Competency 2
ENGAGE DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE IN PRACTICE
ENGAGE DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE IN PRACTICE
Social workers understand how diversity and difference characterize and shape the human experience and are critical to the formation of identity. The dimensions of diversity are understood as the intersectionality of multiple factors including but not limited to age, class, color, culture, disability and ability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, immigration status, marital status, political ideology, race, religion/spirituality, sex, sexual orientation, and tribal sovereign status. Social workers understand that, as a consequence of difference, a person's life experiences may include oppression, poverty, marginalization, and alienation as well as privilege, power, and acclaim. Social workers also understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination and recognize the extent to which a culture's structures and values, including social, economic, political, and cultural exclusions, may oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create privilege and power.
Diversity and difference occur to some extent within every person, and in order to be competent in practice, social workers must understand how diversity and difference apply to the human experience. These diverse differences include but are not limited to: age, class, color, culture, disability and ability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, immigration status, marital status, political ideology, race, religion/spirituality, sex, sexual orientation, and tribal sovereign status. Social workers take these factors into account on the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of their practice and ensure that they apply self-awareness of their own biases when working with clients, and keep in mind that they client is the expert of their own experience, and the social worker must act as a learner in order to best serve their clients. To best represent my engagement with Competency 2 over my time in the social work program, I chose two artifacts in the form of essay assignments from previous social work courses: A Self Study paper from SW 300, and a group paper on Development and Diversity for SW 341.
The first artifact is a paper I wrote in a the class SW 300: Social Work and Difference, Diversity, and Privilege. It was a self study paper, where we were meant to reflect upon our lives address our biases and experiences with various dimensions of diversity. In this essay, I explored the areas of gender, ethnicity/nationality, race, sexual orientation, ability/disability, class, and religion/spirituality, and the relationship I had with these areas. This assignment allowed me the opportunity to deeply reflect on my feelings surrounding diversity and difference, and forced me to work through uncomfortable experiences and biases I have. Through this self study I was able to increase my competency with diversity and difference by not only reflecting upon my own experiences, but recognizing my privilege and areas I lack knowledge.
The second artifact is a group paper from the course SW 341: Human Behavior and the Social Environment II. It was a paper about the intersectionality of development and diversity. Throughout this paper, we concentrated on the toddler and early childhood developmental stage of life, and explored how different diverse factors such as poverty, race, and disability would shape a child's development. To summarize, we found that When children are exposed to things such as poverty, food insecurity, racism/ethnocentrism, or abuse and neglect, their body and mind do not develop properly, which shows through later in life. Cultural competency is essential in a career of social work, which includes becoming familiar with processes, development, risk factors, and protective factors of clients who are in the toddler/early childhood development stage.
To conclude, competency 2 has been very prevalent throughout my time as a BSW student, and is an area that I continue to strive to increase my competency in. While I have a lot of personal experiences with gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, class, religion, and ability, I also recognize that there are an infinite amount of perspectives and personal experiences that people have with these areas of diversity. There are experiences that I will never have myself, and never be able to fully understand, but I will always try to. I think it is vital to educate ourselves on experiences that differ from our own, in order to become more tolerant and inclusive of others' differences. What I have gained and affirmed from this competency 2 is the knowledge that it’s important for us not to become myopic in our understanding of cultural differences. To deny the importance of other human dimensions, such as sexual orientation, gender, disability, religious orientation, race, and so forth, is not to see the whole person. In order to be a social worker, I acknowledge that while I have my own opinions and life experiences, I am a student of my client, as they are the experts in their own experiences. Every person has different life perspectives, and we should be conscious of these differences, and value them, rather than appeal to some areas of diversity while oppressing others.