Disabilities in Social Work
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Abstract
This paper reflects on older people with disabilities in social work. The research paper evaluates information from one book and three articles to present the paper’s claims and opinions. Markedly, the research work summarizes essential discussions in the area, including debates, policies, and their implementation. Social work disabilities in this sector have seen a considerable change as service provision strategies have been changed with time, with a substantial shift from clinical to community care. Together with these systemic shifts and advances in care management, changes were made to the theoretical methods that influenced practice, like the introduction of basic concepts such as uniformity and the social system of disability, which posed barriers to understanding disability and service provision, particularly social work. Working with families, especially with a disability experience, is fundamental to social work practice in this area, are some of the main elements of this work are explored in this paper.
Part 1-LITERATURE REVIEW
Field of Service
Social service workers are dedicated to providing services to communities to make their lives comfortable. The benefits include providing healthcare and counselling (James, Morgan & Mitchell, 2017), food supplies, among others (James, Morgan & Mitchell, 2017). The workers often interact with the community members to assess their needs for particular services or products. The local governments are solely responsible for equipping the social workers with the required resources to ensure they provide adequate and quality services to the community members at all times (James, Morgan & Mitchell, 2017). Usually, data collection is done by the social service workers determining the type of services required and identifying the regions and populations that need them. Local authorities also utilize the data for planning due to the distribution of services and products to particular localities members. Ideally, the needy population within the community is the most prioritized in providing services and delivery of necessities that they may require to live comfortable lives.
Target Population
The target population for social services includes individuals with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities require a range of services and products to maintain a balance in life (James, Morgan & Mitchell, 2017). The individuals considered are those above the age of 40 years and unemployed. Most people about the retirement age do not have people to take care of them, which may expose them to uncomfortable environments, thus contributing to their health deteriorating. Also, orphaned children or those from low backgrounds below 18 will be part of the target population for social work services. Discrimination based on race is against the law, which means that individuals with a disability and meet the criteria will be catered for without considering their racial backgrounds.
Practice Methods
A social casework approach will offer services to the population with disabilities that meet the set criteria. The approach includes having a one on one interaction with the identified parties so that their conditions can be identified and recorded. Often, the social worker would be required to create a comfortable relationship with the individual with a disability to regain their confidence and better understand their individual needs.
Additionally, social group work will help the population of disabled individuals interact with each other (Flynn, 2019). Often, most disabled people rarely leave their homes, making it challenging to interact with others with similar conditions. Therefore, creating a social group would enable all the affected individuals to interact and share their experiences (Flynn, 2019). The creation of such an environment is vital in the result of relationships among the community members. Identification of common problems and solutions would also be possible by creating a social group within the community (Flynn, 2019). The social group members would be guided by the social worker to develop definite routines to help with their emotional recovery process.
Notably, disabilities in social work use medications to help in improving knowledge advances and cognition for practical rehabilitative approaches, whereby psychiatric disabilities’ adults are currently in a position to pursue the required career and personal goals in their societies. This way, the new psychiatric disabilities supported education, which is amongst the current models of psychosocial rehabilitation for mental illness; adults. Notably, the service, principles, and mission which are part of the supported education components are reflected, presented, evaluated, and researched on in various studies, which are provided.
Social Worker Role
The social worker will be directly involved in data collection, identifying the number of people that are disabled and meet the set criteria. The records would be used for planning by the relevant authorities within the local government. The worker would collect data through social interaction with the affected individuals within the community.
Additionally, the social worker will be responsible for creating social groups for all the community’s identified members. The social groups would be used to build better relationships among the community members, especially those with disabilities.
Furthermore, identifying the primary challenges faced by the members with disabilities within the community would be essential. The social worker should address inadequate healthcare, sanitation, and starvation as of interest to the local government (Simcock & Castle, 2016). The identification of the challenges would make it possible for planning and decision making by the relevant authorities. The social worker will also be responsible for connecting the community members with a disability with other professionals to solve underlying issues such as emotional instability, drug addiction, and sanitation, among others.
Part II-FIELD OF SERVICE
Presenting the Problem
Lack of sufficient information about people with disabilities in communities is a significant problem facing the social services section. The data may fail to be updated regularly, making it challenging to design a comprehensive plan on how the available social workers can serve all the affected individuals adequately. The population has particular problems that they face, including poor sanitation and lack of food supplies. Due to the high expenses within the economy, the affected individuals fail to acquire resources that they would require for their daily lives (Simcock & Castle, 2016). Further, inaccessibility to healthcare services makes their lives challenging. In situations where they need medical attention, they may not have accessibility or fail to afford the medications and treatment costs. Eventually, their health gets compromised, with others losing lives.
Barriers to Service for the Target Population
To offer adequate and satisfactory services to the target population, sufficient resources must be available. This is an element that lacks in most social services departments. Therefore, serving individuals with a disability to their satisfaction may be challenging.
Additionally, a lack of sufficient human capital trained in handling persons with disabilities may be a challenge to eventually achieving the set goals and objectives. Professionals skilled and knowledgeable in handling persons with disabilities should be sufficient so that all individuals can receive the help they require in high quality.
Individual & Environmental/Societal Causes of problems
A primary societal problem in communities is a lack of openness when giving personal information to social workers. Often social workers collect data about individuals so that they can identify the best approach to be executed to help them live better lives. However, due to a lack of transparency and trust, achieving the objective of making the lives of people with disabilities better cannot be achieved (Simcock & Castle, 2016).
Additionally, the community members’ lack of responsibility may result in low sanitation within the regions they live in. the people living with disabilities often suffer health complications resulting from poor sanitation. Therefore, when mismanagement of wastes exists, people with disabilities suffer the most.
Ethical Issues & Value Issues for Social Workers in this field
The social workers are required to maintain the privacy of the information collected from every individual. As professionals, the information should be well stored and protected from access by third parties. Breaching the privacy policy with the client would be considered unethical. Additionally, social workers would be required to use their moral ethics to make decisions while interacting with individuals with a disability within the community.
Worthy mentioning, disabled social workers have remained amongst the most marginalized group in the community, particularly with constant struggle, exclusion, and poverty since people do not see them as equal as the ordinary people. Consequently, people do not value them as the other citizens, hence, characterizing their entire lives. Markedly, social work involvement with individuals with any kind of disability has virtually been associated with professionalism. Even considering more of the issue, in the past disability has been featured majorly in social policies in the same way as a disability has existed. Worryingly, the association between individuals with disabilities, the policy, and social work has for centuries not been a smooth one. Notably, the relationship involved a mixture of charity given at its best and at the same time incarceration shown at their worst. This is a trend that has been on existence for centuries to even the present times. This is similar to social work where the same response gamut has been experienced.
Nonetheless, for centuries, social workers with disabilities have positively resulted in requesting for their rights compared to other equal citizens. Unfortunately, their issue has not been listened to, and currently, social workers with disabilities are still neglected, and their cries are not listened to. Nonetheless, now, there are established laws that have been put in place to help in securing the disabled rights such as UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that seeks to control on when by, and how such social workers will be supported.
Anticipated Income
The average salary for a Social Worker is $60008 per year in the United States.
Personal Assessment
I feel that people with disabilities require more attention so that they can live comfortable lives. Most of them are above the retirement age and orphaned, and they do not have people to take care of them. Others may lack sufficient resources to allow them to access medical care within the available facilities. Therefore, I feel that the relevant authorities should be more concerned about the welfare of the people with disabilities that are unemployed and within age limits that they cannot take care of themselves. Besides, the legal authorities should make sure that they come up with social workers’ disabilities movements that will address the problems of the disabled with a deeper perspective. Moreover, society should be enlightened on how to handle disabled social workers, particularly, to always regard them as ordinary citizens with equal rights as any other individual.
References
Curran, T. (2020). A Foucauldian analysis of social work with disabled children.
Flynn, S. (2019). Social work intervention pathways within child protection: Responding to the needs of disabled children in Ireland. Practice, 1-13.
James, E., Morgan, H., & Mitchell, R. (2017). Named social workers–better social work for learning disabled people?. Disability & Society, 32(10), 1650-1655.
Simcock, P., & Castle, R. (2016). Social work and disability.