I love social work. Because there are only three other social workers at my agency, I do not have many opportunities to be among a large group of comrades. So I was very excited when two weeks ago I had the opportunity to sit and talk with 15 other social workers.
I am supervising a social work student this semester. It is intimidating and anxiety-producing and apparently those feelings reflect a parallel process to my student's experience. I am taking the SIFI course (social workers all know what SIFI refers to, but no one seems to remember what it stands for) so that I can become officially certified in HOW to be a supervisor forever after. And what fun! For two hours on the first day of class, we all shared thoughts about our own experiences as beginning students, and then talked about how we were preparing for our new supervisees. I didn't say much at that point since, oops, I hadn't really thought about any "preparation." Other workers talked about how their agencies had formal orientations for students, had taken the students out to lunch, had already assigned a client caseload for each student, etc..... Hmmm. I hadn't done any of that. But this is new for me, and my agency has not hosted students for a few years--protocol, what protocol??
Despite my sheepish smile of avoidance, I was so glad to listen to all of these like-minded individuals talking about the very unique experience of "field placement" Hearing things like: "What is the organizational culture of your agency; continue to be reflecting and reevalutating as a new supervisor; if your culture is barely organized chaos, provide students with a safe haven" warm my heart. I had forgotten that there is a whole other vocabulary in social work because it has become almost second nature to me. I love speaking other languages!
In today's SIFI session, I sat in a small group with fellow SW's and talked about ethical dilemnas such as: A) Your student presents you with a rather expensive gift on your birthday (or at the end of field placement). Do you accept the gift? If yes, why? If no, why? B) After a few weeks at the agency, your student discloses [social work word!!] that he is gay and wonders if you are gay also. How do you respond?
Perhaps to non-social workers, these questions may not seem like dilemnas. To us, however, they are laden with underlying meanings and messages that are critical to the ethical and professional nature of social work. Finally, at the end of the class, one supervisor talked about how her new student had started co-facilitating a group and was struggling with issues of self-disclosure. She mentioned, in passing, that the group had 23 teenage participants and many people (including myself) gasped. "A group with 23 people??!!" "Group work requires specific skills and planning. What is the goal of the group? Do you think you can accomplish that with 23 people??" As we got up to leave, the woman next to me muttered, "You can't do a group with 23 people. That poor student," and I smiled in recognition---we speak the same language.
Did you know that about 75% of low-wage earners in the USA do not have health insurance? Or that when a man gets divorced his household income increases by 10% whereas a woman's decreases by 27%? Or that only 37% of families headed by single mothers receive child support?Or that since 1977, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of people working full time who are still poor?
POV's presentation this evening, "Waging a Living," was a distressing portrait of four working- poor families representative of the above statistics. One women who takes care of the elderly in a nursing home commented that although she works to make people feel more comfortable and cared for at the end of their lives, she is paid less than garbage men.
This week I also attended a "town hall" for parents and guardians with children involved in the child welfare (or child protection) system. After listening to story after story of parents being ignored, demeaned, and abused by "professionals," my colleague said that she is considering leaving the field. She said, "It's never going to change."
It made me think of the last time I went to family court with a client. The judge asked her if she had requested an order of protection against her husband so that she could get "better housing." My client replied, "No, I asked for the order to protect myself and my child. We are afraid of him."
Goodness, I haven't written in a while. I'm seeing so few clients during the summer that even supervision has been more infrequent. Our major task for the summer is to complete progress notes and treatment plans, evaluate the previous school year, and plan for September. Strangely enough, we’re three and a half weeks into the ever-diminishing verano and I have yet to complete one treatment plan.
But let me write about something I have accomplished, sort of. We've started planning for a fathers group that will begin again in the fall. We tried to implement a support group for fathers last year and we had a limited, albeit enthusiastic, response. In particular, three fathers became dedicated members who amazingly felt comfortable enough to discuss their marital relationships and childhood experiences, and how to talk to their kids about sexuality. I write, "amazingly" because these are Latino men who are traditionally very closed to talking about their family cosas with anyone, let alone two female social workers (thankfully, we have one male colleague helping us facilitate).
I also realize that this is not reserved for Latinos and is quite common among males of many ethnicities as it is generally understood that most males are not socialized to be "touchy-feely." On their evaluations of the group, they wrote things like, "It's really important to share with other fathers," and "I want to learn new ways of communicating with my kids." I realize I am feeding into stereotypes, but I am surprised by those comments, especially from "macho" men. In the parenting workshops that we coordinate, almost all of our participants talk about how in their home countries (Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras...) most parent involvement in education involved a faja, a chancleta, and a vague mandate to "do well in school." This is a generalization, of course, and has a lot to do with socioeconomic status and previous generations' educational attainment as well.
Despite our few eager dads, my colleague is pessimistic about a successful group next year, and she should know. She works with the after-school program and has daily contact with all the parents. "They tell me they are interested, but I see them throw the flyer out as soon as they turn away from me. They don't want to talk to anyone about their families, and they don't even want their wives to come to a support group; they want their mujeres at home."
In situations like this, it becomes very critical to remember that affecting change in just one family can be a success.
I've been away from work for a few days. The school year ended and I've moved out of the school and into my agency's office and took a much-needed (albeit short) vacation. While I was away, I read a fascinating book that I recommend to everyone working in social work, public health, and education, as well as anyone who is Latino or works with Latino communities.
In the Land of God and Man describes how "good girls" are brought up in Latin America and how for the author, there was very little room for questioning the Church, the law and the roles of men and women. She explores abortion (including a disturbing passage on the methods women utilize to perform self-induced abortions), homosexuality, transvestitism, men having sex with men, machismo, and the impact of gender roles on the whole society, including the women who can afford to employ servants and those that live in favelas. A key thread is the effect that AIDS has had on these prescribed gender roles (for example, the infection of "monogamous" wives who married as virgins) and how it is forcing these issues out into the open. The author enriches her journalistic accounts with her own personal experience as a "good girl" in Colombia who becomes "americanized" in the US during high school and college. Toward the end of the book, she discusses how there is no exact translation of the word, “empowerment” in Spanish, despite the widespread use of the term by foundations, organizations and the World Bank to fund and operate programs aimed at “empowering women.” She writes, “Is the word ‘empowerment’ such a foreign and imported –and censored- concept for Latins that there is no space for it?” After I read this, I realized that I have tried to say the word “empower” to many of my Latina clients and never really felt I was translating it correctly. It seems it will take much more than a dictionary to translate that concept.
Today I said goodbye to one of my favorite clients who is also one of my favorite people in general. B just finished the fifth grade and is moving down South on the last day of school. We've been working together since November and she was such a dedicated kid. She came every week and impressed me with her courage and tenacity to work through her sadness and anger. Her parents were in the process of separating (not mutually, however) and she was struggling with the idea of "losing her family." At 5am on the morning of her birthday, she awoke to the sound of police officers in her kitchen arresting her father for alleged sexual assault. A few days before, she had told me that her parents were planning to take her to the Build-A-Bear store in the mall on her birthday and that the three of them were going to have a special dinner together. She was so excited, and I think mostly about her parents spending time together and fulfilling her vision of a "happy family." I told her that it must have been really sad and scary to have her father arrested, especially on her special day. I know I have to say the "tough things" to kids, but sometimes it gnaws at me. I was so furious at her father. It's difficult to sit with kids in that moment and realize that you can't make it better; you can just try to contain some of their rage and sadness.
During the months that we worked together, B constantly amazed me. One day she told me that she was having a hard time finding the words for her feelings. Since she loves to paint, I suggested she try and paint the feelings--their colors, shapes, textures, sizes, etc. I never know what's going to happen when I ask kids to engage in these kinds of activities and B blew me away. She painted these blocks of different colors and varying sizes and then, without missing a beat, proceeded to tell me what each of the blocks represented: sadness and confusion, excitement about new friends, anger, sadness about missing her friends, and finally, a gray block, "this is like nothing, just feeling nothing." She did have the words.
The end of the school year is just a few short days away. Although I don't have off for the summers like Dept of Ed staff, I can work at a slower, less chaotic pace and finally finish up those treatment plans from 3 months ago. But like I told Y, one of my kindergarteners (soon to be a first grader), all change can be difficult, even if we are looking forward to it and even if it is positive. Her mother was concerned about a recent pattern of enuresis (involuntary wetting) during the day and night. Based on Y’s history, particularly that the same thing happened at the beginning of kindergarten, I think she is anxious about the end of the year.
I too feel anxious, but not because I'm nervous about whether or not I will like my new teacher in September. I'm distressed because I can't believe another year has gone by--how did that happen?? I'm anxious because I feel that a change has to occur in my life and soon, and unlike 5 year-old Y, I am the only one who can initiate that change. I've had several moments (even after I passed my mid 20's) in which I reveled in being an adult. Controlling my money, my time, my diet, my vacations and all my decisions, both big and little can be so empowering. But sometimes I just want someone else to make my decisions for me because change can be scary, even if it's for the best. No, I am not wetting my pants at work, but sometimes I feel like I am doing the equivalent--bingeing on ice cream and cereal, crying silently on the subway, window shopping so I can focus on finding a cute summer skirt instead of stressing about how or if to end a relationship, thus changing the course of my life that I thought I was on for the past 5 years.
But I digress. This blog is supposed to be about my job, but lately I've been spending so much time spinning in my head that it's hard to focus on my clients. This can be dangerous because I start to make session content about me--"Why is she pretending like she doesn't hear me?? Why is she angry with me?"--instead of more appropriately considering what my clients are playing out with me (because it's not really "me," it's whoever I've become through transference). Good thing I have a supervisor who brings me back to the clinical context. But sometimes I hear myself making comments or suggestions to a client and I realize that I need to be saying those same things to myself.
"Change can be really difficult and scary, even if you're excited to go to the first grade. Let's think of some times when you've had to deal to change before and how you handled it. It sounds like you were patient with yourself, and you found some things to comfort you, like painting with your mom every Saturday and imagining all the fun things you could do at your new school.
My partner and I were talking about stereotypes the other day and she told me about an upsetting experience she had in college. L was born in Honduras, grew up in Brooklyn, and went to college in a predominantly white, affluent community. At the beginning of her freshman year, she secured a work-study job in one of the college's administrative offices. After the first few weeks, a woman who had been working in the office for several years asked L how she liked the position. L told her that she was enjoying it, and the woman commented, “Yeah, keeps you off the streets, right?” L looked at her quizzically and thought to herself, “Why would I be on the streets?” It took her a minute to realize that the woman saw L’s hair and skin and had made narrow, biased assumptions about her life. Perhaps the worst part of this story is that the woman believed she was being compassionate and understanding. Oh, ignorance.
You might want to take a look if you are interested in social work, children, therapy, culture, race & ethnicity, documentary film, education, "cultural competence" and probably other things.
