Autobiographical Statement On Social Work

Autobiographical Statement
Social work is important to me because I see there are a lot of problems both systemic and with individual people that need to be addressed through research and clinical work. I want to spend my life working on improving services and quality of life of foster children and their families, supporting the grief and loss process with cultural sensitivity, working to reduce negative prejudice and discrimination, especially when it holds people back from living out their full potential, and understanding and providing needed resources to people who struggle with mental health and disability through evidenced based practice and scientific work. I want to provide services whether that be individually, in the community or

Over the past two years I have spent around seven hundred hours advocating, documenting, writing court reports, and understanding the legal dependency system in order to ensure the rights of foster children are upheld and appropriate services are provided in a timely manner. This work has been particularly important to me because giving a foster child a voice through advocacy work does and can create positive change in their life. While some aspects of this work is emotionally draining, I find it is humbling and gratifying to be a part of the process of positive change for these children. Foster children also experience grief and loss as a result of being taken away from their families, moving from foster home to foster home which has led me to my most recent volunteer work as a grief and loss facilitator for the BRIDGES program through Multi-Care. Another reason is due to the loss of my infant son in 2009 has given me an intrinsic need to help others through their grief and loss. The only way to grieve is to grieve, and so participating in group work allows me to help others through a difficult time with support, a listening ear, and love. I am hoping that as I participate more in this work I will gain more knowledge on how to deal with grief and loss and make some observations that will help me become better at working with the foster

The United States in particular continues to struggle with discriminatory factors to include: racial prejudice, sexual prejudice, religious prejudice, disability prejudice, mental health prejudice, socioeconomic prejudice, and so on. Something that I feel strongly about is that minority groups face oppressive factors that hold them back from living out their full potential, and citizens not being able to live out their full potential is a social problem that affects us all. While I am interested in many oppressive factors, such as sex trafficking, domestic violence, educational gaps, foster care system, and poverty; I am going to address stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is when a person feels themselves at risk of confirming either a positive or negative stereotype. When somebody is negatively stereotyped this can have many effects such as: reducing students ability to test well, this can affect job security by creating mental barriers, and get in the way of being able to get basic resources because a person might not want to fulfill a specific stereotype. Our world is full of stereotypes passed down through cultural norms, the television, newspapers, Disney movies, and in just about every aspect of life. While it is important to make heuristics for survival purposes, making these quick snap judgements