1/8/2014:
S: 2:42pm
E: 3:40pm
So sorry that I haven’t written for a while. I feel these days, I would rather communicate
my thoughts verbally, hence, I have been more of an extrovert by calling and
talking to people. I just hope I won’t
be bothering them due to my adrupt change of behavior.
What is a Friend?
I don’t know. Maybe I
make the worse friends. I was hanging
out with one of my friends partly because he feels alone. While being with him, he has his quarks. I could tolerate it, but he could sense my
uneasiness so he kept telling me, “If you want to be my friend, then you have
to accept who I am.” It’s just the way
he is, it’s all-or-nothing, OK, got it.
However, that statement somewhat bothers me. I see friendship like a light form of
marriage. In a marriage, both couples
will almost always need to bend a little in each other’s direction. The husband/wife can change some of their
bothersome habits, and the other spouse can change theirs, too. Like friendships, it involves
compromise. When I’m with people, I
control myself, with wisdom, so I can come out as friendlier to them.
My First Client
Client confidentiality is a very important issue in social
work but, happily, I have her permission to share what I did. Well, I wasn’t actually a social worker
helping someone, but these days, I feel like when I’m helping a person, I apply
social work principles. Ok, so here is
an example. The list may not contain everything
about the client because I’m just drawing on what’s above the iceberg.
Carol (not her real name) is a 45 year-old woman. She lives in Florida. She has daughters whom both are living
outside the house. The oldest one is
studying pre-med. The youngest working
and making a living on her own. Her
husband died recently. Due to this, she
suffered from severe depression. Before
her husband passed away, they lived in a family home. However, following his death, the house was
foreclosed. Carol lost much of her
belongings and moved to a small apartment.
Now, she is moving to another apartment, similar price, but with a nicer
environment. She said before, she used
to be so happy. “Life is wonderful,” she
would tell me. She is chronically
unemployed, her last job more than a year ago as a bartender. She quit her job because her supervisor, as
she said, treated her horribly. She is
on-track to apply for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), however, her case, as
she said, is taking a long time. Her
next hearing will be in June. She has a
dog and her dog helps a lot to keep her company. She feels alone and isolated. She also has financial troubles. She has trouble paying rent and buying
necessities. She doesn’t have a bank
account because she owes a few hundred dollars to the bank. She is taking advantage of the SNAP food
stamp program. She is taking three
medications for her needs. One is to
address hypothyroidism, another for depression, and the last to control muscle
movements. She told me that the
hypothyroid medication helps to allieveate her depression the most and that she
just got dignoisted by a doctor for that condition. The doctor said to take that medication for
two months. However, due to a lack of
funds, she couldn’t afford any of the medications. She said she tries to eat healthy but that
her appetite, due to her depression, has been poor. She has a relatively poor social support
system. She was abused as a child. Her family has been long divorced. She has two sisters. One sister is hostile to her and refused to
help. The other one did help her by
giving emotional and some financial support.
Her mother is also not so well-off but she did give Carol some
support. She doesn’t go to church, she
isn’t very religious. That is her status
in a nutshell.
She has so many challenges.
Where can I start? What can I
do? I remember in one of my social work
classes, my professor gave a short story, like the one above, and told our
class to identify the biggest issue. I
raised my hand and said that unemployment was the biggest issue. I was thinking if the person has a job, then
he/she will be able to have income, and thus, with money, more issues can be
solved. But no, I was wrong. The biggest issue was mental health. If the client has alcoholism, depression, or
other personal issues, he/she may not be able to hold a job. Thus, I would have wasted my efforts. So, focusing on my client, my very first
actually, I prioritized her issues. I
used the goals and objective approach. I
set the goals to be measurable, attainable, and with a time frame. I considered making an eco-map, but I didn’t.
So, for my diagnosis, I put the first priority for Carol is
to set up a bank account. If she has a
bank account, it will be much easier for people to help her financially. The second priority is her depression. For that, she will need funds to purchase her
depression medications. The third item
is her short-term expenses. She needs to
have the money to sustain herself at least in the short-term. Fourth in sequence is employment. I can assist her in finding a part-time job
(no full-time because SSI won’t allow it).
With these four steps, I feel she will be much happier and will be able
to live a self-sufficient life. I could,
if I am willing, modify the plan to add more details. For example, she can join a support group or
club. I can research agencies around her
area who may be able to assist her. I’m
writing this just to give an example of what I think social workers do.
There are more topics I want to write about but I ran out of
time. I will write more later.
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