SOCW 2016 FINAL

Posted: March 27th, 2020

SOCW 2016 FINAL

Student’s Name

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SOCW 2061 Final

Donna’s Story From a Problem-Solving Perspective

            A problem-solving perspective in social work is a practice model that entails focusing on gaining sufficient understanding of the challenges, brainstorming all possible solutions, and offering these options to a client or patient for them to implement a chosen solution. “Donna’s Story” is the title of a Canadian documentary that revolves around the life of Donna Gamble, a Native American woman from the Cree tribe, who struggles to overcome her life of prostitution and drug addiction. Donna is portrayed as a strong, determined, and resourceful woman, who struggles to overcome numerous challenges in her life and society to become an influential Aboriginal counselor of the youths and adults battling to overcome drug addiction and abuse. A problem-solving perspective on Donna’s life is represented by her critical look at her experiences and that of her family and society.

Abusive Past and Donna’s Transformation

            An assessment summary of Donna’s life should be done in consideration of her past, present, and future goals that she would wish to achieve. In the documentary, Donna reports that she was sexually abused and molested by her uncles when she was a little girl. The abuses that Donna went through as a child can be attributed to having made a significant contribution to her deviant behavior as a teen and young adult. It is recommended that Donna enrolls in social work classes that are uniquely tailored to tackle drug abuse and addiction-related counseling skills to further her efforts to become an effective Aboriginal counselor. As a social activist working with Donna, I would recommend that she formulate tangible goals for her personal and professional life as a social worker. These goals would entail ensuring that her children do not manifest deviant behavior, in addition to providing that she rehabilitates some prostitutes and drug addicts and moves them from the streets.

Analysis of Donna’s Life from a Strength-Based Approach

            Donna exhibits exemplary resilience to have her life not determined by her past, but by her present and future aspirations. A strength-based approach in social work is a perspective used by welfare workers to focus on people’s strengths, potential, and abilities instead of paying attention to their deficits and problems. Donna represents an extraordinarily resilient and determined individual committed to ensuring that she continues learning, growing, and changing to become a better person (Hepworth, Rooney, Rooney, & Strom-Gottfried, 2016). Her situation from a strengths-based perspective portrays a woman with the considerable capacity to inspire people especially those who have gone through similar life experiences.

A Resilient Donna Fights Back to Become a Role Model

Donna is illustrated as a strong individual with aspirations to change her life and the lives of those afflicted by drug addiction and substance abuse. An essential aspect of the strength-based approach is the focus on an individual’s self-determination and commitment to change. Donna is portrayed as a self-determined individual committed to self-empowerment. She seeks to see these aspects manifested in individuals facing drug abuse and addiction challenges in their lives. It is important to note that the strength-based approach places emphasis on the establishment of enabling social niches that do not provide opportunities for stigmatization and discrimination (Bourdieu & Nice, 2007). Donna was cognizant of the fact that as a former drug addict and prostitute, she would face social stigma and prejudice from members of the society. Donna turns to her mother and daughters for social and moral support, which is an example of one of the tenets of a strength-based approach. The best method or model for working with Donna is enabling social niches to empower individuals using locally available and accessible resources.

 Evidence of Voluntary and Non-Voluntary Professional Relationships

            A voluntary relationship in social work refers to the situation where community workers are required to work with individuals who willingly seek their services. On the other hand, involuntary professional relationships entail circumstances where welfare workers are required to work with individuals who have been ordered by the courts to attend sessions with them. According to Healy (2014), a majority of social workers are engaged with clients who have been compelled by courts, spouses, partners, and supervisors, or the threat of punishment. Greene (2017) states that unfortunately, a majority of social work approaches and practice models are designed around the notion that individuals in need of social work services do so voluntarily. It is important to note that a majority of such clients harbor notions of being unwanted, mistrust other people, and feel generally unsafe in their immediate surroundings. Social workers should possess the necessary skills, competencies, and knowledge to promote the establishment of helping relationships between them and their clients (Howe, 2017).

The Ideal Social Worker

Donna attributes her decision to change after she received a hug from a total stranger on the streets when she was a prostitute. Regardless of the relationship type that exists between welfare workers and their clients, it is the professional responsibility and duty of the former to ensure that the latter receives appropriate counseling and care (Moser, 2012). Social workers should assist their clients in ways that help them live their lives to the highest possible quality. Social care involves helping people to live comfortably, maintaining their independence, and leading more meaningful and fuller lives. According to Greene (2017), social control from a sociological perspective entails the provision of welfare services based on defined social values and behavioral norms.

The Purpose of Child Welfare Service

Child welfare refers to the services designed to ensure the safety of children by monitoring the family’s ability to support and care for them successfully. All governments have the responsibility to support and coordinate the provision of services aimed at preventing the neglect and abuse of children (Fay, 2014).  Various services to ensure the well-being of young ones are designed to help the families that require assistance to care and protect their children (Howe, 2017). Child welfare services are responsible for arranging for children to live with their relatives or foster families in situations where the parents cannot assure their safety and wellbeing. Donna’s firstborn child was taken by child welfare services and put up for adoption, as mentioned earlier because she was considered incapable of assuring the child’s safety and wellbeing. She reports that her new goal in life is to end the cycle of generational domestic violence, drug abuse and addiction that afflicted her family to ensure that her children are not exposed to similar risks she encountered when she was young.

A Dysfunctional Family and Unattended Childhood

Timely intervention of child welfare services could have helped Donna escape sexual abuse and molestation by her uncles in her childhood (Moser, 2012). Consequently, Donna could not have turned to drugs and prostitution as a coping mechanism to deal with the trauma of growing up in a dysfunctional family. Donna states that she held strong resentment against her mother for leaving her and her siblings unattended for weeks. The existence of effective child welfare services could have helped Donna and her siblings move from the harmful environment into a more favorable one. The absence of an effective child welfare measure also facilitated the sexual abuse and molestation Donna suffered as a child.  

 Structural Argument of Donna’s Situation

The generational cycle of domestic violence, drug abuse, and addiction was the principal causative agents of Donna’s past and present experiences in life. Donna reports that her uncles used to give her money after sexually molesting her, which she would then use to buy eateries from the store; this was her coping with mechanism against the trauma. Donna’s mother says that she was also sexually abused, and upon reporting it to her mother, she was accused of asking for it, which made her seek alternatives to adjust with the predicament.(Glanz, Rimer, & Viswanath, 2008). When candy and other sweet confectionaries failed to console Donna, she resorted to other more “effective” coping mechanisms that were readily available to a 15-year-old girl on the streets, and that is how she started using drugs, became an addict, and began working as a prostitute to earn a living on the streets.

Donna Believes in Her Strength

Donna lived in a society that was conditioned to accept aboriginals as naturally predisposed to drug use and substance abuse, a belief that acerbated her situation (Payne, 2015). Donna believes that women have much potential to solve the issues affecting them directly; all they need is empowerment. She  finally qualified as a counselor for aboriginals, recovering drug addicts, and prostitutes seeking to leave the streets. Donna is driven by feminist philosophies in her quest to change lives, especially for recovering drug addicts and prostitutes, as illustrated by her incessant commitment to even visiting inmates in federal penitentiaries. Donna perceptions about her situation did not act as an inhibitor towards her desire to turn around her life. The use of failures and weaknesses as a source of inspiration and learning experience is the main emphasis of rehabilitative social work.  

 Personal Reflection on Donna’s Life

Donna’s story is extremely insightful for the various risk factors that aboriginals face as a community and the reasons behind what is considered as endemic drug abuse and addiction problem. Donna demonstrated exceptional resilience and determination that enabled her to overcome insurmountable challenges in her life to become an integral member of her society, committed to helping people deal with similar problems she had encountered in her life. Donna’s story provides social workers with useful insights into the various approaches that can be effective in various settings. For example, enabling social niches was extremely effective in Donna’s situation, which helped access locally available resources to help her cope with the challenges she encountered in her path to recovery. Self-determination is demonstrated to be an integral component of changing one’s life, especially when faced with the challenge of negative social labeling, discrimination, and stigmatization.

No Change is Possible Without the Will

Donna’s situation illustrates that a strong will to endure and survive adversity is as important as the approaches used by welfare workers to help individuals recover from various problems that they encounter in life. Changing one’s life for the better is demonstrated to be a holistic process whereby an individual seeks to support not only from self, but also from the immediate family, friends, community, and society in general. Support systems are demonstrated to be extremely vital in recovery from various socially unacceptable behaviors and practices. Donna’s story provides the viewer with a unique perspective on some social challenges that isolated populations face while tackling issues that might seem inconsequential, but they impact people’s lives adversely. As a social worker, Donna’s Story is inspirational and motivational because it exhibits a case that can be emulated in designing novel practice approaches.  

References

Bourdieu, P., & Nice, R. (2007). Outline of a theory of practice (vol. 16). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Fay, B. (2014). Social theory and political practice (RLE Social Theory). New York, NY: Routledge.

Gitterman, A., & Germain, C. B. (2008). The life model of social work practice: Advances in theory and practice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Glanz, K., Rimer, B. K., & Viswanath, K. (Eds.). (2008). Health behavior and health education: theory, research, and practice. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Greene, R. R. (2017). Human Behavior Theory and Professional Social Work Practice. In Human Behavior Theory and Social Work Practice (pp. 31-62). New York, NY: Routledge.

Healy, K. (2014). Social work theories in context: Creating frameworks for practice. New York, NY: Macmillan International Higher Education.

Howe, D. (2017). An introduction to social work theory. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hepworth, D. H., Rooney, R. H., Rooney, G. D., & Strom-Gottfried, K. (2016). Empowerment series: Direct social work practice: Theory and skills. Ontario, Canada: Nelson Education.

Moser, C. O. (2012). Gender planning and development: Theory, practice and training. New York, NY: Routledge.

Payne, M. (2015). Modern social work theory. Oxford, MA: Oxford University Press.