UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
47-304 (03) Professional Communication in Generalist Social Work Practice
Dr. Wilfred Gallant
INITIAL INTERVIEW INFROMATION FROM STUDENT/CLIENT
I AM ------YEARS OF AGE.
MY NATIONALITY IS ------(Cultural Background)
I AM CONCERNED ABOUT ------.
THESE ARE MY PREDOMINANT ISSUES------
THIS IS MY ------CONTACT WITH THIS AGENCY (i.e. first, second, etc., etc.)
PS: ALLOW THE CLIENT’S PROBLEM TO DETERMINE WHAT AGENCY YOU WOULD MOST LIKELY BE FUNCITONING FROM.
HAVE STUDENT/CLIENT PROVIDE A SCENARIO THAT IS SUBSTANTIALLY CREDABLE AND THAT PROVIDES ENOUGH INFORMATION TO ASSIST THE STUDENT/WORKER.
Key Areas of Concentration for Ch. 5
Preparatory Arranging
The skill of preparatory arranging involves logistical preparation for a first meeting. It includes scheduling an appointment, ensuring that there is adequate time and privacy, and organizing the physical environment.
Some clients are allergic to perfumes or colognes and react adversely to such scents.
Do clients have a comfortable place to sit when they arrive for the final interview?
Preparatory Empathy
Preparatory empathy involves "putting oneself in the client's shoes and trying to view the world through the client's eyes" (Shulman, 1984, p. 22). You try to "get in touch with the feelings and concerns that the client may bring to the helping encounter” (Shulman, 1992, p. 56). Even before an initial face-to-face meeting, anticipatory empathy heightens your sensitivity to the prospective client's possible agenda, thoughts, feelings about himself or herself, the presenting issue, and the situation. THIS WILL HOLD TRUE FOR YOUR FINAL AUDIO TAPE INTERVIEW. AT THIS POINT YOU CAN TAKE ALL THE KEY THEMES FROM THE LAST FEW INTERVIEWS AND BEGIN THE FINAL INTERVIEW WITH A CAPSULE FORM OF WHAT THE STUDENT/CLIENT HAS PRESENTED SO FAR. Through preparatory empathy, you try to anticipate the client's subjective experience related to seeking or receiving social service. You put yourself in the other's shoes so you gain increased appreciation for the client's motivation for the contact, thoughts, and feelings about engaging an authority figure, and potential issues related to the client's sex, stage of life, culture, ethnic background, and socioeconomic status.
Preparatory empathy regarding cultural aspects is especially important. Members of some cultural groups may be ambivalent or conflicted about visiting a social worker. Preparatory empathy involves trying to experience what the client may be thinking and feeling as this interview begins. Preparatory empathy is therefore always tentative, always preliminary, and always subject to immediate change based on the client's actual communications. Even when your preparatory empathy proves to be inaccurate, however, it is a productive activity because it enhances your readiness to listen carefully to the client when you finally do meet in person.
By empathizing in advance, you increase the likelihood that you will approach the prospective client as a unique human being with all of the complexity that entails. A major challenge in this form of anticipatory empathy, however, is resisting the temptation to narrow your view of the person so that it becomes more of a fixed stereotype than an open set of possibilities.
Preparatory Self-Exploration
In addition to preparatory empathy, you should also engage briefly in preparatory self- exploration before meeting with clients or prospective clients. Preparatory self exploration is a form of self-analysis or introspection through which you, a human being who happens to be a social worker, identify how you might be affected by your interaction with this particular person, this specific issue of concern, and this unique situation. In self-exploring, you would ask yourself questions such as "How am I likely to feel about this individual or family? How are the cultural and demographic similarities or differences between us likely to affect me? Given what I know about the issue and situation, what personal reactions might I expect to experience?"
The purpose of this skill is to identify the potential effects of your own personal history, characteristics, needs, biases, emotional tender spots, and behavioural patterns. Self-exploration helps you to bring into conscious focus those aspects of your personal self that might affect the nature and quality of your social work services to a particular client.
Preparatory self-exploration also involves identifying other personal factors that may affect your readiness to provide service. For example, there may be extraneous factors unrelated to the particular client that might influence you personally. If you have a splitting headache, are dealing with the break-up of a significant relationship, are in the process of repairing your furnace, have just lost out on an opportunity for promotion, did not sleep last night, or are worried about a family member of your own, the quality of your service might be affected. Identifying these factors and their effects on you constitutes the first step toward managing them so that they do not interfere with the high-quality professional service that all clients deserve.
Centering
When, through preparatory self-exploration, you have identified personal factors that might affect your ability to provide high-quality service to a prospective client, you attempt to manage or contain them. As part of this centering process, you ask yourself, "What can I do to ready myself personally before the meeting begins?" Centering involves organizing your personal thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations so that they do not interfere with the performance of your professional obligations and delivery of social services. Depending on the personal factors involved, centering might include various kinds of activities. Among the more common are brief stress-management exercises intended to reduce emotional reactivity and promote self-control. Among the useful stress-reducing activities are positive self-talk, visualization, muscular relaxation, journal writing, and brief meditation.
BEFORE YOUR LAST AUDIO RECORDED INTERVIEW, YOU MIGHT DO SOME TIME OF MEDITATION, BREATH RELAXATION, ETC. ETC. AND EXPLAIN HOW THIS MIGHT HAVE BEEN HELPFUL TO YOU.
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Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Beginning
Because first impressions are so important, the initial face-to-face contact often affects all future encounters. The beginning portion of each subsequent interview tends to influence the course of those meetings as well.
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to help you develop proficiency in the beginning skills in terms of the following goals.
Goals
You should be able to demonstrate proficiency in the following:
Introducing yourself
Seeking introductions
Describing initial purpose
Orienting clients
Discussing policy and ethical factors
Seeking feedback
Ability to assess proficiency in the beginning skills
Competent use of the beginning skills helps ensure that meetings are positive and productive. An effective beginning results when you and the prospective client accomplish the purpose for which you first meet (e.g., information gathering, information giving, assessment forming, or change making) and reach some mutual conclusion concerning a next step in the process (e.g., conclude your relationship, continue to work together, or arrange for service from another professional or agency).
Typically, you make contact with prospective clients in one of two ways: "(1) The individual, family, or group may reach out for help with a problem they have identified as being beyond their means of solution; or (2) a community source may identify an individual, a family, or a group as having a serious problem threatening the welfare of themselves or others (a vulnerable person or group) and request that the social worker intervene to solve that problem" (Compton & Galaway, 1994, p. 346). During the early part of a first meeting, you generally hope to facilitate an exchange of introductions, establish a tentative direction or purpose for the meeting, outline the usual expectations of clients, describe the policies and ethical principles that might apply during this and future encounters, and ensure that the prospective client understands the parameters within which the interview takes place. This is a crucial part of the beginning process because it addresses your legal and ethical obligations with respect to informed consent. Commonly, at this point in the process, you give the prospective client an overview of relevant agency policies, as well as information about pertinent laws and ethical principles. The prospective client can thus understand the context within which helping endeavours take place. Throughout the beginning phase, you should frequently seek feedback concerning information discussed. Prospective clients sometimes need additional clarification about complex or confusing policies and principles.
The beginning skills are commonly used quite extensively during the first few meetings with clients. Use some of them in initial professional encounters with other people as well. Just as you are with clients, you should be clear about purposes and expectations when meeting with referral sources, colleagues from your own or other agencies, government officials, parents, and others with whom you interact as part of your professional responsibilities. Several beginning skills are also used during the early portions of later encounters. The beginning skills include (1) introducing yourself, (2) seeking introductions, (3) describing initial purpose, (4) orienting clients, (5) discussing policy and ethical factors, and (6) seeking feedback.
Introducing Yourself
At the beginning of any first interview, be sure to identify yourself by full name and profession, and by agency or departmental affiliation. For example, at the beginning of a meeting in the agency where he works, a social worker might say as he holds out his hand in greeting, "Hello Mr. or Mrs. Adabu. I'm Dan Majors. I'm a student social worker here at the (name agency). " [Based on what type of help the student/worker is seeking.]
Seeking Introductions
"And you're Mr. Nesbit? Is that right? Am I pronouncing your name correctly?" Then ask how the person prefers to be addressed (Miss, Ms., Mrs., Mr., Reverend, first name, or nickname).
Describing Initial Purpose
As part of the process of preparing for a meeting (see Chapter 5), you identify a tentative general purpose (Schwartz, 1976, pp. 188-190; Shulman, 1992, pp. 79-101) for the meeting. Especially in initial meetings, new clients tend to look to you, as the professional person in an authority role, for leadership. Therefore, you should clearly and succinctly describe your view of the purpose for the meeting. [YOUR ROLE IS TO ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND THE STUDENT/WORKER AND TO COMMUNICATE REFLECTIVE RESPONSES WHICH MAKE THE CLIENT FEEL PRIZED, VALUED AND APPRECIATED. THE DEPTH OF YOUR REFLECTIVE RESPONSES WILL ENCOURAGE THE CLIENT TOWARD FURTHER SELF-EXPLORATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE. Without some beginning guidance from you, prospective clients are likely to feel even more uncertain about a process that is usually quite stress provoking. By tentatively sharing a general purpose, clients usually feel a sense of relief, as they conclude that you do, in fact, know what you are doing.
Orienting Clients
During the beginning phase of the working relationship, many clients are quite uncertain about what is expected of them. Certain aspects of the anxiety and ambiguity may be the result of cultural factors, but others may be associated with potential vulnerability. Prospective clients are certainly concerned about the issues that led to the contact, but many are also worried that they may not be able to do what is needed to address them (Garvin & Scabury, 1997, pp. 80-82). In particular, prospective clients may be confused about how they may help you, the social worker, best help them. Ambiguity about what they are "supposed to do" is probably associated with the relatively high discontinuation or dropout rates of clients generally, and particularly members of minority groups (Sue, 1977).
You might attempt to orient an individual client in the following way:
ORIENTING CLIENTS (INDIVIDUAL)
You can best help in this process by sharing your thoughts and feelings as freely and as fully as you possibly can. Please ask questions when you do not understand, offer suggestions about what might work better, and give feedback about what helps and what doesn't. Finally, you can be helpful in this process by trying as hard as you can to take the steps that we plan together. If we work together as a team, there's a good chance we'll be able to resolve the issues that prompted this visit.
In orienting clients, recognize that expectations necessarily vary according to the reasons clients seek or receive social work services. They also differ according to the agency setting, its mission and programs, and the composition of the client system, its size and the ages, capabilities, and motivations of its members. As you can imagine, the expectations for an adult male client about to begin an intensive, three-month therapeutic and educational group experience for men who batter women would be quite dissimilar from those for an 8-year-old child who witnessed her father shoot and kill her mother.
Discussing Policy and Ethical Factors
An extremely important beginning skill involves discussing potentially relevant legal, policy, and ethical factors. Understanding the ground rules is a critical element in developing an authentic, honest, and trusting relationship. This constitutes part of the informed consent process and is an essential element of professional service. Failure to discuss relevant policy and ethical factors may be grounds for malpractice action.
As a professional social worker, you are bound by certain guidelines in the performance of your duties (see Chapter 3). Some of these originate with the agency with which you are affiliated (e.g., agency policies and procedures), others are promulgated by the social work profession (e.g., ethical codes and standards), and still others are formulated by governmental bodies (e.g., laws and regulations). Clients have a right to be informed of the policies and ethical principles that may apply to them. Many agencies wisely provide prospective clients with brochures and other publications describing relevant policies. Box 6.2 shows a sample document that social workers might provide to prospective clients and use in guiding the discussion of policy and ethical issues. However, some clients do not or cannot truly understand the full meaning of such written material. You should therefore discuss key policies with most, if not all, prospective clients.
BOX 6.2
Agency Policies
As a general guideline, whatever clients say during sessions remains confidential among agency personnel. There are, however, a few exceptions. If a client wants the agency to provide information to another person or agency (for example, to a medical doctor), he or she may sign a Release of Information form specifying which information to transfer and to whom. Also, as required by law, indications of possible child abuse or neglect will be reported to child protection authorities. Similarly, evidence that a person represents a danger to himself or herself or to others will not be considered confidential. Action will be taken to protect the lives of the persons involved. In potentially life-threatening circumstances, the value of human life takes precedence over that of confidentiality.