What Is My Professional Identity

Professional Identity
I have long been interested in the experiences that shape us as individuals, and how the interactions we have with other people, communities, and systems affects how we view ourselves and the world in general. Social work allows me to spend my work hours engaging with other people with the aim of enhancing my clients’ well-being and empowering my clients to achieve positive change in their own lives and in their communities.
As a former journalist and English Major, I had never even taken a psychology class (something I always saw as a pre-requisite for social work) before arriving at Loyola. All I knew was that the previous year that I had spent facilitating arts programs in a woman’s correctional facility had provided
As a middle-to-upper-class White Canadian woman, I stand in a not unsubstantial amount of privilege. Part of my professional identity is based upon using the privilege I have to help others and to fight for change so that more people have the same opportunity I have been given to chase their goals and feel safe, protected, and loved. The incorporation of clinical supervision has also allowed me to vent my frustrations and worries about my performance in a safe space, and to hash out difficult cases. I believe continued supervision will be important for my continued professional development. In his review of my internship, my current supervisor wrote that I was a tireless advocate for my clients rights and provided strong and empathetic support that my coworkers and clients alike responded to. This feedback is something I will continue to strive to live up to as I move forward in my career. The advocacy element of social work is something that I see as differentiating social workers as different from other mental health clinicians. It is our duty to keep “social justice and social change” (National Association of Social Workers [NASW], 2018, p.1) at the forefront of our work. While direct service with marginalized clients in my eyes inherently puts these issues
For this reason, I have found a collaborative, strengths-focused approach to be most useful when working with clients. I try to incorporate classic strengths-based principles, such as discussions of resiliency, personal strengths, and community contacts when working with my clients (Manthey, Knowles, Asher, & Wahab 2011). This has proven particularly important at CGLA, where my clients face an antagonistic system that focuses predominately on their negative past experiences and the consequences of those experiences. By centering my clients’ ability to achieve the change they desire, I find that we are better able to reflect on their goals and challenges, as well as the resources they both have and need to acquire, then if I were to focus on only what has gone wrong for my clients (Manthey et al., 2011). The statement that “we are more than our mistakes” may be cliched, but I have found that many of the people I work with very much need to hear it. The importance of using a strengths-based framework with clients was stressed in my 504 class: Work with Individuals and Families. Although I took this class in my second semester, it was the first time I was exposed to comprehensive explanations of how to facilitate effective and appropriate assessments, interventions, and treatment planning with