Social Worker Field
Name: Monique Headley Course/Section: BEHS453 6980 Project #1 Paper Social Work is a profession for those with a strong desire to help improve people’s lives. Social workers assist people by helping them cope with and solve problems they may have in their daily lives, such as family and personal problems and dealing with relationships. Social workers assist can be child, family, and school social workers. They all provide social services and assistance to improve the social and psychological functioning of children and families. Some social workers specialize with child protective services, adoption agencies, or foster care.
In this particular situation, I interviewed a friend of mine’s social worker Ms. Ayunda. A social worker serves as the link between the child and families. She addressed problems such as the child misbehavior, family problems, parent drug problem, family abuse, etc. Ms. Ayunda has been a social worker for 6 years. She has worked as a Social Worker for Child and Family Services Agency in Washington, DC. Her duties include, working a 40 hour week and some weekends meeting with clients, attending meetings, and coordinating services to help assist with the child or family. Ms.
Ayunda is a family social worker. She provides social services and assistance to families. She keeps a record and history of all family updates, concerns, interests, and conflicts. If any abuse or neglect is present, she reports it to child protective services, and from there a resolution happens. Sometimes a child will be placed with a foster home, foster care, or adoption agency depending on their home situation. It has to be hard as a social worker to deal with people’s behavior, children feelings, and emotions. You must have to emotionally be strong and ready to handle anything in this career field.
The academic training that prepared Ms. Ayunda for her Social Worker career was first receiving a bachelor’s degree in Social Work. Then she received her master’s degree in social work after 2 years where she concentrated on her chosen field. That helped her develop the skills required to perform clinical assessments, manage large caseloads, take on supervisory roles, and a way on how to explore things upon a client’s need. Ms. Ayunda then got her license in DC & MD, which is a requirement for social work practice and the use of professional titles.
Also, Ms. Ayunda stressed that as a social worker you have to be strong, responsible, willing to work independently, and able to communicate well with your clients and colleagues. Right now I am pursuing my BA degree in Psychology. My interest is Social Worker now and I will defiantly look into this. The reason why Ms. Ayunda became a social worker is because she wants to make a positive impact on someone’s life. She is furthering a cause that she is passionate about and she wants to help countless others overcome comparable obstacles.
There are so many stories and situations she witnessed of children being abused and neglected in their homes or parents struggling and can’t afford to take care of their child. She even runs into families who parent(s) are on drugs. To make a change and to be that person to make that change is an honor. The challenges that she has faced were when she had to take action and have CPT take children from their home because their parents were on drugs, neglected their child, abused them, or another serious issue. Few parents spoke harsh words to her and acted very violent.
Even the child will not speak to her because they felt as though it was her fault they were taken away or they didn’t want to get in trouble by their parent. The child will be crying for their parents and it is just a situation that you never want to happen because you don’t want to break up a home or separate a child from their parent. As far as balancing your work with your life responsibilities beyond work Ms. Ayunda just recognize her boundaries and separate her professional and personal lives. That has to be so hard to see and witness a child’s pain and their parent’s pain.
I really felt for Ms. Ayunda at that moment when she mentioned the challenges she faced. In one case a mother was on drugs, had bi-polar, and was schizophrenic. The mother had a 9 year old son and the case opened when she had an episode walking with her son on the highway into traffic and saying that she was going to kill herself. Someone reported other things to Child Protective Services that the mother neglects the child and he stays out real late at time. The mother did have drugs in her system when tested.
For the fact that the mother was using illegal drugs and had a psychological sickness made her even worst. The 9 year old mother was not herself when she did drugs or didn’t take her medication. When you are on drugs you tend to abuse your child and when they interviewed the boy he did mention that his mother abused him. It was not the form of punishment abuse, but she would hit him obsessively to a point he will have marks on him. The boy even came to school with a black eye the next day he got suspended from school. When he got suspended he was scared to go home.
They put the boy in counseling and some days he would not speak to the counselors scared he will get in trouble by his mother if he does. There were many more episodes that occurred and the child had to be taken from Child Protective Services. Family violence is an act by a member of a family or household against another member of the family or household that is intended to result in physical harm, bodily injury, assault, or sexual assault, or that is a threat that reasonably places the member in fear of imminent physical harm or bodily injury (Gosselin, 2010, pp. 31).
Child abuse and child neglect is defined as any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation, or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of serious harm (Gosselin, 2010, pp. 93-94). A child that is being physically abused behavior indicators is withdrawal, aggressiveness, frightens of parents, afraid to go home, reports of injury by parents (Module 3). In Ms. Ayunda case the child was abused by his mother and hurtful things were said to him as well.
Emotional abuse plays a role in the mother and 9 year old boy’s case. Emotional abuse includes excessive, aggressive, or unreasonable parental behavior that places demands on a child to perform beyond his or her capabilities (Module 3). The signs of emotional abuse are uncommunicative behavior, unreasonable fearful or suspicious, lack of interest in social contacts, or evasiveness (Gosselin, 2010). I think that a lot of hurt is said to a child when their parents are using drugs and also are bi-polar/schizophrenic because they are not themselves.
The mother’s background explains a lot. My friend was abused by her son’s father and she was raped by her uncle when she was in her young teens. Her mother’s mother was schizophrenic, so that was a genetic psychological behavior that passed to her. A lot of times when you do not get counseling and you are raped at a young age it can really mess you up. Some people turn to drugs because they think that drug’s heals them, makes them feel better, and forget their problems. Really they need to receive psychological help or counseling.
It looks like the boy’s mother went through a lot and as she got older she got worst. Now, her son is receiving counseling and I think that is good because the things his mother done to him, around him, and him being taken away from his family really can affect him. After reading the Modules and Textbook I came across that the boy was being neglected by his mother. Neglect is defined as failure or refusal to provide care or services for your child when there is an obligation to do so (Gosselin, 2010). Neglect is one of the primary types of family violence in the textbook.
When you leave a young child unsupervised or unattended that can be considered as neglect and many people do not look at it like that (Gosselin, 2010). Module 3 describes three types of neglect and how child neglect is the failure to provide for the child’s basic needs. In this case the mother was doing self-neglect. The mother was refusing to take her medications for her psychological behavior and using drugs in her household which makes it an unsafe living condition because she could flip out on her child, go crazy, or not be herself.
She is unable to pay her bills or manage her finances due to her addiction. Personally, I have learned a lot from the interview and from the readings. I think that the readings related to the case situation that the social worker mentioned. Child protective services were involved in this case. I think that they made the right decision into getting the 9 year old boy into their custody. If he stayed with his mother any longer he would not have got counseling, psychological help, and he would be pretty messed up.
Some young children show behavioral issues or act out when they go through family or household problems. As a social worker it must be hard to get involved in situations and cases like those. References Gosselin, D. (2010). An Introduction to the Crimes of Family Abuse. History of Violence in the Family, 4, 31-56. Gosselin, D. (2010). An Introduction to the Crimes of Family Abuse. Child Abuse, 4, 85-112. Module 3 Commentary: Domestic Violence: Children, the Youngest Victims.
