As a social work student, I have studied child and youth and Indigenous Peoples. I have taken courses in criminology, human rights, social policy, as well as social and child welfare. If there has been one message repeated over and over throughout these courses, it has been that a persons behaviour is affected by the environments they encounter. This explains why children in the welfare and justice system are often youths who have experienced some sort of trauma during their childhood, whether it be neglect, financial difficulties, physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse. It is evident oppression and trauma have a strong influence on criminal behaviour. Therefore, it is important professionals take a restorative justice approach when working …show more content…
I know the most efficient way I learned from my mistakes, was having my mother sit me down and explain that what I did was wrong, and how my actions effected those around me. Her disappointment meant more to me than a spanking and lecture from my father. My father was raised with harsh discipline so he believed that was the best way to deter bad behaviour. That may have worked for him, but it certainly did not work for me. The way my father punished me when I was a child has had a long-term effect on me emotionally. I believe bad parenting is the root cause for most behavioural issues. It is important for parents to enforce high self esteem and make sure their children feel loved. The best way to decrease youth offences is to increase mood, self-esteem, develop social skills and strengthen positive interactions with others during childhood (Kelly & Cozzolino, 2015). Therefore, children will not feel worthless, and crave for negative attention. My experiences have influenced the way I think justice should be. My traumatic experiences have made me a supporter of restorative justice. Howard Zehr explains restorative justice as ‘a process that identifies and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible’ (Oudshoorn, 2015, Chapter 8). This needs-based approach moves away from the traditional criminal justice system, which often created more injustice and harm and allows a community to come together to determine what is most just (Oudshoorn, 2015, Chapter
A growing number of probation officers, judges, prosecutors as well as other juvenile professionals are advocating for a juvenile justice system which is greatly based on restorative justice. These groups of people have been frustrated by the policy uncertainty between retribution and treatment as well as unrealistic and unclear public expectations. As a primary mission, the balanced approach or policy allows juvenile justice systems together with its agencies to improve in their capacity of protecting the community and ensuring accountability of the system and the offenders . It enables the youths to become productive and competent citizens. This guiding philosophical framework for this policy is restorative justice as it promotes the maximum involvement of the community, victim, and the offender in the justice process. Restorative justice also presents a viable alternative to sanctions as well as interventions that are based on traditional or retributive treatment assumptions. In the policy proposal for restorative justice, the balanced approach mission assists juvenile justice system in becoming more responsive to the needs of the community, victims, and the offenders . Therefore, this paper considers how restorative justice reduces referrals of juveniles to criminal and juvenile justice systems and gives a proposal on the implementation of restorative justice in the community together with a number of recommendations. For instance, preliminary research reveals that application of restorative justice in schools significantly reduces school expulsions, suspensions, and referrals to the criminal justice systems. Restorative justice programs are an alternative for zero-tolerance policies for juveniles or youths .
Intergenerational theory focuses on parents who maltreat their children due to the fact that they were maltreated as children (Popple & Vecchiolla, 2007). This theory argues that maltreated children are affected in many ways and that parents who did not have the proper role models as children, will not learn the proper parenting skills. Children who are maltreated can have development problems that include having little or no empathy towards others, inadequate anger management skills, and limited coping skills. When adults who have gone through troubling childhood experiences and does not work through the issues, they are likely
The job of a child welfare worker appears to be a demanding profession that promotes the child’s safety, but also strengthens the family organization around them in order to successfully raise the children. This child welfare workers work in the system known as the Child Protective Services whose initiative is to protect the overall welfare of the child. The short novel From the Eye of the Storm: the Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker by Cynthia Crosson-Tower demonstrates the skills necessary to deal with the practice of social work along with both its challenges and its happy moments. The novel consists of some of the cases involving Tower’s actual career in social work. In reading the book, I was able to experience some of the actual cases in which children dealt with physical and mental abuse from their families that caused them to end up within the system. Also, some of these children had issues in adapting to foster and adoptive families based on the issues they faced earlier in life. As we have learned earlier in the course, the violence that a child experiences early in life has an overall affect on the person they become as they grow into adulthood. When children deal with adverse childhood experiences, they are at a higher risk for abusing drugs and/or alcohol, increased likelihood of abusing their own child or spouse, higher rates of violent and nonviolent criminal behavior, along with several other issues throughout their lifespan.
Being given the opportunity to intern with the staff at the Family Resource Center in the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) has been a tremendous learning experience thus far. The opportunity has truly surpassed my expectation of what I imagined the journey of internship would be like and how it would help me to evolve into the professional arena as a social worker. I see myself transforming and viewing the community in which I live, the clients served, those deprived, and the tremendous job that we as social workers are tasked with to advocate for those in need from a more open-minded perspective. By enhancing and developing my personal and professional skills, such as active listening, observation, and professional comportment, I will be
The concept of restorative justice became a game-changer in juvenile justice system. Through the course of time, professionals explored every possible methods and approaches that could positively affect the children without the expense of harming their future and wellbeing. The idea of restorative justice is “administer justice that focuses or repairing the harm done to the victim and the community. (Save the Children-UK, 2005)” The four guiding principles are to: (1) Repair and restore the balance within the community. (2) restitution for the victim. (3) Ensure that the offender understand and take responsibility. (4) Help the offender to change and improve. In South Africa, this is practiced in their community throughout
Identify and explain the three major sources of conflict and misinterpretations in social work practice: culture-bound values, class bound values, and language variables.
Children often learn by observing others and normally while growing up, they all have someone that they look up to. They are normally seen to be innocent at a young age when they do not know any better. But there are many of cases in which children do not have the luxury of being with people that love them and treat them right. In most cases, children get abused and neglected by their parents and/or guardians, urging for Child protective services to step in and save the child. Child maltreatment includes child abuse and child neglect and is a major problem in the United States. The National Bureau of Economic Research states that “Over a million children are victims of maltreatment annually” (Currie & Tekin 2006). Child maltreatment could lead a child down a path of delinquency and more should be done to stop this from happening, and providing better opportunities for children that
The first priority is to invest serious resources in the prevention of child abuse and neglect. The evidence is compelling that this is where much of the violent crime that plagues us begins, especially the kinds of violence we fear the most. It is known that most abused children never go on to injure others. But the correlation between later violent crime and childhood abuse is strong and consistent, especially for the most serious kinds of violence. It turned out that being abused or neglected had little effect, if any, on minor forms of delinquency. But for serious delinquency—and violent crime in particular it mattered a great deal. The youths who had been abused were arrested almost twice as often, and reported almost twice as many violent offenses. The ideology is that if we prevent these tragedies, we can reduce violent crime.
Lifting my heavy head with eyes half asleep off of my comfortable and plush pillow I see 7:20am with the date of August 25th on my phone screen. The second day of classes is now upon me, trying to adjust not only to a new semester at school but also to living away from home, with strangers now known as roommates, and as a transfer student. Starting school has never felt this way, living in a brand new environment with my mom not being there to make me breakfast and to encourage me saying “Have a great first day, I know you’ll do great!” I was now one among the thousands of people that have worked so hard towards attending this prestigious University and some that were thousands of miles away from their homes and families.
...l parents as soon as the home is safe again. For some cases recurrent maltreatment occurs when the child is reunified with the biological parents or original caregivers. Children who are abused can display behavioral problems which can impact many areas in their life. They tend to act out at school and have low academic performance (Webb, 2007). They may also internalize their behavior by becoming depressed and showing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Child maltreatment not only affects the child that is being abused, but the family system as well. Some acts of child abuse can be prosecuted with criminal charges which could result in jail time and other serious punishments. Children show the affects of their maltreatment throughout their life through their behaviors. Child abuse is a serious problem that needs to be prohibited by all agencies.
2015). From the way a person talks, to how they view the world around them, this is all individually constructed, and therefore so is crime. Research has proved a strong relationship between whether a child has been abused, and their likeliness for criminal behavior at some point in their life. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 15% of all Male inmates in prison experienced some form of abuse as a child, the number grows to an astounding 37% for women in the system (Prather, Walter and Jeannie A. Golden. 2009). This forms a strong case for criminals who experienced this type of abuse and their reasoning for turning to crime (Prather, Walter and Jeannie A. Golden. 2009). Using the Interaction theory, for many of these individual’s extreme abuse was one of the first things experienced in life. They learned it from their parents or other family members, or maybe other children and teachers at school. From verbal to physical abuse, this type of interaction went on to form and become an essential part of their identity and reality. Abuse which was transformed to violence and deviancy whether to earn a living or let out rage upon another person resulting in a heinous
I strongly considered a career in social work after completing my undergrad school; my yearning for helping and advocating for all children of the world led me to Barry University. With increased knowledge in the profession of social work, I realized, I have been absent minded in the numerous roles that a social worker plays. As advocators, counselors, mediators, and researchers, social workers uphold principles and core values written within the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics. Social workers mission is entrenched in the Code of Ethics. “Code of Ethics set fourth these values, principles, and standards to guide social workers’ conduct” (The National Association, “n. d.”). Service, Social Justice, Dignity
Working with others and improving own learning and performance are highly essential skills in social work. In this essay I will reflect on how well I have developed these two skills and what I need to do to improve them.
Over the course of the semester, I have learned a variety of many things regarding social work. These things vary from learning how to help oneself to understanding how to help others. Not only were the textbooks very useful, but also the materials that furthered this textbook learning. The in class presentation, activities, and guest speakers gave us insight and a different perspective on the material we were learning. I feel like this course has given me a good foundation and prepared me as a future social worker (1).
Many children in the US have to endure child abuse. Most people do not understand the consequences the abused children have to live with for the rest of their lives. Because child abuse is a long-term problem, it impacts not only the child and family, but also the society as a whole. Children who are abused usually end up with self-esteem problems and lose their self-confidence. Therefore, they end up getting addicted to drugs or alcohol, which can create problems for their whole community. As adults, children who have experienced child abuse suffer long-term consequences physically and mentally, which can cause them to have more chances of abusing their own children; therefore there should be more ways to help children and adults cope with their devastating childhoods so that their children wont have to go through the same thing growing up (Mersch).