Respect for diversity is vital in the social work discipline. Being a social worker is being mindful of the many differences that exist within society and how they affect individuals. This competency helps ensure that social workers understand how diversity and difference shape the human experience, and that they are essential in forming an identity. To meet this competency I used evaluation as the cognitive domain and organization as the affective domain. The theories utilized are contact hypothesis and credibility. By meeting this competency, I demonstrate that I understand that a person’s life experiences may include oppression, poverty, marginalization, and alienation as well as privilege and power. I demonstrate that I am engaging in diversity in all aspects of my life such as working with clients with different cultural backgrounds. I also demonstrate the ability to work with different practices whether that be spiritual or professional by working with diverse clients and collaborating with other professionals. As a social worker I vow to always present myself as a learner and to acknowledge clients and constituencies as experts of their own experiences.
Competency:
Engage Diversity and Difference in Practice
Practice Behaviors:
2.1 Develop and implement strategies that strive to eradicate discrimination in any form
Evidence: I demonstrated this practice behavior by creating a flyer that includes statistics of specific challenges the Latino/Hispanic population faces. I distributed these to the staff members at Morris Innovative High School to bring awareness to these issues and strive to eradicate discrimination.
2.2 Apply self-awareness and self-regulation to manage the influence of personal biases and values in working with diverse clients and constituencies
Evidence: I demonstrated this practice behavior by reflecting on different issues in my Integration of Faith and Advanced Practice course. I wrote a discussion post on issues such as gender, traditional marriages, contraception, and many others. Through this discussion post I had to be self-aware and reflect on how I would manage my personal biases and beliefs while working with clients that did not share the same perspective as myself. I also read my peers’ discussion posts and replied to some of them. Here are two examples of my discussion posts.