social work Essay

Submitted By tmottlove
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Pages: 6
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In chapter seven of “The Call to Social Work” by Lecroy, there are three different people who discussed how they became interested in the field of social work. Each individual has their own roles and responsibilities that they have deal with now. Pat Betard, Kathy Lorte, and Levonne Gaddy all have different stories but share many of the same roles and strengths when dealing with their clients. Pat Betard is a 51 year old woman, she is a recovering alcoholic that has been sober for the past 15 years. When she was 35 she went to Seattle University for the addiction studies program. While attending she was touched by a young woman she was dealing with because she reminded her of herself, she was an alcoholic and inches away from losing her home and her children. Later she became a substance abuse outreach counselor in a housing community and dealt with a wide range of different clients. She spent a good portion of her time going to crisis interventions and dealing with case management. A major strength of hers was gaining the trust of her clients quickly along with being persistent and patient when dealing with her substance abuse cliental. One important role she takes on is educating her coworkers and colleagues that do not know much and she gives them the tools they need to be successful when dealing with addiction. One of her clients was a young mother about 30 years old, with a 3 year old son. The two had been homeless almost their entire life and she helped them get their first apartment. The problem with this was that the mom was still addicted to heroin, the young mom forgot to sign up for help and transportation, so the little boy had no way to school and she had no transportation to her doctor appointments. Pat took it upon herself to offer them rides to school and appointments. She spent 20 hours in one week dealing with this woman and could never break through and get her to clean up her act. Pat Betard also runs 3 small groups for the community. The first is The Wise Woman’s Circle, which is for grandmothers raising their grandchildren because the parents are involved with alcohol or drugs. The second is The Codependency Group for Women and this is for single moms, domestic violence victims and recovering addicts. The third group she runs is The Coping with Change Group, and that group is for men and women that are recovering from any type of substance abuse. Kathy Lorte is a young woman that had a baby with downs syndrome, the child later got pneumonia and meningitis and later died a painful death. During this tragedy the family was assigned a bad social worker, this social worker didn’t talk to the family and did not explain everything that was going to happen and never had one encouraging word to say to the family. During this time Kathy told herself that she can do better than this and went on to become a social worker in the pediatric unit in a hospital. When mothers come in and their children pass away, she knows what it is like and how it feels. She took it upon herself to create a detailed packet about what grieving is, nice funeral homes, and information on how to plan their child’s funeral. Kathy also printed out readings and a list of support groups that the families can contact and ideas for memorials. She also would talk to the parents and encourage them to be able to hold the child before and while it dies. Her major role for being a pediatric social worker is to empower people to take care of themselves when dealing with these types of tragedies. She also puts a lot of effort into finding out what the families need and making sure they have a way to get what they need. The strength Kathy must have is staying strong and helping the parents get through losing their children. Kathy worked a cause of a 7 month old baby that needed a liver transplant. The parents were poor and had three other children to take care of, the mother needed help cooking, doing laundry, and helping with the sick baby. Kathy
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