural background influences the help seeking behavior as well how individuals relate and interact with other people. Thus the social worker should be able to understand the situation from my point of view and how I perceive it and not the other way round. What may be acceptable in their culture may not be acceptable in mine and vice versa. Thus to be able to gain my trust and cooperation, the social worker will need to exhibit basic understanding that we are two different people from different backgrounds and should not see everything in black and white and in terms of his/her own acceptable behavior norms. Thus I would appreciate a social worker if he/she has knowledge regarding acceptable behavior and norms of my culture. The social worker should treat me with respect and at par with himself without any bias and discrimination because of my different background. Moreover, the solutions or their suggestions should be such that they are not in conflict with my values and traditions and should be tailored to meet my specific needs. As suggested by Gallegos (1982), it is important that the social worker takes into account my specific needs while identifying guidance systems for me. Thus the social worker should be genuinely concerned regarding my welfare and show warmth and understanding of my issues and suggest possible solutions while accepting the differences between the two of us. I would expect my social worker to identify my core strengths and help me to build on them and empower me in a way that I can actually use to my advantage. This empowerment should be in line with my own personal beliefs and faith and seek to advocate social change with mutually agreed upon areas and goals. (Solomon, 1996) Since I have been here only for 3 years, I am still unable to come to terms with cultural and social differences between my society and US society in general. As our society is more of family centric and focuses on responsible and good behavior from all members of the family. In contrast the American society is more individual centric and family traditions and backgrounds are less important than the individual himself. Thus their behavior seems more self centered and egoistic to me. The other main area of concern could be my difficulty the English language and thus this could be one of the major areas of conflict and unresponsive behavior. As a client, I would expect the social worker to overcome this language barrier either by interpreters or by trying to communicate in a way that I can understand what they are trying to say. I would also expect that the social workers should come back and touch base and try to take feedback on whatever we have been trying to do or whether I have been successful in assimilating the information and guidance given to me. Client from Black Community Let us now consider another client from a black community. This person is coming from the group which has been historically socially discriminated against since long by whites. The community is still struggling with the issues of poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, low educational levels and a lack of a supportive and loving environment at home. This also leads to a tendency towards criminal activities. Thus dealing with such a client is very different from dealing with immigrants like us. We come from society where love and respect for fellow humans and family bonds are very strong and the individual is expected to keep up the family traditions and engage in activities that honor the family names. Thus in this case, the social worker will have to handle their own bias and prejudice against the black community in general before being able to help this man. The self awareness principle assumes significance here as the white social worker finds himself /herself in a situation where he/she is environmentally conditioned to discriminate against this man. By being aware of their own beliefs and values, the social worker should be able to maintain an ethnocentric stance and not be too judgmental Moreover, they should be able to realize the limitation of their own behavior and refer the client to someone more competent if they are unable to be unbiased. This is done assuming that the individuals of similar backgrounds can understand each other better and communicate more effectively. (Jackson & López, 1999). But there may be cases where same community persons are not available In such cases, the social worker will have to very understanding and open to experience with the different individuals. For the black community, the social worker should try to find out their family background and try to involve them in activities they feel comfortable in and can participate easily. Efforts should be made to introduce them to the like minded communities so that they can be helped by their own people who understand them effectively. Moreover, it is important that they are sufficiently empowered or educated to be able to take help from government agencies. They should be provided training and help to assimilate themselves with the mainstream people. The personal attributes of genuineness and warmth are needed to make the client agreeable to social change. The client should not feel humiliated or threatened by the social worker or feel that something is being imposed on him. He should be able to feel that the social worker is only trying to help without being judgmental about his state. This community group is characterized as hard to reach, noncompliant and resistant to change, but sensitive suggestions and guidance is acceptable to them. Trust is the major factor related to any relationship and this is especially true when dealing with Black people. They usually do not trust white persons. It is important to discuss and talk about issues that would interest them and that they are interested in changing about them rather than what the society things is good for them. What may seem abnormal to us may be quite acceptable in their society. Thus by learning about their ways and beliefs, by showing respect and understanding of their traditions and by providing practical working solutions to meet their specific needs, the social worker can start off a trust building exercise and bring them over gradually to social change. Education and introducing them to new ideas and allowing them to make their own decisions is going to be necessary to deal with them. Conclusion In conclusion, we see that there are a lot of similarities in the way a social worker will deal with culturally different client. Though in the two cases mentioned above – myself and a member of black community – we are from two minority communities who are ethnically different from white majority, but our needs for self respect and dignity and the right to equality are the same. We are both looking to assimilate the main culture of the society without giving away our individuality which stems from our ethnic backgrounds. We do not want to be discriminated or lag behind because of our lack of understanding of the main stream American culture. But the major difference in us is the language barrier. As a Korean student, I am not well versed with the English language and need interpretation to understand clearly. But the black community does not have any language barriers as they follow the same language. My cultural heritage is complete with strong traditions, educational background and good family support to fall back upon. So, the approach in my case should be of effective guidance towards English language and towards people or agencies who can help me to understand the cultural differences. While in case of black person – he needs to be helped with work related and behavior related problems both because of his lack of education and lack of awareness of the government policies that he can avail of or take benefit from. Thus the two needs are as diverse as our backgrounds and the social worker needs to understand the differences and tailor their responses and activities to meet the expectations in a sensitive and caring manner. References Gallegos, J. S. (1982). The ethnic competence model for social work education. In B. W. White (Ed.), Color in a white society (pp. 1–9). Silver Spring, MD: National Association of Social Workers. Gibelman, M., & Schervish, P. H. (1997). Who we are: A second look. Washington, DC: NASW Press. Jackson, V., & López, L. (Eds.). (1999). Cultural competency in managed behavioral healthcare. Dover, NH: Odyssey Press. National Association of Social Workers. (2000a). NASW code of ethics. Washington, DC: Author NASW. National Association of Social Workers. (2000b). Cultural competence in the social work profession. In Social work speaks: NASW policy statements (pp. 59–62). Washington, DC: NASW Press. Solomon, B. (1976). Black empowerment. New York: Columbia University Press Read More