Social work is a profession that is more of a calling. Social work involves serving people at their personal level with issues of life. As a social work student, practice through internships is important for developing crucial skills for future practice. In-class studies are also very important in equipping a student with social work knowledge. However, this knowledge is sometimes not directly applicable and therefore requires an investment in practicing. Social workers can practice on a private basis or in organizations that deal with needy persons such as the disabled, elderly, or other groups of people with special needs. While both private practice and organization based social work practice provide an environment for practice, organizations provide better practicing ground. This is because the organizations provide a larger number of people with diverse challenges from which students can practice their classwork knowledge and also learn.
Description of The Agency
During my internship, I worked at Better Home – a home for the disabled. Better Home is a religious-based agency and had a population of about 90 special needs children and young adults by the time I was serving there. As enshrined in the organization’s mission, the purpose of Better Home is to transform the lives of differently enabled persons through holistic education and provision of basic needs to the needy. Better Home operations are funded through government support and charity from well-wishers. Better Home has a wide range of infrastructure and special needs teachers and support staff to support children with different needs including physical needs and mental needs.
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Better Home serves people from all walks of life regardless of their affiliations. The home caters to both boarders and day to day children who live with their parents and are brought to the home every morning. The care home is often assessed by the relevant government agencies to ensure that they are conforming to the set regulations. The management of Better Home is committed to meeting the needs of the children brought into the organization. To promote mobility, the structures in the home are built to allow easy movement of persons. Again, Better Home ensures its facilities are well maintained. This is usually for the purpose of improving the safety and comfortability of the population that it serves. The organization provides a safe environment for the inhabitants.
Better Home ensures that its staff is competent by acquiring trained staff and conducting regular training as during practice. Some of the responsibilities of the staff include ensuring children’s safety while within the premises of the home by preventing any form of bullying and abuse to the children, dealing with any incidences of accidents, and ensuring the home is hygienic. For professional practice, the children are also asked for their consent when the need arises such as in providing medication especially for the disabled who live in the home. Where the clients are not in a position to give consent, the organization requires that consent be sought from relevant persons such as guardians. In addition, to promote good health among the children, the staff provide a quality diet.
The history of Better Home goes back to 1990. As the story goes, there was a single mother who had two children who were mentally challenged. The woman was a devout member of a local Catholic Church. After some time, the woman passed on leaving behind the two children at their teenage. As a result, the church made a home for them to be living in the church compound while being attended to by the church staff. This step gave birth to the idea of starting a home for the needy. This led to the establishment of Better Home which today serves the mentally disabled, the deaf, the blind, the dumb and those with other physical disabilities.
Since Better Home serves a wide range of people with disabilities it requires a set of skills and professionals. Better Home requires healthcare professionals, social care professionals, special needs teachers, and support staff. Healthcare and social work professionals are necessitated by the fact that sometimes the children are not in a position to explain their health statuses explicitly. Therefore, through the help of healthcare professionals, health issues can be easily addressed before becoming worse. Social work professionals are important in giving care to the needy. In this case, they create a better environment whereby the children feel appreciated and encouraged just like other people. The lack of showing concern to people living with disabilities causes them to develop withdrawal syndromes that may plunge them into other psychological problems.
Social justice for the disabled is one of the key concerns in the world today. Better Home has invested greatly in to ensure that the children who it serves get the best services. For instance, as earlier mentioned, the home buildings are constructed in a manner that allows easy movement of the physically disabled. Those who use mobility aiders such as wheelchairs and crotchets can easily move around because the buildings have no obstructive staircases. The institution has enough workers who provide assistance to the children whenever they need assistance. Moreover, besides the traditional curriculum, the institution provides additional recognized education which addresses issues related to special needs persons. In addition to helping the students to develop skills that may help them in the future, it also aimed at helping them develop important life values such as tolerance. The education helps the learners to recognize and appreciate various ethnicities and people who are differently enabled. This kind of education is above the normal topics associated with the disabled such as homelessness, prejudice, racism among others. Moreover, Better Home upholds all governmental regulations concerning people living with disabilities. As the regulations require, the institution provides an environment that promotes child development just like for normal people. The rights of the children are respected at all levels. Better Home management does not tolerate any form of abuse to the children.
My Helping Process
During my internship placement at Better Home, I mostly served the students in preparing and writing their exams. My activities revolved around identifying the group that is required to write exams, preparing the ID cards for the students eligible for the exams, and administering the exams. From my studies, I understood that people with disabilities usually have some challenges, especially when undertaking activities that require concentration. Therefore, I ensured I consulted with the organization’s exams department to allocate the correct timing for various exams. For instance, the blind requires a lot of time to formulate what statements say and answer accordingly. They require a double of the normal timing for a normal paper. Exam timings depend on the abilities of the student to interpret information and formulate answers.
It is on the training that I realized the various persons required to facilitate easy learning. For instance, students who have problems with understanding information that is passed orally require an interpreter. As I helped learners to write their exams, I worked together with an interpreter in the class for the dumb. The interpreter is a qualified individual who works in the institution for delivering interpretation services. Again, the vision-impaired students require readers who readout the set of exam instructions to the learners. Better Home uses its teachers for such an activity. In addition, for those who cannot write due to physical disabilities such as deformed hands and fingers, they use scribes who write for them. Oftentimes, I helped some students to write their exams as a scribe. For the purpose of ensuring credibility in the exams, the readers, scribes, and interpreters are required to practice ethically by adhering to a set of regulations.
Although the set timings for different exams were considerate according to the regulations of the institution, sometimes the set times did not work. For instance, while helping the students to write their exams, sometimes it would take more time to communicate between the learners and their aiders. During my practice, when helping a student as a scribe, it would sometimes take long to put down to paper what the student tells me to write because of any delays in processing the requirements of the exam questions. Again, those with psychiatric challenges would often develop conditions such as anxiety that would require them to be given time for relaxation before they continue with their exams. My communication with my social work supervisor helped me develop patience when working is such an environment.
To help the institution in the better administering exams, I tried to formulate recommendations. After observing for some time, I realized that some of the students required more special attention when doing exams. I found out that some learners had more difficulties when undertaking exams in the afternoon hours than when compared with the morning hours. This would happen due to fatigue and impaired concentration especially due to many mental engagements when writing earlier exams. Again, sometimes, disabled students who need to use special equipment cannot complete several exams in quick succession. In addition, when the exam timings are long, it causes a lot of fatigue to students with disabilities since they are required to remain in a particular body position for the length of the exam. It is therefore, prudent for the institution to consider splitting the time for long papers, change schedules to accommodate exams which require the use of special equipment, and allocate exams in the earlier hours of the day to help students who have fluctuations in concentration.
My supervisor was very instrumental in helping me to practice professionally. Occasionally, I would share out my experiences with him while seeking clarity on several issues. For instance, I would encounter learners who are discouraged in their lives and they do not see the value of living especially with the disabilities they have. Since I was inexperienced in guidance and counseling, I would reach out to my supervisor to seek wisdom on how to go about some issues such as suicidal intentions. Moreover, I used the knowledge I acquired from my studies to undertake basic social work practice. In addition to class knowledge, I relied on the code ethics for social work to make crucial decisions. I realized that sometimes social work puts practitioners at situations that can force them to compromise on their practice. For example, as I helped some learners to write their exams, sometimes they would ask me to answer some questions for them. Following the organization’s code of ethics and the code of ethics for social work helped me to make better decisions.
The Impact of The Internship
My internship placement at Better Home helped me to learn a lot with regard to social work practice. First, I learned to appreciate that it is okay to not know. As I entered into the practice, I was prepared to show my competence as I had acquired knowledge through classwork. However, occasionally my clients would ask me questions that I would find difficult to answer especially when trying to advise them. For instance, some of the clients would ask me to try relating myself with their feelings or how their families feel when they are disabled. Others would argue that I cannot understand them because I am not disabled. Often, I would try to answer my clients' concerns using my class knowledge but sometimes it did not work. After some time in practice, I realized that it is right to not know and put myself to learning. It is at such moments where I would reach out to my supervisor for assistance.
Moreover, my internship placement at Better Home helped me to develop critical values for social work. In addition to my moral values and ethical principles, the experience helped me to instill real-life experiences such as empathy. I realized that for a social worker to work effectively amongst the disabled one needs to go down to the point of identifying with their statuses. In most cases, people living with disabilities tend to have relational problems with those who do not have disabilities because they feel that they are disadvantaged. Therefore, a social worker should patiently deal with them and relate to their disabilities. The experience internship experience helped me to develop empathy, kindness, patience, and communication skills. These skills are crucial for any successful social worker. In addition, my experience helped me to utilize my passion for social work. It helped me to be certain that social work is my calling. By the completion of the internship program, I had resolved to practice and study further in social work.
Feedback from clients is social work is important to help promote professionalism in the service. During my internship, I would frequently ask my disabled clients about my practice. Although some of them were positive to praise me for my practice, others felt that my practice was substandard. Those dissatisfied with my practice challenged my virtue of patience. As a social worker who wishes to learn, I had to take the challenge positively and committed myself to change for the better in professional practice. I realized that patience is crucial in working with people who have disabilities. This is because sometimes they may take to execute duties especially in learning new things. Also, since the disabled are somewhat incapacitated, they may take more time in undertaking duties that they are expected to do by themselves such as hygiene, social workers working with them require to be more patient with them. Agreeably, it was challenging for me to put classroom-acquired knowledge into practice.
My internship at Better Home helped me to appreciate the importance of relationships. In field practice, social workers face dilemmas that they have to address. As an intern, I kept relying on my supervisor for critical decisions. This is because knowledge is acquired over time and experienced workers have a lesser probability of making mistakes than inexperienced workers. For example, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes I would be faced with guidance and counseling matters that were challenging for me to handle. I would, therefore, consultant my supervisor for advice. At one point, my supervisor had to visit me at the institution to help in counseling a depressed client. I recognized the importance of maintaining professional relationships since people have varied levels of expertise. Again close ethical relationships with clients are helpful in addressing the clients' problems. Client-worker relations that are not restricted by ethical practices usually breed unethical conduct that would translate to other professional problems.
In conclusion, my internship placement at Better Home provided me with an ideal opportunity for me to practice in my field. The experience I gained from the placement shaped my social work career and afforded me valuable skills that I would like to carry on to my future professional practice. From the internship placement, my classwork became more relevant and it broadened my understanding of social work principles. The internship helped me to develop important relational skills and values which are applicable in any area.
