The Role of Professional Values in Community Service Work
Professional values play a vital role in community service work. The case is so because they determine the effectiveness of the community work programs and activities due to their ability to build a moral foundation for social workers. Furthermore, they encompass the ethical considerations and principles used to regulate community work practice and establish professional standards. Professional values help in the achievement of social justice because community service workers can be held accountable for violating the set values. However, community service workers and clients face several social barriers that interfere with their ability to obtain maximum results. Therefore, those social barriers must be addressed for community service work to be correctly undertaken. There are several theoretical approaches supporting community service work and its significance in promoting social development. Therefore, community work is an ethical consideration, and theories have been developed to justify its importance. Professional values should be at the forefront of any community service project for it to achieve maximum results.
Roles of Professional Values in Community Service Work
Professional values can be defined as the guiding principles and beliefs that influence and individual’s work behavior. The professional values guide community service workers in different domains such as healthcare and therapy in the delivery of services to the community. Social workers usually are at the forefront of advocating for justice and human rights and giving voice to the marginalized populations. Professional values guide community service workers towards valuing each individual’s worth and dignity (Bureau, 2018). They are required to treat each individual respectfully and compassionately by being mindful of ethnic diversity, cultural norms and individual differences.
Professional values promote social responsibility. The case is so because community service workers are required to strive towards increasing the client’s ability to become self-reliant, change, and address their needs. Furthermore, professional values require community service workers to be responsible to their clients and their organizations and the law. In doing so, they resolve conflicts that may arise between society and their clients in a socially responsible and respectful way.
Professional values enhance the delivery of exemplary services to the community. The main goal of community service workers is to serve the public by helping the needy and managing addressing different social problems. Professional values require human service workers to lift public service beyond their gain and self-interest. Human service workers utilize their knowledge and skills to guide their clients and community members through severe social issues such as child abuse, drug dependency, criminal behavior, and residential instability, among others. Therefore, utilizing the professional values service delivery is placed as the main role of the human service workers, which boosts the fight against social problems.
Professional values require human service workers from all domains to uphold integrity in service delivery. Community service workers are required to conduct themselves in a responsible, trustworthy, and honest way while serving the public. To maintain their work integrity, community service workers are required to continuously increase their competency, which improves their expertise at work.
Professional values play a critical role in the development of human relationships. Community service workers understand the significance of relationships. The case is so because human relationships are vital drivers of equity, advocacy, and change (Martindale, Olate & Anderson, 2017). That being the case, community service workers involve their clients, community initiatives staff, and other professionals as their partners to help them heal different social problems. They improve human relationships among persons to promote and restore families, clients, and communities’ functionality. Since community and human service work depends on the maintenance of positive relationships between people who might be unreliable or hostile, human service workers must be communicative and patient.
Main Domains of Human Services
Human services is a field that deals with servicing fellow humans, whether as a group such as community and families, or individuals to alleviate change and stress to help them work to their optimum capacity (Sundel & Sundel, 2017). There are numerous human services. Nursing is one of the major social service domains. Nurses deal with patients with different needs and are the people who deal with patients from a closer point. They collaborate with other professionals to develop patient care plans while educating patients about illness management.
Psychology is another human services domain that focuses on human thoughts and behavior. Psychologists come up with theories and tests regarding behavioral and mental functioning human being’s welfare. They study how individual relationships with one another and their response to the environment they are exposed to. Therefore, by understating the behavioral mental functioning, it helps treat people with serious mental and psychological illnesses in society.
Counseling is another human service domain that deals with people struggling to beat different types of problems. Counselors play a crucial role in guiding community members suffering from different problems such as addiction and health problems on ways to overcome them (Neukrug, 2016). The fourth main human services domain is child development. Child upbringing can be difficult because families and children deal with emotional and physical changes and disruptions due to child hospitalization. Child development specialists use their skills and training to help in preparing children ahead of difficult medical procedures and tests, and other life changes resulting from an acute illness or chronic treatments that require hospitalization.
The Concept of Social Justice
Social justice is a professional core value that requires community service workers to achieve social justice by fighting against the injustices occurring in society. Community service workers focus on social problems affecting people in society, harassment, discrimination, homelessness, poverty, and any other form of injustice. They offer resources and social support to oppressed groups and vulnerable individuals who are likely to be victims of injustice (Gatenio Gabel & Mapp, 2019). They do so in an effort to seek justice and build a sense of belonging among the people facing difficulties that tend to alienate them from society.
Every individual deserves to be heard and treated with dignity. Community service workers focus on promoting public sensitivity by encouraging the public to stay positive and embrace diversity in different aspects such as ethnicity and culture (Bhuyan, Bejan & Jeyapal, 2017). Therefore, they act as the voice to those who are voiceless and promote equity in society. They do so by ensuring that the vulnerable communities, individuals, and clients can access basic information, resources, and services. Social workers promote wholesome engagement and equal opportunity to clients while educating those who might not be direct victims of discrimination on the victims’ struggles or less fortunate. In doing so, they encourage people to treat one another with humility and compassion, regardless of their backgrounds. All these efforts are aimed at achieving social justice for all.
Social Barriers Faced by Clients and Workers in the Community Service Sector
One major social barrier that is faced by clients is discrimination. Mostly, clients in the community have limited access to social services and are often discriminated against in society (Nxumalo, Goudge & Manderson, 2016). The case is so because, in most cases, they are the marginalized and minorities in the community. Other social barriers faced by community service clients include harassment, poverty, and homelessness, among other types of social injustices.
Community service workers encounter numerous social barriers, such as working with oppressed and vulnerable people. The case is so because they interact with both adults and children who might be suffering from mental health problems or physical disabilities in their daily routine. Constant exposure to highly emotional people and conditions can result in compassion fatigue (Baxter & Fancourt, 2020). The case is so because of the chances of remaining unaffected by such distressing moments and cases, especially when dealing with them on a daily basis. As a result, community service workers are vulnerable to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.
An unpredictable schedule is another social barrier that is encountered by community service workers. The case is so because they work beyond the normal 9-5, Monday to Friday schedule. As a result, it makes it hard for them to balance personal life and work. That being the case, the unpredictable schedule may lead to the community’s social workers’ deteriorated social well-being. Another challenge is the ever-transforming society. Community service workers often deal with different societies that are dynamic in nature. As a result, it is difficult to adapt to these changes, which interferes with their ability to deliver services.
Theoretical Approaches Underpinning Professional Community Service
Several vital theoretical approaches support social work. Therefore, community service work’s structure is derived from evidence-driven practices and theories. Unlike other holistic models used in the assessment and intervention, community service work focuses on seeking remedies and solutions that take into consideration the personal needs of the clients and the environment surrounding them. Some of the theoretical frameworks include transpersonal theory, social learning theory, systems theory, cognitive behavior framework, psychosocial development, and psychodynamic theory.
Transpersonal Theory
This theoretical approach considers the human’s change and development of spiritual nature as a focus for treatment. It integrates the social, spiritual, intellectual, emotional, creative, and physical being into a single complete component. It equally focuses on the six components when developing the treatment purpose. It focuses on discovering divinity through humanity. This theoretical approach’s main purpose is to develop a treatment that involves forgiveness, acceptance, and wisdom Cassidy (Cousineau, 2018). When combined with other therapeutic approaches, it promotes the client’s well-being and peace. It works best for social workers and clients who are spiritual and creative in nature and aspire to be higher. Therefore, for this theoretical approach to work in community service work, clients need to forgive and accept what they are facing to benefit.
Social Learning Theory
Social learning theory is a theory that asserts that people learn behaviors from modeling and observation. For instance, if a child sees his or her parent abusing one another, they are likely to learn to be abusive. This theory plays a crucial role in community service workers because it helps them in addressing destructive habits and behavior. It provides an opportunity to learn and imprint different behaviors on individuals with bad characters by modeling new and healthier ones (Nicholson & Higgins, 2017). Social learning theory uses behavior modification to help clients to model and experience new behaviors, thus mitigating the unhealthy ones. Cognitive therapies such as social learning theory help community service workers to address behavioral disorders. They also model positive behaviors to abusive clients, thus helping them reduce discrimination based on gender and other differentiating aspects.
Systems Theory
The system’s theoretical approach looks at human problems and behavior from the individual’s perspective concerning interrelated and complex systems. This approach considers the experiences, needs, and behavior of all the components that interact within and beyond the system. Based on this theory, community service workers should consider all the issues and factors of the system that affect their clients and focus on making the system supportive and healthy. The systems’ components may include the client’s family members, social networks, and their community, for instance, counselors, friends, schools, mentors, religious communities, and teachers, among others. Also, this theoretical approach takes into account the impact of community values on clients. The theory is also applied when assessing the unbecoming behavior of adolescents. A community service worker can conduct an assessment of the adolescent’s family behavior and dynamics.
Cognitive Behavior Theory (CBT)
Cognitive behavior theory depends on a cognitive-based model that integrates how people perceive, interpret, and experience events and issues to their psychological functioning, behaviors, and emotions. People experiencing distorted, obsessive, and negative thinking often develop behaviors and thoughts that lead them to severe psychological responses and stress. Treating clients with distorted thinking is difficult because such thinking patterns can result from intractable psychiatric issues, together with some aspects of the biological component. This theoretical approach is used by community-service-workers-as therapists to guide their clients to identify potential distortion and their associated triggers. Afterward, they assign them behavioral tasks that put into test their thinking. Since most people experience phobias and aversions, CBT involves a component of aversion therapy to help people overcome phobias.
Conclusion
Professional values play a critical role in community service work because they regulate how community service worker work with their clients. Also, those values tie them to a certain to which they should conduct themselves. As a result, they help them in delivering social justice to the marginalized community. Human service domains are the fields that deal with delivering service to fellow humans, for instance, nursing, psychology, counseling, and child development services. Community service clients and workers encounter numerous social barriers because clients tend to be from marginalized areas or requiring special care. Therefore, they are vulnerable to all sorts of social injustices, such as harassment and discrimination. Numerous theoretical approaches support community service work, such as social learning theory, CBT, and psychosocial theory. These theories help community service workers address their clients’ different needs and help them better their current situation.
References
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Cassidy Cousineau, S. (2018). Faith, Spirituality, and Social Work Education: An Exploration into the Quest for Integration.
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Nicholson, J., & Higgins, G. E. (2017). Social structure social learning theory: Preventing crime and violence. In Preventing crime and violence (pp. 11-20). Springer, Cham.
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Sundel, M., & Sundel, S. S. (2017). Behavior change in the human services: Behavioral and cognitive principles and applications. Sage Publications.