Career Curveball: Wagster’s Five Year Vision After serving six years in the United States Army, Joshua Wagster was forced to retire due to a back injury. His future was suddenly unknown, forcing him to decide on a new career path. Faced with this adversity, he had no choice but to accept the reality of the situation. He knew that he wanted to serve in a profession that had a purpose and a positive impact on others. Knowing this, Wagster went to work figuring out what his future would hold by analyzing his personality and character traits, exploring resources available to veterans, and reminiscing about his life experiences. Consequently, five years from now, he will have a career as a Licensed Social Worker in the state of Kentucky because …show more content…
Wagster’s unfortunate upbringing inspired him to pursue a career in Social Work because he does not want others to experience what he did. He also wants to use what he went through to help people through similar situations. Without government assistance, his family would have never made ends meet. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother was addicted to narcotics. Domestic violence was common in his household, and most of the time, ended with police intervention. Food in the house was scarce, often leaving him to fend for himself. Because of moving and switching schools every year, he found it difficult to make friends. One day, when he was nine years old, his aunt pulled him out of school to give him heartbreaking news. His mother was found dead at the age of twenty six due to an accidental drug overdose. When Wagster’s father found out, he went on a drinking binge and could not be found until the day of his mother’s funeral. As a result, the state took action by granting custody to Wagster’s aunt, and the relationship with his father would be forever damaged. Growing up, Children Protective Services made visits to his home on a regular basis, and to this day, Wagster wonders why the caseworkers …show more content…
Having the ability to understand the position of others, and being relatable to their situations will make the job come natural to him. Current times suggest that too many people only worry about themselves, and do not consider others’ feelings. Many say that empathy is an attribute that people have or do not have, but Wagster disagrees. He feels that most people are fully capable of being empathetic, but choose not to be. Cultural thinker and writer on the art of living and social change, Roman Krznaric, states, “According to the latest neuroscience research, 98% of people (the exceptions include those with psychopathic tendencies) have the ability to empathise wired into their brains – an in-built capacity for stepping into the shoes of others and understanding their feelings and perspectives”. To clarify, mostly everyone is capable of relating to others (BBC News). Having empathy for others, as Wagster does, is a great attribute to have, but in order to utilize that trait as a Social Worker the mandatory requirements must first be
In the Gabriel Myers’ case, it is clear that various adults in his life committed serious errors that led to his untimely death. As a kid in the foster care system, it is the responsibility of his assigned case worker to ensure that his needs are being met and that Gabriel was in the safest home that had authority figures who not only cared for him but were equipped to provide him the care he needed. Gabriel’s caseworker failed at various aspects of his well-being while he was under his supervision.
Alameda has had a hard life as a young girl growing up, both of her parents were alcoholics. Alameda was a 16 year old minor who had a baby and dropped out of school, and then was unable to care for the infant. A case manager by the name of Barbara LaRosa was assigned to Alameda case. Barbara took on Alameda as her client and made a visit to her parents’ home, while making the visit she found Alameda dad incompetent, and could not get any information from him to help with his daughter well-being.
Popple, P. R, & L. Leighninger. (2011). Social Work, Social Welfare, and American Society. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Popple , P. R., & Leighninger, L. (2011). Social work, social welfare, and american society. (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
According to Arianna Huffington in the article “Empathy: What We Need Now”, during hardships and instability of society, empathy is needed to find solutions to those issues. Huffington writes about how empathy is needed in our country in order to produce a positive social change. She begins by giving an example of a movement that Martin Luther King created and how empathy was a part of this movement. King as well spoke of how empathy is the sign of living. To become involved in the situations of humanity in order to improve it, displays that empathy is the core of a human’s existence. After reading this article, I do agree with Huffington about how individuals need to fully understand and put themselves within the situation to fully comprehend the issue to solve.
Jasmine Beckford’s case is the oldest out of the three; in 1984 Jasmine died as a result of long-term abuse aged 4. In 1981 her and her younger sister suffered serious injuries and were paced with foster carers for six months. After this they were allowed back home with their mother on a trial basis as social services were meant to support them. During the last ten months of Jasmine’s life she was only seen once by social workers (Corby, 2006).
Choosing a career is a very important aspect to people’s lives. One goes to college, usually around the age of eighteen, and by the time they leave they are expected to have decided on the career that they will have for the rest of their lives. Being a psychology and interpersonal communication major, I have always had an interest on relationships between individuals given certain stimuli presented to them. I want to have the ability to touch people’s lives by helping them understand themselves and why they behave the way in which they behave. Relationships are such an important aspect to the process of human growth, and they impact each and every one of us. Due to this assessment of myself, I have decided to go to college to pursue my goals of being a clinical social worker.
For the purpose of this paper the social worker interviewed is Ronnita Waters, MSW, RCSWi; she is currently an operations manager at the Center for Family and Child Enrichment (CFCE). The issue or area where her advocacy skills are practiced is within child welfare. Mrs. Waters mentions to the interviewee “I always wanted to work with children, then eventually for children.” when asked what developed her interest in this area of social work. Furthermore, before she became an operations manager, the social worker was an adoptions supervisor, overseeing adoption case managers and ensuring the proper implementation of policies such as the sibling placement policy and adoption policy. In addition, before achieving the role of supervisor, she was
What does it mean to become a social worker? Why was I committing two years of my life to school after renouncing further education? I asked myself this after I applied, waited anxiously for my acceptance letter and scrambled to figure out the finances after I was accepted. I could not have guessed that the first day of the Micro Human Behavior Social Environment (SWG 510) would capture my attention and thrust me into the professional world of Social Work. As I learned more about what it meant to become a social worker, I found myself aligning to the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Ethical Standards as reviewed through Foundation Course I’s first chapters.
Sowers, K. M. and Dulmus, C. N. 2008. Comprehensive handbook of social work and social welfare. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons
Student veterans enter the classroom and the workforce with many concerns and needs but also many skills gained throughout their time in service. Skills in leadership, team work, organization, structured work habits and advance special training specific fields is a broad overview of skills gained. With their skill intact, student veterans must also handle the issues of mental health, disability financial aid, community engagement, and career are among the many needs to be sought after,
Today’s skills session on social work interviewing skills covered the uniqueness of social work interviewing in comparison to interviews conducted in professions such as the police, doctors, employers, etc. It covered also different types of questioning and how to paraphrase. Another area covered was, what to avoid when interviewing a service user and the use of silence. I leant that interview skills are fundamental in social work and social work interviewing is unique. Social workers empathize with clients because of their knowledge of the client group and the need of help to alleviate their problems. Empathy however does not equate accepting that the client is right in what they have done or that the social worker is condoning their actions. Empathy relates to the issue of ‘trusting’ and ‘believing’ the client. In as much as a social worker should seek to establish trust in the relationship, this does not necessarily mean they should believe
Morrison (2007) introduces Emotional Intelligence (EI) as “Being able to motivate one-self and persist in the face of frustration; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s mouth and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope (as stated in Goleman, 1996). In relation to social work practice, EI stresses for social workers to have a working knowledge of emotions; where they derived from and healthy ways to express and manage them. The social worker not only needs to understand these things about their own emotions, they must
Charlotte Towle was born in 1896 and raised in Brute, Montana, which was a large mining town at that time. Her family would often talk about social issues such as labor and management (Boman, 2001). This upbringing got her interested in social issues, but she majored in Education at Goucher College, graduating in 1919 (Lardner, 2014). Working at The American Red Cross, her interest in social work issues was renewed. Quickly she began working at many other social services agencies such as the Veteran’s Bureau and a hospital in Tacoma. Washington (Boman). She did not feel called to the standard casework approach, but more captivated by the psychological method. Therefore she continued her education at New York School of Social Work by receiving
Growing up in a foster home and later on being adopted, my past consists of a life that was placed off, what I thought to be its intended course. The derailment granted me with a different perspective on life and also newfound knowledge and respect for social workers and their contributions to society. Individuals whom were in foster care with me and interactions with foster children from my previous employment opportunity at a daycare, influenced me to steer in the direction of becoming a social worker. As I constantly reached new levels of maturity while progressing in life from exposure through real life experiences, these events created a profound knowledge base in relation to social justice. I have witnessed and ascertained wisdom