My reflection essay on my visit to both AMKFSC and TOUCH SAC will cover my understanding of key issues tackled by the agencies, assessment of the social worker’s approaches, application of theories and perspectives learnt to these real-life scenarios, and lastly, emerging trends in these areas and action taken by the agencies. The TOUCH SAC tackles the issue of aging gracefully while AMKFSC tackles the solving of familial problems alongside the strengthening of the family as a unit. These issues are often multidimensional and complicated; aging gracefully requires more than the fulfillment of physical needs e.g. food and shelter, but also the fulfillment of emotional needs e.g. companionship and recognition. Likewise, familial problems and …show more content…
These problems are related to conflict theory, which stresses how weaker members will be suppressed by more dominant ones . An example in the group setting would be TOUCH SAC’s HDB flat-share initiative, where 4 elderlies of the same gender share a same room to help take care of each other. In this group setting, disputes and disagreements between elderly can occur e.g. monopolizing of communal space. As a solution, TOUCH SAC installed a CCTV in each room with the elderly’s consent that will only be reviewed in cases of dispute, thus deterring conflict and facilitating accountability. Likewise, in a community setting, one group might assert its interest over another. TOUCH SAC workers have noted how students tend to treat their programs as charity and organize their elderly activities sloppily and half-heartedly to an extent that elderlies are disinterested and reluctant to attend them. As such, the importance of a win-win situation where both the target group and the other groups in the community would benefit has to be stressed, an ideal situation being students benefiting from CIP hours, while the elderly benefiting from meaningful