4 posts tagged “social work”

 i'm graduating. this is what i want to do with my life.

Critical Social Work, for me, is about the journey of resistance and struggling against oppression and for equality in creative ways. In the area of homelessness and housing,  I hope it takes the form of subverting policies through protest, creatively working with service users for their benefit and providing real options for housing. i still have many unanswered questions about practicing within oppressive systems (under-resourced housing, flaws of the mental health system, etc) and under seemingly impenetrable policies that work against homeless people. my journey will continue, as each new day presents something: a statement, an image or a practice that is politically loaded, challenging and open for critique. 

 despite my 'knowledge', i often feel inadequate & that I still know nothing about homelessness. but this is a good thing; a  ‘not-knowing stance’ is helpful to critical housing work--- I don’t have any lived experience about homelessness. my service users will be the experts in this field.  I don't know where I will be in five years. I am not sure what kind of job I really want, but do see myself working with homelessness in an anti-oppressive way. at this point, I find it very difficult to see myself working on a clinical level or under the biomedical model, even in resistance through working within and against the system. I am open to the future but see myself working on a community level, perhaps also on a policy development level or in an advocacy role. I am very excited to practice critical social work in creative, subversive and new ways in diverse contexts (political & otherwise). I look forward to subverting oppressive policies; through finding holes that can benefit service users in an increasingly neoliberal, economic rationalist environment. 

So, I do placement at an agency that provides rent-geared to income, independent housing for consumer/survivors [folks who consume/have survived mental health services].

we were doing a lease signing with a new tenant & was "pretty well" on the mental health spectrum, she was the sweetest woman, and we got to the part where we needed to write down an an emergency contact and she said "well.. when i get a doctor you can write that down"
& we asked "well.. um, what about friends or family, or.."

& she said, really somberly and clearly,

"I don't have family or friends. The disability took care of that."

aaand i started crying. thankfully the tears didn't leave the area of my eye. I was just so upset and angry and heart broken.

i do realize i am a blogging machine currently.

so i read this article on ethics in social work and knowing yourself ethically. it rocked my world. i recognize that there is much in my own life that i’ve yet to figure out, to solidify in regards to ethics. i find it easy to flock away from any concrete way to define my ethics, and instead live mostly by emotion.  like, spirituality is something that defines me and i value greatly, but i have kept its definition as being something difficult to explain, and instead to feel only.

    when it comes to ethics though, i think i am more consequentialist/utilitarian-based than deontologically-based on the continuum of ethics. the ends justify the means. things are good because the consequences of not doing good, are bad.  both of these ethoses are present in my ethics, though,  working together somehow in a strange mess in my head, which i can attribute to personal values, my education, field experience and family experiences.

when i think about why i consider myself more consequentialist , i think of my third year placement and present employment at a supportive housing group home for adults with persistent mental health issues.
there, i've been continually inspired by how we break rules of the “system” for the beneficence of residents, and work in conjunction with consequentialist nurses and health care workers to break rules for just and fair outcomes. An exciting example is how we worked together with a resident and her outreach nurse to access a greater amount of her money from her public trustee. we asked for monthly metropass money & got it for her, even though nearly all of the services the resident uses are within walking distance. so the resident uses the $109.00 monthly for other needs.    eff the system. it was a great outcome.

It's so official, I'm either going to go to Hunter College[CUNY] in NYC or University of Illinois at Chicago for my Master's in Social Work. Both have streams that focus entirely on innercity/anti-poverty/"ground-up" social work. Can't find that anywhere in Canada. Both names are well-known. So it's a race to which city will win my heart first! NYC or Chicago? ...Or which school will accept me. Plus I have to sort out residency shit so I can get cheaper tuition (which looks like living in the state for 12 months before applying... that might get complicated..)... but I'll worry about that next summer.

I'm stoked.  

http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/college/
http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/

Naomi gotsta keep her grades up.