In preparation for this blog entry I asked peers, strangers and relatives what they think a social worker's profession entails. As you might imagine, I did not receive an unanimous answer, although there was a recurring theme. The similarities mostly surrounded the notion that a social worker must have the capacity for empathy. Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines empathy as: "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner". I will provide some background on three of the people I spoke to and summarize their images of social workers.
Betsy:A middle-aged woman who has weekly contact with the mental health system while caring for her mother suffering from severe major depressive disorder. Betsy was well aware of a Licensed Clinical Social Worker's role in administering psychotherapy. She is a very lively and personable woman, and thus had spoken to her mother's therapist on several occasions. The therapist once complained to her about the poor wages she was earning. Thus, due to this particular interaction, Betsy relayed to me that she felt social workers were probably underpaid. She also thought social workers could be found in many NGOs, adoption agencies, aid organizations, and public schools.
Cassandra:
A young successful woman working at an investment bank who has had little exposure to the role of a social worker. Cassandra told me she had recently seen a TED video (Technology, Education and Design conferences whose content is shared online) by a social work professor and researcher at the University of Houston called Brené Brown. This video changed her view of the role of a social worker. Cassandra expressed she understood that the social work proffesion entailed research in a field she previously thought was primarily practiced by psychology researchers. I watched the TED videos afterwards, and listened to Brown talk about vulnerabilty, shame and empathy. She focused mostly on shame though, and I found these excerpts, from "Listening to shame" to be particularly relevant to a social worker: We "cannot talk about race without talking about privilege and when people start talking about privilege they get paralized by shame" & "Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, agression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders". I recommend viewing her TED talks:
Brené Brown: Listening to shame
Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability
Ralph:
A young man who is finishing his PhD in Neuroscience. He expressed his conception of a social worker as someone who works one-on-one with people such as with children in a city school, adults trying to find employment, or as a caseworker in an urban setting. He also thought they work with groups of people such as a community organizers and activists lobbying on behalf of social justice concerns. He mentioned specifically that he imagined they could be "someone who knows how to effectively voice the concerns of a minority or disadvantaged group". Ralph's image of social work is a more popularly shared understanding of the profession, according to other people I spoke to during the past two weeks.
This is the second time the term "social justice" has come up in this blog; thus I want to take the opportunity to define what I am referring to. I attempted to define it before reading about its historical background, and this is what I came up with: "An awareness of multiple forms of oppression and the lack of equality on the micro to the macro scale. The individual, institutional and global support of rights and policies for all people to access their culture, religion & language, to economic empowerment, education, health care, democracy, dignity, self expression and self actualization."
Michael Reisch's "Defining Social Justice in a Socially Unjust World" from Families in Society introduced me to this topic's extensive background and contemporary significance. I felt an affinity towards the liberal view which "focuses on the distribution of benefits and burdens and the protection of persons' rights particularly at the level of individuals and others, it also involves the assignment of fundamental rights and duties, economic opportunities and social conditions, and incorporates a principle of compensation or redress (p. 350)." I found redress particularly relevant within the liberal approach to social justice. Reisch explains what John Rawls coined the "principle of redress", as the philosophical foundation for further distribution of wealth and power in order to compensate for inequalities outside of one's control. This was a daunting exercise and I am certain of its imperfection. In fact, I was hesitant to post this initial definition, but I decided to label it a work in progress allowing me to revisit in the near future.
