Social Issues: Social Work, Essay Example

Cross Cultural Social Work Practice

Social work is a discipline that focuses on improving the quality of life for people in their respective communities and social settings. Social determinants affect equitable distribution of services and resources across cultures. Hence, social workers function as links opening opportunities to minorities who feel disenfranchised by associating social structures. This requires that social workers understand the impact of these social determinants across cultures and their influence social work intervention.

Grey and Alligritti (2003) contend that understanding a community’s culture is very important towards designing effective intervention programs. Researchers cited the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Swaziland whereby World Health Organization found it difficult to control this disease because public health did not acknowledge HIV as a disease until 2003 after it had diminished a major portion of the young population. By this time life expectancy of Swazis due to HIV/AIDS epidemic had moved from 61-32 (Grey & Alligritti).

As such, Lantz and Harper-Dorton (2007) cited some basic factors, which are common to diverse ethnic and cross cultural intervention for social workers. These relate to the way ethnic groups relate religion and disease; acceptance of modern scientific interventions to health and wellbeing and related perceptions of wealth, success or prosperity. These are the issues confronting social work practitioners on a daily basis as cross-cultural approaches are made in resolving social phenomenon (Lantz & Harper-Dorton, 2007).

Confronting Biases

Confronting biases in social work practice begins with self-assessment. Each social worker has developed his/her own biases as part of a growing up culture. These may be related to sexual orientation; racial discrimination; gender preferences and social groups’ sensitivities. By first identifying and addressing personal biases the social worker would be more objective in helping clients confront their own bias issues.

Major steps in the process include not taking biases personally. Many people do no recognize that they are being bias when curtained statements are made either action taken. As a social worker it is unethical to respond to a client’s biases by projecting personal offensive interrelations. It would be better to speak to client privately regarding the offence and hoe that they refrain from the remarks or a supervisor’s intervention could be useful.

Next begin a conversation with the person by showing that despite their insult you are still interested in offering your services in the capacity of a social worker. Do not initiate remorse, but let the client confront his/her bias realizing that there is no basis for it. Then proceed towards personalizing the conversation. Instead of pointing the finger ‘you’ reverse it to what ‘I’ as a social worker could do to help remember that the role of social work is to improve the quality of life for all people irrespective of biases.

Cultural Reluctance to Spare the Rod.

Dugger, C. (February, 29th 1996). A cultural Reluctance to Spare the Rod. New York Times

Dugger’s (1996) article ‘Cultural Reluctance to Spare the Rod’ is clearly a cultural diversity issue, which can be perceived from two broad perspectives Child abuse (Whipping) and the issue of discipline. These two concepts will be discussed separately in the following paragraphs.

Child Abuse (Whipping)

Child abuse law in America relates to ‘physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment or injury of a child by a parent or another party responsible for the child’s welfare’ (Global Legal Resources, 2012). This cloud be perpetuated to willfully despise the child or out of mere neglect.Familyand Juvenile court laws administer penalties for families that abuse children physically. In some states however, child abuse is covered under domestic violence and children are usually removed from the home and the abuser (Global legal Resources, 2012).

United Sates of America is known to be one of the nations with the largest amount of immigrants, especially, in states such as New York, Florida, New Jersey and California. Immigrants have brought their ‘spare not the rod and spoil the child’ culture to America where the rod is prohibited from being used on children. More so it is a crime when convicted of assaulting children in this manner. Hence, social workers are caught in the crossfire of the cross cultural diversity issue.

According to Dugger (1996) many social workers are immigrants themselves, which even makes it more difficult to address cases of child abuse among immigrants. Certainly, the report shows where some immigrants as the African father who broke his son’s arm went a bit too far. This type of ‘abuse’ was active in the American society, but cases like this African father initiated laws protecting children from abusive parents.

Discipline

When ‘Reluctance to spare the rod’ is taken from a perspective of discipline arguments have been that the American culture of sparing the rob supports juvenile delinquency. Immigrants contend that this is responsible for ridiculous crime rate among African Americans and the high rate of African American men being imprisoned today.

The challenge social workers face in bridging a gap between the American way of disciplining children and immigrant population perceptions on the issue across the country. Precisely, it is distinguishing abuse from discipline. According to the definition of child abuse it is a willful act aimed at despising the child. It could mean that this child has not violated any house rules and the parent out of spite inflicts lashes or whipping for no apparent reason.

Discipline according to sociologists is a systematic form of instruction aimed at training a person in a trade, craft or code of conduct. Further it is advanced that the word carries a negative connotation since it could take the form of punishment for misconduct (Flowers, 2008). To examine discipline from asocial work perspective, imprisonment and death penalties are all forms of disciplines. These are some of the arguments immigrants take to the court in validating their disciplinary actions of their children.

Dugger’s(1996) view point as posited in the article did not only demonstrate a cultural diversity issue, but highlighted impacts on society as well as social workers ineffectiveness in resolving these issues among dominant immigrant groups who believe that the American child is inturn  are abusive to parents and lack proper discipline (Dugger, 1996).

References

Dugger, C. (February, 29^th 1996). A cultural Reluctance to Spare the Rod. New York Times

Fowers, J. (2008). From Continence to Virtue: Recovering Goodness, Character Unity, and

Character Types for Positive Psychology. Theory Psychology.18(5),629-653

Lantz, J., & Harper-Dorton, V (2007). Cross-culture Practice: Social Work with Diverse Populations. New York. Lyceum Books

Global Legal Resources ( 2012). Child Abuse Law. Retrieved on 19^th  December, 2012 from http://www.hg.org/child-abuse.html

Grey, M., & Alligritti, I (2003). Towards culturally sensitive social work practice: re-examining Cross-cultural social work.Social Work, 39, (4), 312-325