Joseph's Vignette: Case Study

Mary Marrone
Professor Miller Levy
SOWK 544
18 September 2015
#1 Joseph
In Joseph’s vignette, one has to ask: “What is the social worker trying to accomplish?” According to the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics, the task of the social worker is to augment human well-being and focus on meeting the client’s basic needs, while empowering him/her (p.2). It is ironic though because in the vignette this is breached. Since the supervisor already suspects abuse, I as the social worker, am given a preconceived notion of my client. I am given the responsibility to gather more information about the suspected abuse. I am going to have to be very careful of how I engage with my client.
According to Cameron, M. & King
The major one is suspected abuse from a supervisor. Minor red flags include the fact that Joseph is a 70-year- old Jewish-American gay man who is looking for low-income housing. This is a red flag because one often associates a Jewish-American to have wealth. With this tidbit of information, one can infer that Joseph may be ostracized from his Jewish community, perhaps even as personal as his immediate family. This is something I would have to further investigate through my interview with Joseph.
The ethical dilemma in the Joseph vignette is that the supervisor suspected the abuse and is asking the social worker, in this case me, to uncover the abuse. Birkenmaier, J., Berg-Weger, M., & Dewees, M.P. (2013) stress that “relationships that involve child or elder abuse or neglect, exploitation of older adults, and intimate partner violence were once considered private family issues outside the jurisdiction of the law or of any public sector interest” (p.59). The dilemma arises in deciphering if this is a private or public
& King Keegan, E. (2010), practice strategies include rationale for change, modeling, feedback, ventilation, exploration, awareness and insight, emotional learning, interpersonal learning, knowledge, information, client ventilation, development and practice of new behaviors, success and mastery reinforcement, desensitization, suggestion, and advocacy. Each of these factors is likely to be familiar to social workers as they are all featured in social work and other clinical practice models. We view these practice strategies as both processes that occur between social worker, client, and others involved in the work and change principles suggesting helpful actions that may also be used by any of the participants in the work (Make Citation). This parallels to Birkenmaier, J., Berg-Weger, M. & Dewees, M.P. (2013) research that defines the practice framework of engagement as “building a relationship among the social worker, the client, and the client’s environment (make citation). The goal of engagement is to build trust with your client in order to reach positive outcomes (change).
In the Marquez Family vignette, there is a family intervention to try to get the son (Jacob) to quit smoking marijuana and for him to rekindle his broken relationship with his father (Rubio). This vignette illustrates the concept of ACE: The study, which began in 1994, collected two waves of data