Write a reflect on your motivations and values for undertaking social work/ human services practice. As outlined in Chapter 1 of the Chenoweth and McAuliffe text (read this and refer to in your essay) we can become interested in what can be broadly termed as ‘social practice’ for a variety of reasons. Social work and human services practice is ‘reflexive’, which means practitioners need to be aware of their own particular ways of seeing the world, their values, how these influence their perspectives on social problems and practice, and how these fit with the values and purposes of professional practice. This short reflection assignment is designed to assist you to explore your initial understandings of social work and human services. It also provides an opportunity for you to receive feedback from your tutor about your reflective skills and capacity to link those reflections to relevant literature in a scholarly (well supported) way. One very legitimate path to practice can be that you have had personal experiences which have heightened your awareness and desire to assist others. In this assignment please do not disclose information which causes you emotional discomfort or distress. If you have any questions regarding what to share regarding the topic please discuss with your tutor or the Course Coordinator.
In your reflective assignment you should explicitly reflect on:
What led you / motivated you to undertake a degree in social work/ human services? If you are undertaking SWK172 as an elective course from a program which is not social work work or human services (such as a behavioural sciences/ psychology / counselling/ criminology degree) you should explicitly reflect on What led you / motivated you to learn more about social work / human services practice?
How you understand the purpose of social work/ human services practice?
How do you understand the relative importance of the various ‘levels of practice’ discussed in the course, how do you appreciate the relative importance of these for practitioners, are there one or more of these levels which you had in mind when you started the course? Why might this be?
This assignment is reflective in that it asks you to consider your own journey to this course about social work and human service practice. When you write about your own motivations it is appropriate to do this in the first person, using ‘I’, ‘my’ etc. You are also asked to link your motivations and journey to ‘the literature’, that is, to scholarly books, articles, and professional web sites (such as those of the professional associations which accredit this course). When linking to and analysing literature it is most appropriate to write using 3rd person E.g ‘Various writers discuss the motivations people commonly have for studying social work (cite the author/s and year)’. So in this assignment you will be using a mixture of 1st and 3rd person. You will have access to additional resources to help you develop your reflective writing skills.
