Social work placements are diverse, varied, and unique. The aim of any such placement is to gather learning and experience and enable one to have strong practical skills in the future. Social workers are needed to be highly skilled and have vast knowledge pools for working effectively. For the sake of the improvement of skills and knowledge, it is crucial to develop a rigorous understanding of models and theories of social work (Parker and Bradley, 2010). It is important to recognise that social work is a complex human activity with no specific rights or wrongs for various situations. With the placement at Addaction, I came to realise that the profession of social work is about changing the lives of the people looking for social support and protecting them and not about providing a fluent explanation for how they get into difficulties and linking theories with it. The placement enabled me to acquire learning in the practical application of the social work knowledge and strengthen the ability to solve problems and make decisions and give hope to the people having a reliance on the social services (Fenge et al., 2014).
Problem-solving skills have also been one of the main skills which have strengthened over time during the placement at Addaction. During the whole period of placement, my journey has enabled me to conduct myself as per the code implemented by the British Association of the Social Workers BASW and the Health Care Professional Council HCPC. The placement not only made me responsible, but also forced me to be more disciplined. The practice of taking notes during lectures, raising questions about best practices and regularly applying guidelines has made me more professional and disciplined. The exposure to different personalities has enabled me to understand how varying religious beliefs, experiences, family environment and values shape the situations and the varying response of the individuals to the situations (Walker, Crawford and Parker, 2008).
Social Workers are required to have a professional understanding of a wide range of professional and academic disciplines into a coherent and usable form that can be practically used as well. Professionalism, like in all disciplines, is much needed in the practice of social work as well. The placement at Addaction has taught me well about professionalism and made me realise how and what professionalism changes in one’s personality. With more discipline and punctuality in my personality, I learned to become more professional in my routine work. The following of the BASW code of conduct has required me to be mindful of my conduct as well. All the mandatory training during the induction process was attended by me who helped me familiarise with the best practices of the organisation and its policies (Watson, Burrows and Player, 2002). All requirements of professionalism such as introducing me by showing the ID and acquiring consents were fulfilled during the placement at Addaction. The placement at Addaction has helped in the growth of my knowledge of professionalism during the work hours. I learned that good attendance on the social work placement and being reliable and punctual is needed for becoming professional. I learned how to present myself professionally in meetings (Williams and Rutter, 2015).
During the placement at Addaction, I have been learning about professional values and ethical values. Having consideration of values like confidentiality, self-determination, respect and empowerment has been at the core of my learning journey at Addaction. The placement enabled us to complete modules on Ethics and Values. I learned to listen to the other point of views and consider disagreement as healthy for any discussion. I now know about treating the knowledge of the service users as confidential. I believe in treating people with respect and having a good understanding of the experiences of the people and respecting their differing views and opinions. I learned during my placement how I could effectively challenge people and also learned how to manage the information as per the Data Protection Act of 1998. During the placement practice, I recognised the social work duties could be quite challenging at times as it can place oneself in the point of ethical dilemmas. I put forward the wants and needs of the service users as important and valued. I have used the company aims and goals to make the service users feel comfortable and valued. Ethical values have helped me overcome difficulties in making the service users accept support and help in their difficult situations.
Social work is all about removing discrimination from society. With the learning of the anti-oppressive and discriminatory laws and practices, I came to know about my own biases and prejudices and how it could have affected my decision making and practice. The prejudices that we have towards various beliefs, values, religions, races or even genders are often unknown to us as well (Thompson, 2012). My placement at Addaction made me realise how I always found myself to be considering myself as having the right opinion as compared to others. I realised that unconsciously I always considered the minority groups as the victim of any situation, which is not always the case.
Furthermore, I learned to listen to others’ opinions and accept their opinions as well. I took part in debates on oppression and learned of the perspectives and experiences of other peoples. I learned that I am a good listener; however, I have been told that I am less confident in voicing my own opinions and usually refrain from it. The issues of social injustice have been more apparent in my view from the time I have been learning about it (Trevithick, 2012). My exposure to Addaction caused me to know how to treat different ethnicities, races, and genders.
I have been very interested in human rights since my early education. It is one of the reasons I opted for social work as my career field. We used to discuss the rights of the people and legislation like the Human Rights Act of 1988 and debated on it. I also attended the Welfare rights session. My interest has enabled me to learn more about economic and social well-being and its related human rights. I have learnt how legislation can affect real life practice. Being of an ethnic minority community, I have been very mindful of the economic and social wellbeing of one individual (Thompson, 2015). I have an understanding of what deprecation, oppression, and poverty mean in reality. I have an understanding of my role as an advocate for the achievement of the common goal. My placement at Addaction has specifically exposed me to young people who have made me mindful of the rights of the Children as per the Children Act. The Care Act of 2014 is also one of the legislations which has been my prime learnings during this placement. I learned that the economic well-being of the young person’s along with the physical, mental and social well-being is as important for the person as the precedent. I helped a service user in paying her gas bill by providing contact with the British Gas helping her make her payments in time.
The placement at Addaction has been mostly centred on the practical implementation of the theories and the policies of the company. Having a good knowledge of the company policies and the functions of the company is important to be known for the conducting of the assessments. The human right policies should be known by the service users, and it is required to understand the norms and policies for confidentiality before starting the assessment. I have received exposure by treating various clients who had issues of psychological cases like suicidal traumas, tendencies, and emotions of negative sense. The confidentiality policy of the company was one of the most important points which were usually cleared first during the assessments to the service users. The Psychological theory along with the developmental and human growth theories was used to help me in practice and make me understand how the social environment of the clients was responsible for their behaviours. One client who had used cannabis shared with me how his father had drinking problems. It enabled me to understand how he is behaving and why he is behaving like this. I made use of the Cognitive Behavioural for the challenging of the client to make use of positive ways of coping with the anxiety as compared to using cannabis (Rutter and Brown, 2011).
The Gibbs Reflective cycle has been of great help to me during my practice. The importance of critical thinking and the use of logical reasoning enabled me to make informed, evidence-based decisions. I knew from the start that along with being a good listener, I need to have good communication skills as well (Horner, 2012). As all good communication starts from being a good listener, I focused majorly on this aspect. Especially in the case of clients with difficult past and current situations, they need to have someone with whom they can share their experiences without fear of being judged. I made use of my good listening skills to enable my clients to trust me with their experiences.
Furthermore, I used empathy and understanding of the client perspective to be more supportive of their current difficulties. The active knowledge and recognition of the service user needs and wants to be helped me analyse their situation and make logical decisions for their improvement and support. I applied creativity in the decision making and problem-solving to tackle the situations and for selection of the best alternative among many available options. I made use of several exercises to strengthen my decision making and critical reflection ability.
The feedback of the colleagues was one of the many important mediums and tools which helped me in growing immensely. The regular meetings with the Supervisor and the feedback from my Practice Educator and the Supervisor On-Site enabled me to become a better social worker. More than this, the feedback and response from the service users have been instrumental in helping me develop and improve my skills. I got to understand the professional values and the discipline of social work more effectively with the help of the responses that I constantly received from my co-workers and colleagues (Parker and Bradley, 2014). My supervisor was specifically very straight forward in pointing out my weaknesses, and it helped me make a good professional. The Reflection and critical research skills developed over the time of the placement have helped me in assisting the needs of the young people and in encouraging them to have access to the services for their support. I have been more prudent and active in getting over the routine work obstacles by critical thinking, and logical reflection skills (Parker, 2010). Strong decision-making skills have enabled me to work on the feedback of the supervisors and helped me to have better service to Addaction.
During my placement, I have been actively reaching out to anyone who needed my support and to those as well whose criticism and feedback enabled me to get better every day. The team meetings had been one source of getting meaningful feedback, and I considered it the prime time for not only acknowledging my efforts but also getting the needed feedback for the daily work. Throughout my work, in the placement, I have maintained a professional attitude and been instrumental in support of many of my service users. For the future, I am very actively pursuing to be placed in a suitable place where I can work with the victims of drugs. My exposure in Addaction made me realise that I am better with clients with difficult pasts as I am empathic and understand their situation and past experiences. My good listening abilities come handy as well. Therefore, any future endeavour involving the drug victims would be highly preferable for me.
In the end, my journey of learning during the placement at Addaction not only made me more disciplined, punctual and professional, but also made me analyse my weaknesses and strengths in an entirely new perspective; in the perspective of being in use for the social work and service users. I came to realise how strong understanding of individual differences; their contexts are important to analyse their true roots of behaviour. The drug addicts trying to look for support and coping mechanisms were the ones who got my attention most. The support that I was able to provide them enabled me to become more passionate about my discipline in future.
References
Fenge, L.-A., Howe, K., Hughes, M. and Thomas, G. (2014) The Social Work Portfolio: A Guide for Students, McGraw Hill Education.
Horner, N. (2012) What is social work? Context and Perspectives, Learning Matters.
Parker, J. (2010) Effective Practice Learning in Social Work, SAGE Publications.
Parker, J. and Bradley, G. (2010) Social Work Practice: Assessment, Planning, Intervention and Review, SAGE.
Parker, J. and Bradley, G. (2014) Social Work Practice, Learning Matters.
Rutter, L. and Brown, K. (2011) Critical Thinking and Professional Judgement for social work, SAGE.
Thompson, N. (2012) Anti-Discriminatory Practice: equality, diversity and social justice, SAGE.
Thompson, N. (2015) Understanding social work: preparing for practice, Macmillan International Higher Education.
Trevithick, P. (2012) Social Work Skills and Knowledge: a practice handbook, McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Walker, J., Crawford, K. and Parker, J. (2008) Practice education in social work: a handbook for practice teachers, assessors and educators, SAGE.
Watson, F., Burrows, H. and Player, C. (2002) Integrating theory and practice in social work education, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Williams, S. and Rutter, L. (2015) The practice educator’s handbook, Learning Matters.
