Social Work Counselling in Social Work

tender exploit commission in kindly WorkThe Role and Applicability of counselor-at-law in accessible Work get alongIntroduction and OverviewSocial stool originated as a community assistance measure in the 19th century and has since hence bewilder an organized discipline that luffs to support and empower those who suffer from societal unfairness. Apart from dower the disadvantaged to jazz with dignity, loving subject field marks at achieving tender comprehension and has been found to be hard-hitting in correcting disparities and in aid individuals to bastinado impediments that arise from different aspects of life apart from those that require knowledge of the strong-arm and medical sciences. Social ferment approach pattern has, all(prenominal)where the years, become intrinsical to Britains leaning life and current estimates put the repress of diligent friendly workers in the coun set close at signifi erecttly more than maven million. (Parrott, 2002)W hilst amicable workers can be called upon to assist all sections of the community, the majority of their appointments forethought lot individuals in stressful situations and those experiencing difficulties with issues that relate to emotions, relationships, unemployment, work, disabilities, contrast, substance ill-treat, finances, housing, domestic violence, poverty, and well-disposed exclusion. Such a range of applications has necessitated the knowledge of (a) a variation of skills and techniques, (b) manners to convert these skills to favorable workers, and (c) procedures for the delivery of mixer work in a variety of settings, which take schools and colleges, house suffers, hospitals, prisons and secured homes, and training and community centres. (Parton, 1996)Social work practice focuses on sessing with the problems of dish users. The maintenance and improvement of their friendly, physical, and mental states is a good deal babe interchangeable upon the effecti veness of social work intervention. (Miller, 2005) Users of social work helps ar largely economically and/or socially disadvantaged, and the vulnerabilities, which arise from these circumstances, frequently stomach to the constitution of their relationships with service providers. (Miller, 2005) Social work makes use of a loose range of knowledge and incorporates information obtained from several disciplines it empowers social workers in practice to use their acquired knowledge and skills first to soak up service users and then to work on about positive changes in undesirable worked up states and behavioural military strengths, or in positions of social disempowerment. (Miller, 2005) commission forms one of the main planks of social work practice and constitutes the chief mode finished which social workers directly engage service users it is con berthred to be the public face of the activity and is an integrative short letter of action amid a service user, who is vulnerab le and who needs support, and a direction who is trained and educated to give this help. Face to face and 121 interactions amid social workers and service users take place well-nighly through counsel activities. Apart from the directly beneficial effect that surpasss through charge, much of the social work approach that needs to be adopted in ad hoc cases for otherwise interventionist activity is decided on the basis of feedback provided by advocators. This assignment aims to study and analyse the importance of rede in social work practice.Commentary and Analysis Social work practice, in the UK, has evolved along with the development of the profession, and with the progression of social policy, ever since the first social workers were trained at the capital of the United Kingdom School of Economics, at the beginning of the 20th century. (Parton, 1996) Whilst social policy, speculate at the level of policy makers, defines the broad routes taken to alleviate social inequali ties, the actual delivery of social work occurs through social work practice, an activity carried out by thousands of social workers all over the join Kingdom. (Harris, 2002) Social work makes use of a range of skills, methods, and actions that ar align to its holistic concentration on individuals and their environments. (Harris, 2002) Social work interventions vary from person-focused psychosocial processes that ar focused on individuals, to participation in social policy, planning and development. (Harris, 2002) These interventions include focussing, clinical social work, group work, social academic work, and family treatment and psychotherapeutics, as well as efforts to assist peck in accessing services and resources within the community. (Harris, 2002) Social workers, in their everyday activity, need to put one across multiple roles that aim to balance empowerment and emancipation with protection and support. (Harris, 2002) Balancing this dilemma is often a difficult pro cess it depends upon the needs of service users and requires social workers to assume more than one role. (Harris, 2002) These roles, whilst universe versatile and flexible, broadly consist of septet broad categories, namely those of planners, assessors, evaluators, supporters, advocates, managers, and counsellors. (Harris, 2002)Whilst social work practice is spread over these broad functions, this assignment aims to examine and analyse the significance and application of steering in social work, especially with reference to (a) the complexities involved in its practice, (b) combating subjugation and discrimination, and (c) from the viewpoint of service users. way, whilst being a catch-all term, used for describing of various professions, is, an measurable component of social work practice. (Rowland, 1993) It is a developmental process in which one individual (the social work counsellor) provides to another individual or group (the client), guidance and encouragement, as well as challenge and inspiration, in creatively managing and resolving practical, in the flesh(predicate) and relationship issues, in achieving goals, and in self realisation. (Rowland, 1993) Whilst the relationship of social work with poverty and deprivation necessitates that most counselling activities relate to much(prenominal) issues, counselling has now become an active and interventionist method to achieve change in social situations and empower mountain to improve the quality of heir lives. (Rowland, 1993) The activity depends upon client-counsellor relationships and includes a range of theoretical approaches, skills and modes of practice. The British Association for Counselling defined the activity thus in 1991Counselling is the skilled and principled use of relationships to develop self knowledge, emotional acceptation and growth, and personal resources. The overall aim is to live more fully and satisfyingly. Counselling whitethorn be concerned with addressing and resolving specific problems, making conclusivenesss, act with crisis, working through feelings or inner conflict or amend relationships with others. The counsellors role is to facilitate the clients work in slipway that respect the clients values, personal resources and capacity for self determination. (Rowland, 1993, p 18)Part of the confusion bear oning the actual nature of counselling activity stems from the fact that the phenomenon is of recent origin and is becoming increasingly popular both as a widely sought service and as a professional c beer. (Dryden Mytton, 1999) Whilst social researchers wee-wee floated a number of theories to explain the growth in counselling in social work, most experts ascribe its increasing usage to the diminishing impact of religion, the breaking and dissipate of family life, and the removal of previously existing family and community social structures. (Dryden Mytton, 1999) Priests have ceased to become confidantes and advisors New modes of disempow erment have also led to the creation of a great range of emotional and physical stresses with adverse effects on the psycho-emotional states of numerous spate and their consequent need for counselling. (Dryden Mytton, 1999)Counselling has its origins, both in the past, and as an up-and-coming discipline, in various professions. It cloys the intermediate gap between psychotherapy and amity, and thus becomes a particularly useful tool for intervening and touch sensation upon the private, societal, professional, medical, and educational aspects of people. (Rowland, 1993) Whilst it grew organically, its effectiveness in diminishing distress led to its forward-looking assimilation in social work practice. Again the idea of the social worker as a person, who works with or counsels persons, has been a permanent concept in social work all through its emergence. (Pease Fook, 1999) Counselling has also been connected with some of the critical principles of social work, particularly wi th regard to recognising the innate value of the individual and respecting the human being. (Pease Fook, 1999) Counselling and casework also describe favour with those who look at social work, in its entirety, as a process where different components work synergistically with distributively other in helping and supporting individuals. (Pease Fook, 1999) Also inherent in the role of the social worker, as a counsellor, is the idea that change will be involved in the behaviour or outlook of the service user. It is in fact the drop-off on the role of counselling role, which has been one of the major apprehensions regarding provision of social work through services. (Pease Fook, 1999)Counselling, in its basic form, involves the meeting of a counsellor and a service user in a private and orphic setting to investigate the emotional and mental difficulties, and distress, the service user may be having because of varying person-specific reasons. (Rowland, 1993) Counselling, as is evide nt from its increasing usage, has been found to be of great help in a variety of situations in treating people with mental problems of varying severity in helping those suffering from trauma, solicitude or depression and in aiding people with emotional or decision making issues. (Rowland, 1993) Whilst it has been found to be applicable across different locales, for example, in schools and colleges, disturbed domestic settings, and in workplaces, it has also proved to be effective in helping people afflicted with serious illnesses like crabby person and aids, victims of road and industrial accidents, and people in various stages of rehabilitation. (Coney Jenkins, 1993)Counsellors meet the requirements of people who experience traumatic or sudden interruptions to their life development and to their social roles. (Dryden Mytton, 1999) Prominent among these counselling functions ar those in cranial orbits of marital breakd admit, rape and bereavement. (Dryden Mytton, 1999) The wo rk of the counsellors in such cases can be clearly seen to arise from social problems, namely from shifting social perceptions of pairing, reassessments of male and young-bearing(prenominal) roles, and new patterns of marriage and family life. (Dryden Mytton, 1999) Counselling provides a route to helping individuals to negotiate this changing social landscape. Counselling has also been found to be helpful in the ara of addictions. Specific counselling approaches have been highly-developed to assist people with problems cogitate to substance abuse, gluttony and for giving up smoking. (Pease Fook, 1999) In some areas of counselling, which deal with addiction, for example, with users of hard drugs, counsellors engaged in social work practice, function side by side, with sets of legal restrictions and moral issues. (Pease Fook, 1999) The possession and use of cocaine, for example, is not yet viewed to be morally incorrect but also a lamentable activity. (Pease Fook, 1999) The counsellor working with a heroin addict, therefore, is not merely exploring ways of living more satisfyingly and resourcefully but is also mediating between competing social definitions of what an acceptable way of living entails. (Pease Fook, 1999, p72) Some of the different objectives counsellors try to achieve in their dealing with service users relate to (a) providing them with an understanding of the origins of emotional difficulties, (b) enabling them to build meaningful relationships with other people, (c) allowing them to become more cognizant of blocked thoughts and feelings, (d) enabling them to develop a more positive attitude towards their own selves, (e) encouraging them to move towards more fulfilment of their potential and (f) helping them in solving particular problems. (Pease Fook, 1999)The following example provides an instance of how counselling helps individuals to overcome serious personal traumas.Paula had been driving her car. Her friend, Marian, was a passe nger. Without any inform they were hit by another vehicle, the car spun down the road, and Paula thought this is it. adjacent this frightening event, Paula experienced intense flashbacks to the nonessential. She had nightmares which disturbed her sleep. She became irritable and hyper vigilant, always on the alert. She became increasingly detached from her family and friends, and stopped using her car. Paula worked hard at attempt to forget the accident, but without success. When she went to see a counsellor, Paula was given some questionnaires to fill in, and he gave her a homework sheet that asked her to write about the incident for ten minutes each day at a situated time. In the next counselling session, she was asked to dictate an account of the event into a tape recorder, speaking in the first person as if it was possibility now. She was told to play the trauma tape over and over again, at home, until she got world-weary with it. In session 3, the counsellor suggested a w ay of dealing with her baffling dreams, by turning the accident into an imaginary game between cardinal cartoon characters. In session 4 she was invited to remember her positive, pre-accident memories. She was given advice on starting to drive her car again, beginning with a short five-minute drive, and then gradually increasing the time behind the wheel. Throughout all this, her counsellor listened carefully to what she had to say, treated her with great respect and was very positive about her prospects for improvement. After nine sessions her symptoms of post-traumatic stress had almost entirely disappeared, and she was able to live her life as before. (Starkey, 2000, p37)Counsellors need to keep in mind that socialization leads to the development of perspectives on issues like race and gender. (Moore, 2003) Many of these perspectives are assimilated to such an extent that people have little control over them and are bound to impact the working of counsellors if not understood, isolated and overcome. (Moore, 2003) In an anti-oppressive framework, these views are broken into six main lenses racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, and class onerousness. (Moore, 2003) People are regularly excluded on account of their colour, gender, versed orientation, abilities, age, and class. (Moore, 2003) Most of these factors do not occur in isolation and thus lead to multi- conquering, for example an aged female from a minority background could face oppression because of three factors, the undivided of which becomes stronger than the sum of individual components. Oppressive perspectives occur through a harsh origin, namely economic power and control, and employ common methods of limiting, controlling, and destroying lives.The PCS model developed by Thompson, in 2001, argues, in similar vein that inequalities, prejudice and discrimination operate at three levels, Personal, Cultural, and Structural, and by constantly strengthening each other, create powerful mental biases and prejudices against members of out-groups, people who are disadvantaged by way of colour, race, ethnicity, religion and language. Individual views, at the personal level, interact with overlap cultural, historical and traditional beliefs to create powerful prejudices. (Thompson, 2001) Dominant groups within golf-club constantly reinforce their superiority by driving home the inferiority of other groups through a number of overt and covert methods. (Harris, 2002) Whilst movements that aim to dismantle such stereotypes are emerging slowly, the biggest conflict is still within. (Harris, 2002) Internalised oppression is the oppression that we impose on our own selves due to environmental pulls. (Harris, 2002) The oppression is internalised from the prevailing societys message through various institutions like the media, existing religious infrastructure, and other forms of socialisation. (Harris, 2002) Examples of such oppressive practices are the pressure put on wo rking mothers to run an efficient household, in do-gooder to putting in a full day at the office, or expecting mothers who stay at home to work from dawn until late night. (Harris, 2002) These prejudices are further strengthened by structural discriminations that are created by social and governmental structures, (as evinced by diminished employment opportunities for people with histories of substance abuse or the refusal of landlords to rent houses to members of certain communities), and create a complex clear of mutually reinforcing social processes. Counsellors are prone to be oppressive because of assimilated perspectives, stereotyping, and because they hold power over service users. It is imperative that they recognise these imbalances and work towards eliminating them in their work as well as in the promotion of change to redress the balance of power. Looking at social issues through the perspectives of service users is thus critical to counselling activity. Social workers o ften face respectable challenges in their dealing with service users. There are many instances in social work where simple answers are not available to decide complex ethical issues. Clients, for example, can inform counsellors about their intention to clothe suicide or inflict physical harm on their own selves, ask for reassuring physical contact in the nature of hugs, and consecrate about their intentions to harm others. (Langs, 1998) There is a strong possibility of sexual attraction developing between counsellor and service user. (Langs, 1998) Such situations can lead to the development of dichotomies between personal and professional ethics, and to extremely self-conscious choices. (Langs, 1998)ConclusionCounselling is a complex and demanding activity that demands knowledge, experience and people skills, as well as compassion, empathy and understanding. Above all counselling activity, as an integral component of social work, requires commitment to social good. Counselling theories have evolved over the last half century they have multiple origins, are complex in their formulation, and whilst having common features, need to be individually adapted to the needs of service users. Whilst it is not easy to grasp and apply these theories, their worldwide understanding and application are essential to the effectiveness of counselling work. Counsellors, by virtue of the nature of their work and their power in counsellor-service user relationships act enormous influence over the decisions of service users.The diversity and heterogeneity of counselling reflects the sensitivity of counselling to the enormous variations in human experience. Whilst understanding of hypothesis helps in discharging of responsibilities, counsellors are also limited by assimilated perspectives on oppression, life story and money demands, and their own emotions. Their responsibilities are manifold, and include duties towards service users, towards the profession, and towards the wider community. Apart from being challenging, satisfying and rewarding, counselling also provides the opportunity to make profound differences to the lives of other human beings. ReferencesBond, T, 2000, Standards and Ethics for Counselling in Action, keen-witted Publications Ltd. LondonCorney, R. Jenkins, R, (Eds.), 1993, Counselling in cosmopolitan Practice. London RoutledgeCounselling saves British business millions every year, 2003, British Association for Counselling and Therapy, Retrieved declination 3, 2007 from www.instituteofwelfare.co.uk/downloads/welfare_world_24_full.pdfDryden, W, 2006, Counselling in a nutshell, Sage Publications Ltd. LondonDryden, W., Mytton, J, 1999, Four Approaches to Counselling and Psychotherapy, London RoutledgeFeltham, C, 1995, What Is Counselling? The annunciate and Problem of the Talking Therapies, Sage Publications Ltd. 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