“The Role Of Professional Values In Community Service Work”
Working in the community services area would usually reflect that a person is working with individuals who are vulnerable and in extensive need of aid. A community worker supports and empowers every client to accomplish their objectives. They assist individuals to receive the encouragement, aid, and services they need; whether it is a disability, mental well-being, monetary, housing, family support, or multicultural. The professional values of social workers are of utmost significance to confirming the appropriate client-practitioner relationship. The study will demonstrate the chief four domains of human service, the social justice concept, and various social challenges experienced by both workers and clients in the community service sector. Finally, it will also outline some theoretical methods supporting professional community service work.
Community service work emphasizes assisting the marginalized people of the nation and vulnerable populations. Professional values permit one to know the primary beliefs and need to succeed in a particular profession. Human service provides everything from counselling as well as healthcare services to shelter, and food provided via not-for-profit agencies and government in order to enhance the happiness and wellbeing of communities by sending a wide series of support and aid to families and people. There are various domains available for human services such as families, individuals, communities, and groups.
In the context of the initial domain of offering social service to families, the values of esteem and veracity for a person's self-determination ought to be taken into consideration that recognize the connections between members of the family. It can be said that all social workers must develop balances in the families where family members can learn to exercise as a cooperative team and fulfill a goal (Ricciardelli et al., 2020).
The most significant domain of the human service is the individual where a social worker is anticipated to determine his/her clients or customers as social beings as well as creatures. It shows that every professional ought to recognise the personal development of individuals and provide the direction which assists them to live their life full of happiness and also survive, both mentally as well as physically (Elintsky et al., 2017).
In terms of the third domain of offering services to the community, it can be said that the social justice concept could be understood as the significant value of professionals that must be focused on and recognised by employees of social service. The main values that must be noted by every staff of social service are the awareness of diversity recognition, greater empathy, social support, and aware their needs are the advantages of social services that are given to communities. Can be understood, for example, social treatment is considered a method that could be adopted to right behaviors of dysfunctional through education, psychotherapy, or other kinds of therapy (David et al., 2018).
The last domain of human service is the group. It infers the aid or help to many individuals who be a part of a sole category, which could be multifaceted by the problem or challenges of social enhancement, communal trust, and privacy needs. In this context, social workers should employ ethical competencies who ought to protect their privacy rights and manage the confidentiality of every client. Consequently, the value of society integration reflects to be vital in order to encourage it in groups, therefore forming feelings of gratitude and connectedness of contribution of each other (Rivas et al., 2019).
Social justice indicates an outline of political goals, followed via political, environmental, economic, and social policies on the basis of an acceptance of diversity and distinctions, and informed by values pertained to; fulfilling equality and fair treatment and results; determining the equal worth and dignity and supporting the self-respect for every person. In other words, social justice refers to the view that all person deserves equal social, political, and economic opportunities and rights. It can be said that social employees' goal is to unlock the door of opportunity and access for every person, especially those in utmost need (Walter, 2017). Economic justice is encompassed by social justice. The concept of social justice refers to the virtue which directs everyone in forming those organised interactions of people a person calls institutions. It also implements on all people a personal obligation to work and cooperate with others in order to frame and constantly perfect one’s institutions as a toll on social as well as personal development. Moreover, it is also ensured that every person in the nation whether a poor, rich, or middle-class individual – has options regarding the means to make those options and how they live (Dollarhide et al., 2016).
As per Taylor et al., (2017), principles of social justice reinforce the description of social work as a profession, its standard of practice, its code of ethics, and education. Several constructs associated with social justice are entrenched in theories of social work. These contain references to disadvantage, marginalisation, oppression, powerless and empowerment, power, and discrimination; injustice, unfairness, inequity, and inequality; the eligibility for services, distribution of resources, opportunity and access for participation, and policy, economic, and socio-political analyses.
Social justice emphasises upholding and respecting the rights of every person. It tries to find resolutions to inequality, and supporters for equitable resources distribution within a nation and community with the aim that all people have the alike liberty and opportunities. Further, social justice contains equity in housing, education, employment, and provisions of healthcare. However, the social justice movement has dangerous impacts in people as it splits society, pushes a person down to bring others up, and emphasises improbable equality.
Significantly, every social worker pursues goals of social justice by working to resolve the injustices, inequalities, and barriers that are present in society and through active engagement in circumstances of personal crisis and distress, the social justice concept is vital to social work exercise. Moreover, educating social staff properly was considered a significant strategy of social justice. However, essential exercises, skills, and knowledge were disputed in previous addresses.
Concerning community service work, it can be said that the social environment is constituted of dual sights on a provided circumstance and perspectives of social workers and clients. The social worker holds assisting roles, practices values, and professional background. On the other hand, the client has a distinct character and indicates a professional to get various assistance. The chief issue experienced by the client and social workers is the insight of the variation procedure. Social workers have techniques and skills, although the decisions, as well as abilities, could arise to be distinct. The discrepancy or variation of views of clients and between the tools to assist results in low efficiency and misunderstanding of the community service work (Oxhandler et al., 2018).
A client’s belief is also considered another social issue. Client’s belief that she/he could be seen as a vulnerable individual because of complaints, health, and concerns. It is very tough for clients and social workers to remove this stigma since working with humiliation, disgrace, and the incapacity to openly and without any hesitation discuss the issues need extra effort and time. In other words, individuals facing mental well-being toughness may feel worried, ashamed, or embarrassed that they would be seen as vulnerable. They could fear that they would be seen down upon by society or that their employment can be in jeopardy. Moreover, social isolation could be very dangerous than anticipated resulting in actual hormone imbalance and physical pain (Bhatti & ul Haq, 2017). Social workers could assist lonely people to enhance entire spiritual, physical, and mental wellbeing by educating the public to effectively support social interaction. Social workers also face issues when working with juveniles who merely lost their mother and father and have no members of the family could leave them emotionally tired. Apart from this, other barriers related to clients include unpredictable social workers' schedules, illiteracy, etc. On the other hand, social workers could face barriers such as abusive environments, lack of people cooperation, and conflict in the community (Crockett et al., 2018).
Nowadays the stigma of mental health is reducing. Nearly every person knows someone who has taken therapy. Individuals want assistance to lessen poor habits, or resolve a terrifying spiral of depression (Klaric & Lovric, 2017). The theory of social work is significant to the social worker’s practice. It gives social workers the theoretical and conceptual techniques to be competent in their tactics. There are certain kinds of theories that is supporting professional community service work. Systems theory sees issues and human action from the individual’s perspective in regard to interrelated and multifaceted systems. It recognises the experiences, and acts of those interrelating within the systems. Those in the system contain clients, clients’ family members, communities, networks, and so on (Shaked & Schechter, 2017). Although one of the critical disadvantage of this theory in social work is that an approach of psychological is sometimes required for treatment.
The transpersonal theory integrates the intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and creative physical being into the sole complete component and resolves the 6 elements correspondingly with the aim of treatment. A fundamental role of this treatment contains forgiveness, acceptance, and wisdom. This could be beneficial in amalgamation with other counseling in providing a sense of welfare and peace to clients (Friedman, 2018). However, this theory has not been much successful in compared to other theories.
Moreover, social learning theory is considered a vital method in assisting social workers to resolve disparaging habits and behaviors. It provides chances for imprinting and learning new acts on the basis of modeling healthier acts. The theory assists client experience, utilizes behavior variation, and models new acts or behaviors in order to prevent unhealthy acts (Bobga, 2016). These are beneficial in addressing behavioral behaviors in which the actually learned behavior is dysfunctional. However, this theory is based on the notion of adapting what is observed as positive as well as successful behaviour in other people, the person is learning to behave or act more like other or someone else.
It can be concluded that the study has demonstrated the professional values that are applied by the workers of community service. After examining the steadfast evidence, it has been stated that individual self-determination, privacy, and social inclusion are considered the chief professional values. There are various domains available for human services such as families, individuals, communities, and groups. Further, Social justice emphasizes upholding and respecting the rights of every person. It tries to find resolutions to inequality, and supporters for equitable resources distribution within a nation and community with the aim that all people have the alike liberty and opportunities. Moreover, individuals facing mental well-being toughness may feel worried, ashamed, or embarrassed that they would be seen as vulnerable. They could fear that they would be seen down upon by society or their employment can be in jeopardy while social workers could face barriers such as abusive environments, lack of people cooperation, and conflict from the community. Finally, the study has demonstrated various theoretical methods or approaches such as transpersonal theory, system theory, and social learning theory underpinning professional community service work.
References
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