Professional Documents
Culture Documents
TYPES OF RECORDING
(A) Process
(B) Summary
(C) Verbatim
(D) Non-Verbatim
PROCESS RECORDING-
• Process recording is a form of recording used frequently by the
caseworker.
• In this type, the process of interview is reported and is a rather detailed
description of what transpired with considerable paraphrasing.
• It preserves a sequence in which the various matters were discussed.
• It includes not only what both the worker and the client said but also
significant reaction of the client and changes in mood and response.
• In this the interview and observation go hand-in-hand. It may be verbatim
or non-verbatim reproduction.
SUMMARY RECORDING-
Summary is a good device for organising and analyzing facts.
INTERVIEW
What is an Interview?
• Involves communication between two individuals.
• Interview means face to face conversation, or questioning, for the
purpose of eliciting information to understand and analyze issues
/problems in question.
Home Visits
Importance:
1. Case worker creates awareness of the client’s condition with his family
members.
2. It is to reduce anxiety, stress, and depression.
3. It facilitates to maintain the relationship between the client and the case
worker.
4. It is the powerful techniques compared to other technique.
• Families experiencing significant difficulties present a challenge to the
helping professions, especially when the safety or well-being of children
and other family members is at risk.
• Commonly there are multiple problems that are embedded in the social,
emotional and psychological functioning of individual family members and
in their patterns of interaction – both with each other and with their wider
social networks.
• Historical and structural factors in society that are beyond their control,
such as poverty, racism, sexism, unemployment and shortage of affordable
housing, add further layers of difficulty and reduce the family’s capacity to
thrive.
• These difficulties are intertwined and deeply embedded and will not be
resolved through a simple programme or therapeutic intervention.
• Commonly these families do not believe that change is possible and are
reluctant to seek help, or actively resist it.
• Bringing services to the family in their own home seems a self-evident
solution.
• A home-based intervention does not require a client to come to an
appointment, attend a programme or participate in a group.
• The worker joins the family in their home base and sees their reality
through being part of their lived daily experience.
• The worker is on the spot and they can address issues as they arise.
• This type of service requires a special kind of professional engagement
that values and respects the family, conveys warmth and caring, and
hooks into the family’s own underlying yearning to live their lives
differently.
• This work requires well-integrated professional practice that can support
and encourage yet also firmly address anything that will jeopardize the
safety and wellbeing of children and other vulnerable members, and do it
in a way that maintains a real human relationship with the family.
Listening
• Listening involves skill it is part of communication skills.
• According to Patrick O' Neill, listening is the 'ability' to welcome different
points of view and suspend judgment and evaluation of others. Listening is
the 'ability' to put compassion and intimacy to work in a relationship.
• Listening is the key to maximize human resources in the areas of
Creativity, Productivity and Problem solving.
• Understanding the clients’ words and feelings as accurate as possible.
• Social case worker should have sharp intellectual memory to solve the
problems of the client.
• Active listening will strengthen the social case work process.
• Good listening skills are at the heart of a social workers' communication
efforts.
• A case worker who applies the same good listening skills will develop
insight into her clients problems and be able to respond effectively.
• Listening is critical to communication, as communication goes both ways.
• A case worker that makes the time to listen to her clients will benefit
herself and her employees, and that will make her job easier.
• Good listening skills are as critical as having the ability to speak to people
from different backgrounds.
Communication Skills
• As part of their jobs, effective social workers learn communication skills
that allow them to interact with people from all lifestyles and
backgrounds.
• Social workers employ strong communication skills to help people feel
comfortable around them.
• They make it easy for people to approach them. They may alter their
communication style to suit the group they talking to.
• Social workers operate in diverse settings; they may need to communicate
in bureaucratic settings, office meetings, schools, churches or face-to-face.
• A case worker who learns to tailor her communication style to the
person/group she is with will benefit from learning this aspect of social
worker communication skills.
• Good communication skills hinge on self-awareness. A social worker uses
self-awareness to ensure that she doesn't impose her own beliefs or ideals
onto her clients.
• A social worker’s nonverbal behaviors can go a long way when it comes to
communicating. Social workers should make eye-to-eye contact when
speaking with clients and those involved with their care.
Verbal & Non-Verbal Communication
• Verbal communication is a key skill in social work practice and "refers to
face to face interactions and involves the impact of the actual words we
use in speaking" (Thompson, 2009).
• It is importance for social workers to be aware of how and what they say
in certain situations; for example, in regards to the issue of formality.
• If the social worker does not access the situation correctly they may be
conceived as being too formal or informal and thus will inevitable create
barriers.
• Non verbal communication is a major component for interpersonal skill
repertoire and includes posture, facial expression, proxemics(social
distance), eye contact, and personal appearance (Kadushin and Kadushin,
1997), and it can support or contradict verbal communication.
• "Non verbal decoding refers to the capacity to understand the emotions
conveyed through others' nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, body
movements, and voice tone. Nonverbal encoding refers to the capacity to
express emotion through nonverbal cues.
Rapport Building
• Rapport is a state of harmonious understanding with another individual or
group that enables greater and easier communication.
• In other words rapport is getting on well with another person, or group of
people, by having things in common, this makes the communication
process easier and usually more effective.
• A social worker’s nonverbal behaviors can go a long way when it comes to
communicating. Social workers should make eye-to-eye contact when
speaking with clients and those involved with their care.
Observation
• It is the process of noting down things/people/process/situations.
• It is the most important component in the case work process.
• Here the following things to be observed general appearance of the client,
facial appearance of the client, gestures and postures of the client,
emotional feelings of the client, rapport of the work with the client.
Collateral Contacts
• The contact other than the family member is called as collateral contact.
• The case worker collects information about the client in his working
atmosphere, with his friends and also from the society where he is
maintaining relationship.
• Eg: Friends, neighbours, colleagues, employers etc.
• A collateral contact is a source of information knowledgeable about a
household's situation.
• The collateral contact typically either corroborates or supports
information provided by household members.
• Collateral contacts are often used in child custody cases to obtain
information about a child, parent or other person responsible for the child.
• In these cases, the collateral contact often has knowledge of the family
situation without having personal involvement in the situation.
• Collateral contacts provide a third-party validation of the household
circumstances and help ensure correct information(in most cases)
• A caseworker often asks for the names of several persons for use as
possible collateral contacts.
• The caseworker can request this contact information during face-to-face
interviews, during a home visit, by telephone or in writing. The caseworker
uses the collateral contact to support statements made by household
members or to determine eligibility factors.
• The caseworker normally determines whether the specific case requires
collateral contacts and what kind of information to request from these
contacts.
DIFFERENCES-
1. In counseling help is provided to the client without social services
whereas in case work administration of services (concrete help) is a major
treatment strategy to solve problems
2. Agency is not essentially required in counseling but social case work is
always practiced in agency settings
3. Counseling is concerned most of the time with one type of problem but
in case work the client is studied and understood as a whole.
4. In counseling the emphasis is on the problem not on the person
concerned, but in social case work the emphasis is basically on client and
the type of service is provided
5. Counselor is independent in the counseling practice but the case work
services are provided through agency.
Psychotherapy-
• Operates in a medical wing.
• Special types of tools and techniques are employed.
• Deals with individuals having severe or acute problems.
• Considers psychology as the only basis for studying individuals.
• Does not recognize the importance of socio-economic factors for solving
the problem.
• Touches a few problems but goes very deep in studying those problems.
• Involves one-to-one relationships
• Treats each individual as a unique personality and helped accordingly.
• Deals with issues of transference and counter transference.
• It is usually a long term relationship (20-40 sessions) over a period of 6
months to 2 years.
• Makes use of various tools to understand the psychological makeup of the
clients.
• Concerned with deeper and complex intra-psychic conflicts and
personality issues.
• It focuses on reconstructive change.
• It is provided in both outpatient and inpatient settings.
• Emphasizes the past more than the present.
Structure of Personality
• Personality is the overall picture of the characteristic behaviour of the
individual.
• Behaviour includes thinking, feeling, speaking and doing. The concept of
personality growth is complex and requires special knowledge and skills to
identify different aspects of the personality.
Factors Influencing Personality
• A well balanced personality means fulfillment of needs and adaptation to
the environment. But, over the course of time one finds a large number of
obstacles to adequate personality development.
Faulty parenting
• Inability of parents to fulfill the needs of their children due to lack of
material resources, ignorance or lack of parenting skills lead to impaired
personality development.
• Parents sometimes indulge into severe child rearing practices that results
into a strenuous relationship between parent and child, resulting into
personality malfunctioning.
Socialization
• Most of the ego functions of growth develop through the process of
socialization. Those parents, teachers and elders (primary socializing
agents) who have some understanding about children’s needs are able to
rear children in such a way that fosters the operation of ego functions.
• There are things that child should have, and many things that child does
not need, and possession of which may have adverse effects. The
socialization has to operate within the agenda of legitimate freedom and
restraints.
Over protection
• Overprotection hampers the development of ego apparatus.
• When the children have a smooth and comfortable life without their
having to flex their own physical, intellectual and emotional muscles, there
is very little scope for the operation of ego functions like impulse control,
tolerance of frustration, postponement of gratification, reality orientation
and the like.
Strong superego
• It means a person is guided by certain principles and standards of
behaviour.
• If the parents themselves have a very strong superego, then it is easier for
children to imitate them and form a strong superego in them.
• But families which try to inculcate values in the children by punishment
and intimidation, it is likely that the children may accept parental teaching
in a superficial way or reject them, or develop a superego which is rigid
and punitive.
Superego-ego balance
• In a healthy ego-superego relationship, the guilt feelings generated by the
superego are handled effectively by the ego, so that other functions of ego
are not affected by the guilt feelings.
• When the superego is rigid and punitive, the superego-ego duo becomes
ill-matched, creating situations in which guilt feeling overwhelm the ego,
thus affecting the personality as a whole.
• For example, there are individuals who commit suicide because they are
not able to cope with their own guilt feelings.
Techniques
Counselling,
Supportive,
Resource enhancement
Clarification,
Interpretation,
Suggestion,
Developing insight,
Identification, and
Environmental modification,
Counseling
• “counseling is an interaction which occurs between two individuals called
counselor and client which takes place in professional setting and is
initiated to facilitate changes in the behaviour of a client”.
• Counseling is a method of guidance of an individual. It helps the client to
grow to greater maturity by allowing the individual to take responsibilities
and to make their own decisions.
Counseling has six major goals and they are:
Achieving positive mental health
• Resolution of problem
• Improving personal effectiveness
• Modification of behaviour
• Helping to change
• Decision making
Supportive
• Supportive techniques may be implemented at the onset of treatment to
create an atmosphere in which the patient feels stable, which in turn
allows treatment to progress.
• Supportive techniques are maintained throughout treatment to foster a
positive therapeutic alliance
• Luborsky (1984) lists the following techniques as supportive:
1) demonstration of support, acceptance, and affection toward the patient;
2) emphasis on working together with the patient to achieve results;
3) communication of a hopeful attitude that the goals will be achieved;
4) respect of the patient's defenses; and
5) focus on the patient's strengths and acknowledgment of the growing
ability of the patient to accomplish results without the therapist's help.
Elements-
(i) accepting one’s impulses and attitudes – good, bad or previously repressed;
(ii) understanding the pattern of one’s behavior and seeing its connections and
consequences
(iii) looking at a new reality based on a fresh understanding and acceptance of
oneself
(iv) planning new or more adaptive behaviors and actions to cope with reality.
Identification
• Key Activities of the Case Worker in Problem Identification include:
• Finding out the client's views; what do they see as the problem/s.
• Identifying the problem in terms of need rather than the solutions to the
need.
• Exploring the client's strengths or the good things in their lives.
• Developing a working alliance with the client.
• Brokering other services if casework is unacceptable or inappropriate.
• Collecting all ideas regardless of their merit. This means trying to get a
large number of ideas gathered rather than high quality or feasible
solutions. The Case Worker must refrain from evaluating and clarifying the
ideas until the next stage in the process.
Environmental modification
• There may be aspects in the client’s environment that may be contributing
to the problem situation.
• Bringing changes in the environment could be helpful.
For example, a drug addict could be told to avoid the company of friends who
persuade him to take drugs.
An alcoholic’s wife could be advised to take extra care not to label her
husband as an alcoholic when he is on the road to recovery.