Reconsideration of the Empowerment Framework - Essay Example

Week I am the social worker of the twenty first century, embodying and practicing in the formative moments of the new millennium. Merely one in forty generations have experienced the pivotal turn of millennium, a period when expectations are grand that everything can be newly created. It is in this core of hope that this reconsideration of the empowerment framework to social work practice is presented. Read revision as it is but ‘re-vision’ to see once again, just like the first time. Erecting the beloved community is both the mechanism and the expectation for consequence of personal and political empowerment. It is our destination and the process of reaching the end of that destination. It is the real meaning of Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision: a sympathetic community where race and social class is surpassed and economic and social justice is the tenet and not the exclusion. It is as well the vision of this empowerment paradigm to social work tradition. The paradigm becomes profound and stretches out to integrate further explanation of how-to and for what reason, enlarged by stronger professional, community, multiethnic, multicultural and global points of view on empowerment mechanism and the commemoration of differences. Countless individuals still desire to live in a society where dearly loved community can be built, where caring bonds of affection and knowing unite us together through our differences. We just cannot give up that yearning. We call for such ties not for the reason that we embrace utopian dreams but because we have wrestled throughout our loves to build this community. The petite circles of affection and care we have been able to shape in our personal lives embody a tangible realistic note that beloved community is not a fantasy, that it previously is present for those of us who have carried out the task of enlightening ourselves for higher consciousness. Week 2 Ambivalence and indecision indicate the likelihood of resistance. The social work business can be signified as a victorious hegemonic knowledge, yet it cannot attain absolute finality on its manner of perceiving the world: One of the unique features is the pursuit for ties of mutuality and collective identities, through which individuals and their concerns and motives are shaped and which transcend involved exchanges between individualized individuals. This pursuit may have been diminished, yet it has not been totally eliminated. There are other discussions wrestling for articulation from users of services provided by social work: types of involved citizenship on the basis on collective identities and experience of social differentiations, founded in interests influencing people’s individual lives, but associated to wider shared experiences of discrimination and inequality. Social work is one of the disciplines in which such efforts occur over the relationships between the state and its members and the giving out of rights, privileges and obligations in social welfare. It is a discipline on which a lively interaction transpires, involving: control and conflict; constructing the restrictions of what is considered ‘normal’ and pursuing to remove those restrictions; employing restricted standard of access to resources and efforts to amend those standards. In investigating any attribute of social work practice or organization, two questions should be answered: who has the authority to identify the terms in which the matters or dilemmas are recognized? Who stands to benefit or lose from specific units of social work ties and practices? My argument is that social workers have been in the losing end because of the associations and practices appended in the social work business, which are embodiments of social workers. Week 3 There is a new dimension emerging at the advent of the twenty first century. It is illustrated by economic exchanges, cross cultural interaction and communication through technological progresses, and, possibly, equally advantageous transaction and interdependence. The internationalization of the economy may reap advantages from economically impoverished nations but it may as well further to the misuse of global resources, its employees, and its most impoverish members. It may demonstrate the economic and cultural hegemony of supreme and powerful nations. For instance, Australians customarily value equality, collectivism, and comradeship, whereas market actualities of the new international economy emphasize good organization and growth, representing a clash of political principles influenced by globalization. The international economy is as well primarily tolerated by national or global organizations, which produces fertile ground for human abuse. Therefore, it is important to work together toward a global goal of the beloved community in which there is economic and social fair dealing for all individuals. This is the goal of the empowerment paradigm to social work practice. It is important to deliberate on the definitions and purposes of the notion of empowerment in the milieu of economic globalization. The application of the notion of empowerment in knowledge creation or meaning making regarding economic globalization is at anomaly with meanings of empowerment as fragment of the anti-oppressive knowledge creation associated to human rights for everybody; in anti-oppressive knowledge creation value given on the individual and human pride. As it is applied in the framework of economics the concepts consumer empowerment are merely catchphrases; the significance is on the market. Obtaining economic assets carries on to be a fundamental objective in empowerment-centered anti-oppressive procedures as it is applied in international social work and social progress. However, there is more to transforming to an empowered human being, family, organization, community or country than economic affluence. We carry on connoting empowerment expansively as individual and political phenomena with the objectives of human pride and economic and social justice for everybody. International perspective and global cooperation, and the examining of circumstances of great economic inequality and those where rights and privileges of human pride are at concern, could have a say in building a win-win situation for everybody across cultures. Week 4 Social work starts as soon as social worker and client meet. Urgent interests can be addressed before formal evaluation and negotiating take place. Nevertheless, the equally determined objectives surfacing from these mechanisms commence us into the work stage, when the client should assume liability for empowerment task. The social worker has specific objectives and duties in the empowerment procedure. But the client should reflect on the circumstance, invest the task with sentiment, and identify the oppression, task toward searching or generating alternatives, settle on the paramount path for herself, and take action in it. The worker guides in the procedures, providing empathic advocacy and specialization regarding specific difficulties and structures. She transmits her awareness of the risk that external and institutionalized domination pose as the client attempts to overcome difficulties to obtaining the resources, capabilities, and influence to modify the condition. The work of advocating reflective thought and rousing the awareness of the problematic individual or context exchanges is enlarged by the worker’s skills to pose very important questions and contribute in a procedure of praxis regarding the site of oppression in the middle of everyday dilemmas in living. There are realities that liberate people that can be found out in the procedure of problem solving. The worker as well raises coping inquiries, which are formulated to underline the client’s skills in envisioning solutions to complicated life duties. When individuals can find out their own individual and shared strengths and can discover difficulties in the socioeconomic system of American community, they are ironically open to assume responsibility for posing liberating reforms. Self-worth, identity and movement for social change develop out of this mechanism. Week 6 The paramount reform should have effect in both the hearts and minds of individuals who deal with human services organizations. It is significant that professionals do not over-generalize from behavioral sciences and social sciences alike. For instance, the broken home with an unconventional matriarchal authority has been shown by various authors as harmful to the physical and moral progress of children. On the other hand, children belonging in a patriarchal family as well are broken. The encouraging influence of mother is normally misinterpreted. No matter what their family constructs, individuals of color commonly acquire access to human service organizations with great difficulties against them receiving assistance they need. The mechanism of change unavoidably includes social unrest and disruption- confusion of clients’ and professionals’ virtues, values and convictions that are originally shadowed in the theoretical underpinning of natural order; disruption of customary outlooks and behaviors that distinguish elite or privileged individuals from unfortunate people. Subsequent to the termination of clients’ usage of professional services, care providers should probe upon themselves if they have accomplished the paramount good or the least damage throughout the intervention process. Nothing less than a positive response is good enough since providers of human services are by principle liable in guiding establish a society wherein people can subsist with dignity. Through the assisting exchanges and interactions, if they are lucky enough, clients become absorbed in existence on their personal terms. They do no search for the ultimate answers, definitely not to question regarding the oppression or disregard or poverty or anger. But they oftentimes undertake the power of potentiality, the potentiality of generating a gratifying and fulfilling life for themselves. References Week 1. Barr, A. (2007) Social work and community development. In J.Linshman (Ed.), Handbook for practice learning in social work and social care. Knowledge and theory (pp.285-300). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Coulshed, V., & Orme, J., (2006) social work practice. (pp.264-284). Houndmills: Palgrave. Ife, J., & Tesorerio, F. (2006) Community Development: Community based alternatives in an age of globalisation (3rd. ed.) (Chapter 2) Melbourne: Nelson. Kenny, S. (2006) Developing communities for the future: Community development in Australia (3rd.ed.) (Chapter 2) Melbourne: Nelson. Mendes, P (2003). Community development and social work: Are they compatible? New Community Quarterly, 1(2), 24-27. 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