Introduction

This social work identity has a critical role to play in development of a career in social work and identifies how individual perceives themselves as a social worker and a contributor to the society and the manner in which they tend to communicate their overall value skills and roles within the different jobs they have carried out and how they perceive their success in the contributions made by them. The focus of this reflective paper is to understand the factors influencing the development of the social work identity in association with ethics, theories, knowledge alongside professional values and additionally relate my professional experience to it.

Factors influencing the development of social work identity in relation to professional values, ethics, theories, knowledge and rationale

In my opinion, the social work intends to provide contribution to the society's issues and prevail social justice while uplifting human rights so that individuals within the society can be assisted. The creation of a suitable social work identity within the professional field is not an easy task an it requires management of several values an ethics which tend to contribute towards better engagements with various families and communities (Fook, 2022). The social professional identities are not created easily and as discussed in the prior paragraph, aspects such as values ethics and key theories alongside other knowledge management aspects have a strong influence on how one social identity can be created an in my consideration there have been several values such as empowerment, will, motivation to promote justice and fairness in the society, respect for all beings and other such values have contributed to my professional development (Healy,2022).

In this context it is also essential to observe that the ethical principles of utilitarianism, justice and fairness, deontology and other such code of ethics have also helped me in developing my social professional identity and for assisting me to uphold my overall integrity. The theory of self-determination in social work is also guiding theory and principles which I generally tend to follow while carrying out my tasks effectively. I personally believe that the knowledge of these theories and critical principles upheld my capability to give my clients the right kind of space to make their own decision choices and maintain dignity in addition to taking assistance for me for a better future for themselves (Yang et al., 2021). I personally tend to believe that the theoretical frameworks also have a significant role to play and they have enhanced my understanding of the social work and how client experiences can be engaged in successfully.

Hence when I make use of ethical theories and self-determination theories in the domain of social work domain, I tend to apply that to my work and this has helped me to enhance my social identity and made me more efficient in nature. In my opinion, knowledge acquisition has a great role to play and all individuals must practise knowledge acquisition in a consistent manner so as to assure that they are being able to deal with the new age issues taking place post pandemic (Idowu  & Elbanna, 2021). Cultural sensitivity is an important topic of concern in the field of social identity and hence keeping a knowledge of how cultural sensitivity can be well developed and applied within the context of the social work is significantly vital. 

Identification and reflection on placement experience i.e. transformative learning moment contributing to shaping the social work identity

Although developing knowledge in regard to the values, ethics an as well as the theories helps in development of the social professional identity, however, the experience of an actual workplace or the  transformative learning movement in the form of an internship experience can provide towards the development of a social identity and hence the placement which I achieved has helped me in learning the practical implications of the different theories which I had learned (Smith et al., 2016).

My initial placement was in a Resident care within the lifestyle team. In this regard, some of my responsibilities were designing and facilitating activities, building relationships alongside promoting inclusivity and advocating for the residential wellbeing. In this regard, I was largely involved in seeing to it that I'm being able to plan and lead my daily activities in a significant manner thereby enjoying and engaging in meaningful time for the residents and alongside building a relationship of trust with them.

Furthermore, I was also required to develop and activities which promoted inclusivity by meeting with various individuals from different culture backdrops and maintaining their overall health needs alongside advocating for the wellbeing and providing them with specialised facilities as per their requirement (Ricciardelli et al., 2022). Engaging in this experience was not an easy task and I was able to learn several aspects about myself as a social worker which included some strengths ranging from active listening skills to adaptability to empathy compassion cultural sensitivity.

This made me realise that I could be a profound social worker with a significant professional identity as I had the necessary skills to support individuals in need (Johnston et al., 2016). However, there were certain challenges which I faced as well in regard to the communication barriers.

As I was a nonnative speaker, I sometimes felt that there were certain areas where I faced fluency barriers and moreover my academic responsibilities often limited my time which I could give to my internship and extended my workload thus impacting my performance. I also felt that there were certain personal biases which I was facing due to my own culture and there were several ethical dilemmas which I underwent during my internship experience (Kadushin & Harkness, 2014). However, I personally believe that this experience has had a profound influence on me and enabled me to understand the way in which a social worker can develop their identity.

Summary

Hence alongside the theoretical aspects and ethical framework associated with the development of a social identity, the experience of working in the residential care programme has enabled me to develop my professional identity and to identify the key areas where I need to work upon. Within the next few weeks, I have decided to work on my communication barriers and engage in better time management alongside work on my personal biases. Furthermore, I also decided that I would be dealing with my ethical dilemmas by referring to various principles and ethical frameworks in humanities assignment.

 

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Reference List

Fook, J. (2022). Social work: A critical approach to practice.
Healy, K. (2022). Social work theories in context: Creating frameworks for practice. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Idowu, A., & Elbanna, A. (2021). Crowdworkers, social affirmation and work identity: Rethinking dominant assumptions of crowdwork. Information and Organization, 31(4), 100335. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772721000014
Johnston, L., Noble, C., & Gray, M. (2016). Critical supervision for the human services: A social model to promote learning and value-based practice. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Kadushin, A., & Harkness, D. (2014). Supervision in social work, 5e. Columbia University Press.
Ricciardelli, L. A., McGarity, S., & Nackerud, L. (2022). Social work education and the recognition of rights in the digital tech age: implications for professional identity. Social Work Education, 41(1), 90-104. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02615479.2020.1805427
Smith, F. L., Harms, L., & Brophy, L. (2022). Factors influencing social work identity in mental health placements. The British Journal of Social Work, 52(4), 2198-2216. https://academic.oup.com/bjsw/article-abstract/52/4/2198/6356820
Yang, H., Wang, R., & Chen, H. (2021). Professional identity construction among social work agencies. Journal of Social Work, 21(4), 753-773. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1468017320940587