Choose one piece of auto-biographical writing which relates to needing welfare services. Provide an analysis of the chosen piece of auto-biographical writing which draws on the learning in the module ( Social work, Service users, Anti-discriminatory practice & Using Narratives) and discuss how the learning from the analysis could support anti-discriminatory practice?
Welfare services are basically processes that deal with the well – being of the different individuals and the society. It offers financial help to the people to the economically and socially degraded people which are actually provided by the government. This will actually help to increase the happiness and prosperity in the lives of the people. In this study, a detailed analysis is done on the various aspects of welfare services (Abbott, 2003). The analysis is explained with the help of an autobiographical piece in evangelical Christianity relating to the role of women who are American and African slave (Arum, 2010).
This autobiography dealt with the conversion of slave women, conversations between slave women and white women in the Southern society of evangelical Christianity. This society was hugely patriarchal and it affected the independence of women in the aspect of religious powers. The major role of the women was to nurture their children and also to encourage their religious involvement. There were different types of Evangelical churches like the Baptists, Methodists, and etc. Slaves do not belong to any specific institution. They literally faced numerous exploitation and humiliation from their masters (Leckie, Given & Buschman, 2010). The disciplines of the church basically alert the responsibilities assigned to the slaves for their masters. The American – Africa slaves faced torture in terms of their religion as well as in conversion (Magnusson, 2010). This had serious implications against the white culture with respect to political and social means. In the process of conversion, mother plays an important role for their children. The family was the only peaceful place for a slave. In the family, a slave can lead his normal life but tremendous pressures still bounded on them. However the responsibilities of the white women were quite similar to the slave women. Their main focus was on improving the lives of their children and help in domestic chores. Slave women dealt with extreme difficulties to raise their children (BarkleyRosser, 2010). They married men on distant plantations and faced the threat of rape and other violations from the white slave owners and were sold to the traders from their families which ultimately resulted in the less effectiveness of nuclear families (Eriksen, 2010). However women faced many issues regarding gender discrimination. Another aspect which was significant was the both conversions and religious visions which was the vision of calling to preach and pray. A major difference exists in the narratives on the basis of gender, since only men recalled being asked by God to preach. According to the evidences described in the narratives, a calling from God allowed only slave men to undertake the position of preacher. In many of the men’s narratives their call to preach and their confidence in their ability to lead demonstrate that at that time men did not question the ability to serve in a more formal leadership role (Leckie, Given & Buschman, 2010).
Some men even often recalled that they had a lack of faith in their capabilities, but it was noted them God asked them to preach. A former slave expressed his self-doubt, stating that God not only instructed him once to preach: “I call you to preach the gospel,” but also a second time: “Go in peace and fear not for a teacher and preacher shalt thou be and many shall hear thee and believe.” The normal man heard two specific messages before he would go further in future. However, the slave knew that he had the right and the calling to become a preacher because God spoke to him. These important relationships of the family invoked women with the influence on setting up traditional family standards and it also provided stability in the family. One vital way that they demonstrated their family leadership was through religious instruction and guidance (Okitikpi & Aymer, 2010). Slave women-mothers, aunts, and grandmothers-served as unofficial advisers and mentors providing security and moral expectations for slave children, as well as elevating women’s status in the family realm. There are hardly any references in the narratives to the importance of fathers who provide religious guidance. This autobiography mainly focuses on Evangelical women including mothers and aunts. However, it also provides an insight into the religious leadership of men within the family. Through the practice of Evangelical religion or fonns of folk religion, women obtained an important place in their families, representing a moral authority in the slave community. For example: Frankie Goole expressed happiness about her belief in God and her positive memories of religion during slavery. A very real implication of the importance of influence of mothers on their children’s religion is the number of references in the former slaves’ narratives recalling their mothers’ praying, singing, discussing religion or the submissive nature of their mother. This will directly reflect the impact of women’s religious activities on their children. They also indirectly indicate that women gathered strength, introspection, and comfort from praying. Their own convictions led to a position of religious leadership within families, an ascent that directly challenged white assumptions of black inferiority. The more women secretly gathered to discuss religion, prayed during the worlung and taught their children how to worship. At the same point of time, this type of religious resistance to the slavery’ institution became an important means for women and thereby they gain respect and gave strength to their children. A former slave recalled the visuals of her mother praying for her child to convert in to Christianity (Albertson, 2010).
These teachings encouraged women to generate moral and domestic authority. It also helps them to provide self esteem and values to their children. These teachings remained with the children even in the difficult situations and provided them the courage to survive in those difficult situations. Even though the churches were biracial, most of the churches divided the seats according to races, castes and the sermons that were offered to the African Americans. However, it was observed that many slaves have benefitted from this kind of worship. They belonged to the same religion as their master and mistress and religiously they were completely equal. In this biracial scenario, the role of the white women was vital. The white women negotiated with the slaves and allowed them to attend the local churches (Arum, 2010). This actually implied that religious preferences of both white and slave women were on a same level. Similar religious preferences do not imply similar cultural activities. Their relationship was very complicated. White women belonged to a highly dominated class. They did not have any economical and social problem like the slave women. So their scenario is completely different from them (SAUNDERS, 2010).
Social work is carried out by the trained personnel in order to alleviate the social deprivation from the lives of the affected people. Social work is a very important in the contemporary society. The two major roles which are normally there in Social work are Support role and Control role. The first one is basically associated with the support which is to be given to the people who are mentally and socially degraded while the control role is associated with the protection of child’s health and mental aspect. The social work contributes the life quality of the citizens, solidarity and the other relations in the society. Communities and individuals will constantly face social disadvantages and they will require help from the states and the government and to overcome this, there is a need of social work. Social Work is the profession that allows one to fight for individual’s rights, protect the vulnerable and support those who are in need of support. It enables one to have a positive effect on others. It allows one, as a practitioner to work with a varied and differentiated group of people, to learn and experience a multifaceted life that is consistently dynamic and evolving. It allows one to try and tackle the various problematic issues, to help empower others to solve their own problems, to make a difference (hopefully for the better) the way the individual live. It teaches one continuously about all the different aspects of humanity and allows one to learn a lot about oneself. Social work allows one to work on different levels of society, to have a hand in changing it and to push forwards to a fairer, more equal and just society. Being a social worker could literally mean the difference between life and death for one person and that ultimately says it all and therefore makes it worth having, worth continually training and learning, worth making it a true profession and worth fighting for and continually developing it. That’s why social work is important in the lives of the people facing obstacles and difficulties.
Another important aspect which can be viewed with respect to social work is the role of Service Users (Lichtenberg, 2010). Service users are those people who use the social health care services potentially. They normally highlight the negativity of the mental and health policies. The main objectives of a service user are
They also deal with the social work approaches which ultimately lead to assessment. If these objectives are fulfilled then the people can lead a normal and independent life. The task of a service user is one of the most important aspects in a social work approach. In a social work practice, four stages are needed to be identified (MOREAU, 2010). They are
In the first stage, the problem should be assessed and analyzed whether it is an individual problem or problem of the society. Secondly to overcome the problem, a proper and appropriate strategy should be adopted. Thirdly, there should be a method of intervention like the state intervention to help the degraded people and lastly there should be a proper review to this assessment and critical review should be given so that if further any kind of social problem prevails, then these reviews will help to avoid the negative aspects of the social work. It also provides way to develop self esteem of the individuals and there is no unfair means to treat people differently (Flabbi, 2010).
By anti discriminatory practices, it is meant by the actions taken to prevent discrimination which happens in terms of race, color status. It actually promotes equality so that there is less discrimination. In this type of practices, the diversity of the people is dealt by the social workers and other professionals which ultimately results to develop a social awareness and also develop a relationship with the client (Lichtenberg, 2010). The workers who are comfortable to deal with their own identities have initiated effective responses to the others needs with different identities. The need of anti discriminatory practices arises when a low backward class is affected by the discrimination against them (Rapp, 2010). The objectives of the anti discriminatory policy are to provide polite, positive and encouraging responses to all the relevant inquiries. It also ensures balanced decision how the applicants can meet the needs of children and the people who are young. These practices will always make the affected people to deal with the difficulties. This will also ensure the victims not to lose their sight of importance of improving their livelihood. Providing equal opportunities do not mean treating every individual same. It will help to identify the uniqueness of the particular individual (Pennington, 2000). Basically, in multiculturism anti-discriminatory practices are rooted. These practices are employed by the social workers who help the degraded individuals to overcome the prejudice of the institutions and individuals. These types of practices are flexible and it involves the views of the individuals who are oppressed. These can also analyze the nature and impact of culture of different organizations and it includes multidimensional strategies which reflect the different concepts of networking, involvement of the user and participation. The practitioners should work out an understanding of all these ideas thereby lowering the discrimination and racial disparities among people. In this way it will help to develop ways to deal with these discriminatory and oppressive policies (Rapp, 2010).
On the basis of this above autobiography, it can be inferred that the lower class of people i.e. the slaves are hugely affected and are discriminated against race, color and social status. The high classes dominated the lower class people. Presence of racial discrimination affected adversely the lives of the people. The black people were immensely tortured and had to face lots of issues in their regular life. There was even gender discrimination. Society being patriarchal, women were left behind in every aspect (Siddique, 2011). They face tremendous obstacles, sexual harassments and even brutal killings. The slave owners married slave women and exploited them in every way. They don’t have their own independent life and had to do according to the order of their husband. Their opinions did not matter as well. They could not lead a peaceful life even in their own house (Kraal, Roosblad & Wrench, 2010). However, the white women somehow had a better place in the society compared to the slave women. Though they had same religious beliefs, but the cultural difference had made a distinction among them (Pierson & Thomas, 2010). Here the service users can help to the degraded people through counseling and specific advice. In every situation, the slave women faced difficulties and there was no way for them to get out of this. In this scenario, the lower and the backward class of people needed support from the service users. Importance of social work also cannot be neglected. Here, the support role is played by the churches and control role is played by the slave’s mother who has a desire for her child to convert into Christianity and lead a better life. Women are always sacrificing their happiness for the betterment of their family (Singh, 2010). Like here, slaves mother are praying anxiously for their children only for their enhancement. They can’t even show their interest in any matter which they like (Rivera-Maestre, 2010). They were deprived of elementary education as well. So they don’t have any idea about today’s advanced generation where women play a significant role in the society and are still fighting to make their position stable in the society (Pagitt, 2010). There should also be a way to provide an analysis. So the anti discriminatory practices are required to be undertaken to make the lives of the people peaceful and hastlefree (Siddique, 2011).
However this piece of autobiography can be compared with today’s scenario as well. In today’s scenario, both developed and developing countries faced severe social issues. Issues regarding women empowerment, racial discrimination still prevailed in many developed countries as well (Dovidio, Hewstone, Glick & Esses, 2010). In every sphere of life, women face more challenges than the male counterparts. For example, molestation is faced by women everyday in majority of the countries. In a developed country like USA, statistics show that 9 out of 10 women have been molested and attempted rape. In Africa as well, this problem is quite prominent. There persists inequality in terms wages and salaries (Un.org, 2015). Women get less salary compared to the men. The average wages earned by women is $34,700 and by men is $42,800 (Bobbitt-Zeher, 2011). On a daily basis, women have to manage both household and professional work. The major issue that persisted in Africa was the racial discrimination. Today also, the white people are given more importance than the back people. In Libya, the black migrants were extensively humiliated and racial violence resulted in the death of the migrants (Un.org, 2015). There is still the presence of caste differentiation. In Africa, distinction among the high castes and low castes has unfavorable effects on the people of low caste. This reduces the growth in career, lowered the earnings, loss of self-esteem and confidence, depression anger etc (Siddique, 2011).
In order to eradicate these social issues, certain policy implications should be adopted. Measures should taken by the government to improve the social and economic environment. Government policies should be implemented to remove inequality among men and women (Pennington, 2000). There should be a law on the equality of wages among and women so that women can earn at the same level men do. Gender discrimination should be reduced. Some policies should also be adopted in order to remove the disparities in caste system. There are differences in the religious beliefs as well. This should also not be discriminated and some policy or law should be implemented in this scenario. If these policy implementations are undertaken by the Government of both developed and developing countries, then there would be improvement in the lives of the normal people (Changer, Barreto & Ellemers, 2010). The Government should itself take the responsibility to remove these problems. So these social issues should be addressed and there should be positive solutions in the form of policy implementations and welfare services. Welfare services thus provide a very important place in the lives of the socially degraded human beings. It generates integrity in the society and help to maintain a well balanced state (Un.org, 2015). The need of welfare services is not only important in the lives of the slave but it is of utmost importance in the lives of the women in particular as they facing majority of the issues in their live (Pennington, 2000). The growth of welfare services, social work as a profession in both developed and developing countries should show positive outcome if there is cooperation among the government and different social welfare organizations. In this way a new positivity can be achieved in the field of social work. (Changer, Barreto & Ellemers, 2010).
References
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