Respond to at least two colleagues by expanding on their posts with an explanation of the bicultural conflict and tension, experienced by both the social work intern and Helen, as a result of their ethnic and racial identities.
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Get Help Now!· Then, explain how you, as a social worker, might address Helen and her family’s bicultural socialization needs, given what your colleague described.
Colleague 1: Lea
Introduction
In order to provide competent and effective care, the social worker must be able to adapt and personalize treatment to the individual. When working with individuals from different ethnocultural backgrounds, a balance between cultural sensitivity and empirically proven methodology must be found and utilized (Bernal, Jiminez-Chafey, and Rodriguez, 2009). In the case of The Petrakis Family (Plummer, Makris, and Brocksen, 2014), the social worker is faced with providing services to Helen Petrakis taking into account her Greek heritage, culture and belief systems.
Helen’s Cultural Influences:
For Helen, family is “everything.” She reports the social work intern a number of identifiers of her ethnic identity. She states that she is Greek and practices the Greek Orthodox religion. From there she expresses her cultural practices by explaining that she, as the mother, is the primary caregiver to her husband, her children, and her mother-in-law. In addition to caring for the family, she also holds down a full-time job and cooks and cleans. She also relates to the intern that she and her husband support their adult children because they do not believe in taking money from them. Helen does not seem to think this is anything other than “how things are done.”
Intern’s Perception of Helen
The Intern appears to be surprised by the many roles that Helen plays in her family. She states that she understands why Helen would be showing symptoms of being overwhelmed. Though we are not informed of the cultural background of the social work intern, it is made clear that she is surprised by the cultural practices related by Helen. She is most likely a “modern” woman subscribing to the Anglo-based norms, values, and customs of the ethnic minority. It might be assumed that the intern was raised in a society where children are not supported by their parents indefinitely, working women share family responsibilities with their partners, and aging parents are cared for in retirement homes, or by in-home care. Those values held by Helen and her family are devalued by the dominant culture (the intern), therefore a “deficiency formulation” between the intern and Helen that may affect the efficacy of services provided to Helen (Robbins, Chatterjee, and Canda, 2012).
Dual Perspective Model
The social work intern will have to address Helen’s issues in a way that is in line with her cultural and ethnic identity while alleviating the stress and anxiety she is experiencing. In this case, the social work intern can utilize the Dual Perspective model to assist Helen in overcoming the obstacles she faces. Applying assessment skills in order to gain an understanding of the norms, values, and behaviors, as understood by Helen, will inform both the intern and Helen of the expectations she has placed on her by herself, her family, and her ethnic community. Another skill of importance will be assisting Helen to identify her nurturing (family, immediate community) and sustaining (society, educational, service) support systems so that she and Helen can advocate for and work toward additional services to assist in filling in the gaps. Furthermore, the intern can help identify skill building opportunities such as educational programs and cultural studies to help Helen “develop the flexibility necessary” to manage her cultural beliefs while caring for herself as well (Robbins, et. al., 2012).
References:
Bernal, G., Jiminez-Chafey, M. I., & Domenech Rodriguez, M. M. (2009). Cultural adaptation of treatments: A resource for considering culture in evidence-based practice. Professional Psychology: Research And Practice, 40(4), 361–368.
Plummer, S.-B., Makris, S., Brocksen S. (Eds.). (2014). Sessions: Case histories. Baltimore, MD: Laureate International Universities Publishing.
Robbins, S. P., Chatterjee, P., & Canda, E. R. (2012). Contemporary human behavior theory: A critical perspective for social work (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Allyn & Bacon.
Collegue 2: Dalicia
A summary of the cultural influences depicted in the video and explain how Helen and the intern’s ethnic and racial identities might be relevant to their interaction. In the video Helen stated that she is from a Greek family that is very family orientated which means that Helen is the one that supposed to take care of everyone when they need help or is sick. Helen does seem overwhelm but is okay with being overwhelm because she is helping her family out. This may cause a concern with their interaction because the intern may not come from a culture where one individual has to take care of everyone and everything. Having this concern can cause a disagreement between the intern and Helen because Helen may feel that what she is doing for her family that the intern should understand but due to the intern culture she may not be able to understand.
Explain any video evidence of the intern’s perception of Helen’s culture and further explain how the intern’s cultural perception might reflect her level of intergroup competence. From the video the intern really do not know anything about the Greek culture so her perception of Helens culture is not clear. Due to intern perception of not being clear in the video it was observed that the intern was trying to write down everything Helen was saying even the things that may not have been important and not really hearing what Helen is actually saying (Laureate Education, 2013). Also feel that since the intern do not know anything about the culture it would be hard for the intern to adapt to Helen issue and family base on the intern own values and beliefs.
Explain what social work skills the intern might use to apply the dual perspective model in her approach to Helen. Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda (2012) stated that “theterm culture change has traditionally referred to the modifications, revisions, and new manners of expression that result from the process of interaction between cultures.”One social work skill t
