Engage Diversity and Difference in Practice
As a social worker, we understand that working with diverse clients is essential; we know that the people we come into contact with are from different backgrounds, this can include, political ideology, race, religion/spirituality, sex, sexual orientation. As a social worker, we also understand that personal life experience may consist of oppression, poverty and privilege, power. There are so many different things that make a person who they are. Because social workers know that and have an understanding, we can talk about peoples strengths.
Practice Behaviors
1. Apply and communicate an understanding of the importance of diversity and difference in shaping life experiences in practice at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels.
2. Present themselves as learners and engage clients and constituencies as experts of their own experiences.
3. Apply self-awareness and self-regulation to manage the influence of personal biases and values in working with diverse clients and constituencies.
Academic Evidence:
During my Junior year, I wrote a paper on Poverty that was split into two parts Part A and Part B In this paper I explored my perspective of poverty and how I dealt with it when I had first encountered it. This paper really helped me process my thoughts and feelings that I never really had thought about to much all before.
Practicum Evidence:
I have the opportunity to work with a lower socio-economic class as my agencies population. When working with these cases, I often have to make collateral or reference calls. In order to not have a bias view, we cover all our bases. These are some of the collateral questions. We try to get different views and diverse opinions so that when we do ask these questions, it is not bias. Here is a list of collaterals that I had to do for a certain month. I also had the opportunity to work on a survey for the parents of the lower socio-economic class. In this Parent Engagement Survey, we were able to ask parents what are there needs, meeting them at there level, helping and really listening to what they have to say.