Personal Philosophy of Practice Paper
This paper is designed to help you explore both course material and personal beliefs about social work practice. The development of a professional identity as a social work practitioner begins as you critically reflect on self and practice in your senior year. While aspects of this paper are personal reflections to critically examine your personal beliefs, you are also required to use course materials to describe the approaches and models you are discussing in your paper. This should be 5-7 pages not including reference or title page. Proofread, answer all questions, use APA format and cite a minimum of five times to course readings this semester. Describe your philosophy of practice by discussing your beliefs about the following: 1. Clients, workers and change a) What do you think are the causes of client problems? b) What is the role of clients and workers in creating change? c) How can workers be most effective in helping create change? d) Why are some clients successful in reaching goals and others less so? 2. Practice strategies: models, theories, perspectives a) What models, theories or perspectives do you feel are most effective? (please provide specifics for why you are answering this way. It is possible that you like a model but are not comfortable using it yetthat is fine, just explain) b) Within these models, theories or perspectives, what techniques or ideas do you find most compelling? c) Given what you know about best practice in your area of work and population, which practice strategies do you feel you should incorporate more in your work? d) Do you think these practice strategies are consistent with your comments about clients, workers and change? 3. Culturally affirming practice a) How is your personal philosophy of practice consistent with culturally affirming practice: working positively with clients who are different from you regarding race, class, sexual orientation, gender, age, ability or national origin? b) (How) does their status in a marginalized group matter for your helping relationship? 4. Values and ethics a) How is your personal philosophy of practice consistent with the values and ethics of the social work profession (as noted in the NASW Code of Ethics and discussed use subheadings to help organize the paper. I think you may benefit from considering that. The requirement was also to use three outside sources in addition to the Walsh book. Lastly, While you discussed using MI, you did not support this statement with any research. According to the research, why is MI good for your specific population?
