Practicum Reflection Paper

After reading several of my students posting for this week, I can see the similarities in ever practicum settings. Even though, we all complete our practicum at different settings, the overall role and services were the same. As a social worker our goals are to be that helping agent that connect people to different services. At Adult Protection Services, case workers are advocate, facilitators, case managers, brokers, and networkers. Personally speaking to be a successfully social worker, we have to be all those professional skills and roles. Our job consist of advocating on behalf of our clients, assisting with services, linking clients outside resources and services, and fighting the state and federal government to ensure these vulnerable people continue to have their rights.
Forming and maintain professional relationships are necessary for our job. During this week of practicum, I was able to meet some services in the community, and I was able to network with them. My field instructor express the importance of building relationships with hospitals and nursing homes. At Adult Protective Services on call caseworkers sometimes have to place client rather quickly, and that is when the hospitals and nursing homes will give a helping hand. On the other hand nursing homes or hospital will request our services when clients appeared to be abused, neglected or exploited. Forming and establishing good working relationships can allow for better service of clients. Having a bad reputation can also hurt the case workers, because outside agency do not want to work them. In its strive for expertise social workers learned a long time ago that practicing social work is more than just having a good heart and good intentions. “According to it requires having a certain expertise, this expertise arises from the base of authority that social works claim, a base of authority that makes the social worker uniquely qualified and most able to attend to the client’s