Intervene with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
Social workers understand that intervention is an ongoing component of the dynamic and interactive process of social work practice. Social workers understand theories of human behavior, person-in-environment, and other inter-professional conceptual frameworks, and they critically evaluate and apply this knowledge in selecting culturally responsive interventions with clients
and constituencies, including individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Social workers understand methods of identifying, analyzing, and implementing evidence-informed interventions and participate in interprofessional collaboration to achieve client and constituency goals. Social workers facilitate effective transitions and endings.
Social workers:
a. engage with clients and constituencies to critically choose and implement culturally responsive, evidence-informed interventions to achieve client and constituency goals; and
b. incorporate culturally responsive methods to negotiate, mediate, and advocate with and on behalf of clients and constituencies.
Implementing interventions into clients and/ or communities is crucial for social workers to use in order to practice effectively. We must have a sound understanding of client’s situations, social injustices, and policy. Utilizing evidence-based interventions is necessary in order to align with client’s needs and desires. To engage in this, I will take the client’s needs and remain aware of intervention practices that best promote client desires. I feel challenged by this competency in that I have a tendency to want the intervention to be as mistake free as possible. This is rarely the case but I am committed to this competency because intervening is a specialty that social work has that keeps us in contact with individuals and our communities.
Evidences
Coursework:
Scottathon Archer Bachelor III
This is an assignment for Practice with Individuals that is a pseudo scenario of a teenager that has difficulty making social connections because of their recent change in sexuality. Part of my group’s task was to implement interventions based on what we had gathered. Some of those interventions included implementing support groups for Scottathon to attend, providing an ecomap to visualize support systems, introducing coping methods, and referring to counseling.
This assignment helped me to develop knowledge and skills in the human environment such as understanding this pseudo client’s specific religion of Mormonism. This allowed me to better understand what would be a S.M.A.R.T. implementation for Scottathon’s specific needs and history of trauma. I also became more knowledgeable about being trauma informed with this age group.
I chose this assignment because my group had to come up with interventions that were sufficient to this situation such as coping techniques, an ecomap, support groups, and referring to therapy. I chose this assignment over other assignments because this implemented interventions that were case specific and sensitive to needs.
Field:
This is a program out of the Office of Diversity and Strategic Planning that we are looking to implement towards the end of the year that would allow students to be ambassadors for Southern but specifically in the realm of diversity as well as be a part of conversations surrounding diversity that give students a voice. This intervention comes from a need that has been realized because of the array of diverse students that Southern has and serves. We also were notified that some students indicated that they wish Southern could have people and a safe space to discuss things that are occurring around the world. For instance, some students indicated that they wish Southern would address the atrocities occurring in Gaza and the West Bank. From this, we are in the midst of taking action. It is still in the process of formation as it is sitting as one of the Diversity Committee Task Groups.
This program has added to my knowledge of how it is going to be implemented in full. What will be necessary to build the structure of such a program. I also gained skill in turning brainstorming ideas from assessment into full ideas that are functional for students to attain.
I chose this because this is a new program that stems from assessing what we have seen and acquired about diversity and culture on Southern’s campus from students.
Further Evidence:
This is a course that I took at my home church in Louisville, Kentucky, where we as church members learned how to effectively reach those in chronic need. Detailing how traditional models of missionary work are not effective in solving an institutional issue that affects communities. Much of this was to effectively listen to what our community around our church truly is voicing as needs. Not what we as church members think is best. With this learning/ training that our members had from this course, we have implemented the learnings to community outreach with a neighborhood that is very close to our church. The neighborhood of Berrytown is one that we have always, as a church, tried to support but nothing has really worked in the past. We have gone to city council meetings and house visits with families that have given us consent to do so to learn the needs before we move forward with trying to assist this community.
I developed knowledge in how to meet communities where they are as a church. Specifically, how to meet their needs from a systemic angel that not only satisfies temporary and immediate needs but how to transform communities’ circumstances through relationships and time spent.
I chose this experience because we co-collaborated with our residents of this community to implement the best intervention as communicated by the community themselves.