The point of this assignment is to describe in detail where we developed our own personal value system.

The competencies covered in this assignment are simply to help us to apply social work principles to guide professional practice, and to apply critical thinking to inform and communicate professional judgments. I feel that I met these competencies by clearly lying out where and how I developed my personal value system, and how it relates to the social work code of ethics. I also I feel that while performing critical thinking skills on my own life, I was able to discover how I could use these values to help guide and shape my future practice.

Nicholas Case Social Work Practice Methods Values Paper 11-28-11

In the profession of social work there is a document that sets out the values, behaviors and ethics that a social worker should uphold at all times. This document is called the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics. For each individual professional, the Code of Ethics may either be at one with their personal value system or it could be at odds with it. For myself personally, I was drawn to the field of social work, in part, due to some of its core values. Also while some aspects of the Code of Ethics may be at least somewhat against my own value system, many of them I feel match up perfectly with the person that I have developed into. In fact, I sometimes feel as though the universe was molding me into a social worker from a young age, as it is a field that due to my personal value system, I feel I can be very effective in. Starting from a very young age, my parents tell me that I was a very social child, who would approach and befriend any one I could. As I got older, I can remember instances of being like that, usually making friends with the other people that I saw spending their time alone. The earliest memory I have of doing such a thing happened when I was around six or seven years old and living in an apartment complex in the city of Roseville, on the east side of Detroit. Everyone in my neighborhood interacted pleasantly with each other, all the parents looked out for all the kids, we had annual community celebrations of various holiday like the fourth of July, Halloween and Christmas, all the neighborhood children and families mixed together, and there was never an instance of racism that I can remember from the whole time I lived there. My

neighborhood had a large amount of immigrants from all different parts of the world and was very diverse. I remember making friends with a young Ukrainian immigrant boy, was always very friendly with the Cuban immigrants that lived next door, had a good friend named Massimo whos family had emigrated from Mexico a few years earlier, I also spent a good portion of time with my mentally disabled neighbor. There was also a large amount of both Caucasian and African American people in the community I lived in. All of which as I said, existed together peacefully and pleasantly, all together it was a nice place to raise children to be culturally wellrounded and respectful. There was one person in particular that I remember spending much of my time with though, a senior citizen immigrant from Cuba, whose name I never learned, though I do not remember why I never learned it. My parents fought all the time when I was young, and the only way to get away from the yelling was usually to go and sit on the benches at the end of my block and read a book. One day when I went down there during an especially nasty fight, there was an old man reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar. I had seen his family move in a few days before, but had not met any of them yet. As I said before, I was a friendly child, and living in a neighborhood where the adults were always kind to the children, made me feel safe around my neighbors, even if they were new. So I walked up and asked if I could read next to him and he said I could. I remember he then said not to worry about my parents fighting, that things would get better, smiled, patted me on the back, and went back to reading his newspaper. We spent much of our time together on that bench reading together regularly for years until I moved, yet sharing few words, and his friendship had a very positive impact on my life. The effect that living in a close knit, diverse community, and having a diverse group of friends, I believe was to lead my development to be congruent with a few of the core values of

the Code of Ethics. The first of which is the importance of human relationships, which is described as Valuing the mutual emotional exchange; dynamic interaction; and affective cognitive and behavioral connections that exist between the social worker and the client to create the working and helping atmosphere (Barker, 2003, p. 365). Even though I never knew the name of my old Cuban friend, and we said very little to each other, the connection we shared was no less dynamic: he provided a positive stable influence to my life and could be depended on to always be there when I needed him, whether he knew it or not. He also helped to instill a strong respect for my elders and taught me that just being there is often enough to make a huge impact. The next effect that my former community had on me is a respect for cultural competence and social diversity, my learning of which, matching up with the social learning theory. In the article Gendered Fear of Crime Socialization: An Extension of Akerss Social Learning Theory it is stated that Social learning theories, in particular, highlight the importance of human interaction and the fact that learning occurs both directly, through socialization agents such as parents or teachers, and indirectly, through the observation of others behavior and its consequences. (Rader, Haynes. 201.pgs 291-292) As I mentioned earlier, I lived in a very diverse neighborhood, consisting of people from many different backgrounds, cultures, age groups, some with disabilities and many that had come from other countries. So I learned from my community interactions, that everyone was different, and that these differences should not mean that a person should be treated differently, and that differences were normal, which matches up nicely with part four of the section of the Code of Ethics defining the requirements of cultural competence and social diversity, when it states that we should be sensitive to and appreciative of cultural difference (Kirst-Ashman/Hull, 2012, p. 399).

To this day I am still learning and growing towards a greater understanding of cultural competence, through friends that I have made in the social work program at Wayne State. Part three of the Cultural competence and social diversity outline of the Code of Ethics states that we should be acquiring a continuously growing knowledge base about clients cultures that can be applied to practice (Kirst-Ashman/Hull, 2012, p. 399). In the program, I have made friends with two women of Middle Eastern descent that practice the Islamic faith. Throughout our talks and time together, I have learned a great deal about their culture that otherwise, I would have never known. For example, it is not acceptable for a man outside of a womans family to ever touch them. Without knowing this, if I were in a worker-client relationship with a Muslim woman, it would be possible for me to offend her and make her uncomfortable with me by attempting to shake her hand as a greeting or lay a hand on her shoulder for comfort and/or support. While I have gained some useful information from them for practice in my life later, there is still a great deal that I do not know about their culture, as well as other cultures foreign to my own. Because of this, even though I feel that I do have a decent knowledge base in social diversity and cultural competence, I still have a great deal to learn. In order to be able to adhere to this section of the Code of Ethics, I feel that I should try to put myself in situations where I am being immersed in a different culture than my own. Also, making more friends from varying cultures can be very beneficial to the learning process, because with the more an individual knows about other cultures, they will be less likely to make mistakes when dealing with a diverse client base. Without this knowledge, I do not feel that I will be able to be an effective social worker. For the most part, the Code of Ethics seems to me to be a guideline to not only being effective as a social worker, it also is a set of guidelines on how to be a good person. Working for the betterment of the greater good, treating people with respect, refraining from letting personal

values affect the judgments of others, promoting social justice not using derogatory language or sexually harassing people, having integrity, respecting the dignity and worth of a person, among many of the other aspects of the Code of Ethics, are values that I feel all people from all cultures should employ at all times. Though there is one of the aspects I mentioned that I feel all social workers must battle with at sometimes, and that I know I more than likely will someday as well, which is being able to refrain from letting personal values affect the judgment of others. Keeping personal values out of a situation can be a very hard task. The human race is very diverse, and has members that come from many different backgrounds than my own. Because of this, many people do not necessarily hold the same value of having respect for cultural and human diversity that I do, among many other value differences. An example of a struggle that I could see having with a client would be in dealing with a person that has had a history of performing hate crimes, and is seeking help with reintegrating themselves into society after spending time in the prison system. Having friends of the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) community, I have seen hate crimes happen and have given emotional support to friends that had experienced such acts. For example, I remember when I was a senior at an alternative education high school, one of my very close friends, who I still remain very close with, was openly gay. Because of his sexual orientation, he was targeted by a certain student at our school and was mentally harassed daily, until one day when the student decided to physically attack him. Luckily, there was a faculty member that was nearby that quickly put an end to the situation before any real harm could be done, and sent the student to the office. I just so happened to have done my own trouble making of some sort that day and was already sitting in the office waiting for my next class to start, when the student that continually harassed my friend came in, and he came in angry. He started yelling

obscenely about how he felt about my friend and all the others like him, and went to the window, where he saw my friend holding hands with his boyfriend in the parking lot. This set him off and he began saying how he wanted to just go down there teach them both a lesson. I refused to hear any more of his hate speech, and even though the secretary in the office was frantically motioning for me to sit down and stay quiet, I couldnt help myself. I stood up to him and let him know that he was wrong for acting this way, making threats and saying such horrible slurs and being so hateful, when my friend was in no way trying to make a problem and was just living his life the way he felt was right. The other student came towards me and tried staring me down and saying things such as how I was sticking up for my boyfriend, and making vulgar insinuations about my relationship with my friend. I held my ground, refusing to back down, and calmly restated that it was wrong to act the way he was and asked for him to please keep such feelings to himself. I believe my lack of fear and strong will proved to get him to back down from me, and he was soon after expelled from our school for his recurring behavior of this kind. I believe this instance had two effects on my development into a social worker, the first of which being that due to my history with this issue, in a situation like the one I have described in which I would be dealing with a client responsible for performing hate crimes, I would immediately have a conflict of interests. The Code of Ethics states that Workers should avoid conflicts of interest such as those between the workers personal interest and his or her professional responsibility (Kirst-Ashman/Hull, 2012, p. 399). If the person had not be reformed from his prison sentence, and made such feelings clear to me, I would not be able to continue providing them services due to the risk that whether I meant to do so or not, I would not be providing them the best care available for their situation. In such a situation, I feel it would be best for me to inform my supervisor of the conflict of interests, and if there were no other

workers that could take on the client, I would then ask my supervisor to sit in on sessions that I would have with the client, and if necessary, explain to the client that a conflict of interests exists. The second affect that the situation I faced with the high school bully of my friend, was to instill a deep passion for social justice in myself. The code of Ethics describes social justice as The idea that in a perfect world all citizens would have the same basic rights, protection, opportunities, obligations and social benefits (Barker, 2003, p. 404-405). From that experience and a handful of others in my life, I became conscience of a passion to promote social justice whenever and wherever I am able to do so, regardless of the consequences I may personally face. I feel that this passion will serve me greatly as I grow and mature into a professional social worker. As a whole, as I stated before, I feel that my personal development has had a large impact on my desire to become a social worker. I was raised to value human diversity, and to be respectful of other people at all times. I developed a passion for social diversity and a hunger for knowledge of other cultures. I have long carried myself with a respect for many of the aspects of the NASW Code of Ethics, even though I did not know until recently that I was doing this. And while I know the profession will not be easy, and that conflicts will occur, I believe that through my personal development and the training I am receiving at Wayne State, that I have the potential to be a very effective and valuable member of the social work profession. I look forward to bringing my personal skill set to the profession and hope to someday be a powerful tool for social justice and the betterment of as many individuals in need as possible.

Bibliography Rader, N. E., & Haynes, S. H. (2011). Gendered fear of crime socialization: An extension of Akerss social learning theory. Feminist Criminology, 6(4), 291-307 Kirst-Ashman, Hull, (2012) Understanding generalist practice. Sixth edition. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning. Barker, R.L. (2003) The social work dictionary. Washington, DC: NASW Press.