Background Info:
Now that you have taken more steps toward seeing how your social work inspiration ties to practice, history, ethics, and culture, how might this apply to the type of clients or problems you envision working with in a social work practice? Perhaps your initial assumptions have broadened when reflecting more about culture. Or, maybe an added perspective on social work history has affirmed your hope to focus on a specific population or problem.
This Assignment provides you with the opportunity to learn how social workers intervene with diverse populations and about different fields within the profession, based on a population or problem of interest that you hope to focus on in your practice. As part of this Assignment, you also have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with Walden Library skills that you are developing this week to support your academic performance.
To Prepare:
Consider a social work population or problem with which you have considered working. Go to the Walden Library to find articles about this population/problem and the social work role when working with this population/problem.
Walden Library recommends the following:
Navigate to the Social Work Research GuideLinks to an external site.. From the Library’s homepage, click on the blue button Research by Subject, then choose Social Work.
The gold-lined search box at the top of the pages searches thousands of social work journals and is a great place to start your research.
Look at the results, especially the title and subjects, to see related concepts and keywords to add to your search.
Use OR between related terms, which means you will take either term. Example:
domestic violence OR intimate partner violence
Add a second concept in Box #2 to focus your search. It helps to keep concepts separate, especially when multiple boxes are provided. Example:
Box #1: domestic violence OR intimate partner violence
Box #2: veterans
Refine your results based on what you find. Do not be afraid to try other keywords or combinations of words.
Now apply limits. Scroll down in the left column to limit by date (last 5 years) and limit the results to peer reviewed scholarly journals only.
To retrieve the full text of the article, click on the PDF or click on the Find @ Walden button and follow the prompts.
Other examples of searches:
drug addiction OR drug abuse OR substance abuse
senior citizen OR older people OR elderly OR aging
suicide prevention OR suicide intervention
adolescent OR youth OR teen AND anxiety
ASSIGNMENT:
Submit a 2-page paper in which you do the following:
Describe the population or problem with which you are interested in working.
Identify the roles social workers take with this population/problem.
Describe what you learned about working with this population during your Walden Library search.
Identify types of skills and knowledge you want/need to develop in order to effectively work with this population/problem.
Support this paper with 3 sources, including from the Learning Resources throughout this course and information found in the Walden Library.
References:
Alvarez-Hernandez, L. R., & Choi, Y. J. (2017). Reconceptualizing Culture in Social Work Practice and Education: A Dialectic and Uniqueness Awareness ApproachLinks to an external site.. Journal Of Social Work Education, 53(3), 384-398. doi:10.1080/10437797.2016.1272511
Barsky, A. (2018). Cultural competence, awareness, sensitivity, humility, and responsiveness: What’s the difference?Links to an external site. New Social Worker, 25(4), 4–5.
