HHS310: H & HS Culture: The Helping Relationship (CGD1716A) Wk3 D2

Using the Basic Problem-Solving Process- Chapter 7

No aspect of life is static. Evolutionary change comes so slowly that it may appear static, yet the process is continuous. Throughout a single lifetime, adaptations are, of necessity, made more swiftly. The individual, as well as the species, is involved in a constant process of change and adaptation, both to the requirements of normal growth and developmental patterns and to the demands of the environment.

People may be born with handicaps—physical, intellectual, or emotional—that tend to lead to the development of destructive patterns of living. Pressures of the environment and the social situation can cause people to adapt in ways that are equally destructive, although these may be the only adaptations possible to ensure survival in a particular situation. The task of human service workers is to improve the functioning of both individuals and society. Workers thus are concerned with enabling people to alter patterns of behavior that are destructive and also with changing the unhealthy social situations that lead to their formation.

Why and How People Change

We must consider how and why individuals and social systems change, apart from natural development and maturational change, and how this change can be facilitated:

• People change as a result of rational decision in order to provide greater self- fulfillment and to avoid pain and discomfort.

• People change when they learn, through facing and accepting the logical and inevitable consequences of their own behavior, that what they are doing is not really

Levine, Joanne. Working with People: The Helping Process (Page 120). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

meeting their needs in a satisfactory and constructive way or contributing to their happiness and well-being.

• People change through the development of relationships in which emotional needs are more adequately met and defenses accordingly need not be so rigid and constraining.

• People change when, as a result of learning different ways of behaving, they provoke different responses from other people, which in turn push them to respond differently.

• People change when they are required to adapt to changing demands of the social systems of which they are a part.

• People change when they have hope of reward for the risk they are taking in upsetting the status quo. • Systems change when there is change within the parts that comprise them and when provision is made for the utilization of new input.

Rarely do these conditions of change occur singly; frequently they are seen in various combinations. Together they encompass the rational characteristics of people as well as their psychological, physical, social, and spiritual components.

One of the basic philosophical tenets of human services is that fundamental change must come from within, although an outside force can help to facilitate it. his is true of systems on all levels, from individuals to the most complex social group. Basically, they all must be responsible for changing themselves.

Workers act as catalysts, setting into operation the conditions and forces that lead to change. To do so, they operate from another basic philosophical belief: that people can be understood by utilization of the scientific method of study. his method provides a disciplined, orderly framework for workers’ thinking and an overall pattern that can be learned and used to deal with the problems of life. The classical scientific method involves recognition and systematic formulation of a problem, collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses (tentative explanations of the problem). The researcher hopes that a valid theory or law emerges from this process. he orderly framework for working with people is an adaptation of this scientific method. It becomes a constant and ongoing process from the point at which the worker becomes involved in a situation until termination. Though the words we use to describe the process are different, the process is basically the same.

Structure of the Helping Process

The structure of the worker’s activities is as follows:

1. Engagement: Involving oneself in the situation, establishing communication, and formulating preliminary hypotheses for understanding and dealing with the problem.

2. Assessment: Appraising the situation on the basis of data (facts, feelings, people, circumstances, and systems) involved.

Levine, Joanne. Working with People: The Helping Process (Page 121). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

3. Definition of the problem: Formulating the need.

4. Setting of goals: The end toward which the effort is to be directed.

5. Selection of alternative methods and an initial mode of intervention: Looking at all the possible ways of tackling the problem and selecting the most propitious one.

6. Establishment of a contract: Agreeing on a definition of the roles and responsibilities of the participants.

7. Action leading toward the desired goal: The work that is necessary.

8. Evaluation: Weighing the outcome of action in terms of success or failure.

9. Continuation of working plan, abandonment of unsuccessful intervention and selection of a different approach, or termination of the plan: Both continuation and selection of a different intervention strategy are based on a repetition of this basic problem-solving process.

In light of our basic belief that people have a need and right to be involved in decision making in matters that concern them, we must ask: What is the role and responsibility of the client in this whole process? First, we must remember that this process is a description of the activity of workers—this is their working structure. Second, clients must always be involved in each step to the extent that they are capable of participating. This involvement is part of the total process, and workers who shortcut or evade, probably using the justiication that it is a time-saving device, are contributing to failure, creating dependency, and making more work for themselves. This way of working should be a growth experience for clients; only as they are involved in it will they grow. his process is an orderly way of thinking and planning and is valid no matter what the level of intervention. It is applicable with individuals, groups, and communities. It is also descriptive of successful coping behavior that people have always used to survive, and it is a continuous and adaptive process (see Figure 7.1). .

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Engagement

Engagement is that period in which workers begin to orient themselves to the task at hand. The initial involvement in a situation for which a worker has responsibility may come about in different ways.

VOLUNTARY APPLICATION FOR HELP These clients are usually conscious that they have a problem; they have probably considered and perhaps tried various ways of dealing with it that have been unsuccessful, and they are succulently aware of their need for help to request it. hey may or may not know what the real problem is, but they know that something is hurting, and they want relief from this pain and concern. hey may or may not be prepared to do what is necessary to get this relief—as do most people, they probably want an easy, quick, permanent, and all-encompassing solution with little or no additional pain or effort on their part and probably as little real change in their life pattern as possible. Crises, with the resultant fear, anger, and feeling of helplessness, are potent forces in bringing individuals, groups, and communities to seek help. On occasion, workers may either precipitate a crisis or allow one to happen in order to bring a person or a group to the realization of the need to go outside themselves for help.

INVOLUNTARY APPLICATION Circumstances force some clients to secure help against their own wishes. These are critical situations that leave no alternative, such as extreme poverty, incapacitation, disasters, or social pressures from significant individuals and institutions (wife, husband, parents, employer, schools, and military, legal, or correctional services) that enforce compliance with referral. Although there is usually an element of reluctance in all requests for help, clients who feel that they have been forced into participating present an additional hurdle for workers, whose initial task is to recognize and deal with this reluctance.

REACHING-OUT EFFORT BY WORKERS By the nature of their responsibility, workers will often be required to reach out to involve themselves with people who are not actively seeking or being referred for help. These people may or may not be conscious of their need, and they may be unwilling, unmotivated, or unable to do anything about it, but the risks to them and to society require that action be taken.

The tasks of workers in the engagement period are (1) to involve themselves in the situation, (2) to establish communication with everyone concerned, (3) to begin to define the parameters within which the worker and the client(s) will work, and (4) to create an initial working structure. Beginnings are important. While it is always possible to go back and start over, the initial fresh impetus is gone forever. A second start involves reworking what has happened in the first. Beginnings in human services may be as simple as walking into a crowded waiting room or receiving a letter, a card, or a phone call, or as complicated as attending a board meeting involving differences about a major company decision or going into a neighborhood that is in a state of crisis over some loaded issue such as school busing. While not essential, it is helpful if the client can have direct contact with the worker during the engagement period. So much nonverbal communication takes place under

Levine, Joanne. Working with People: The Helping Process (Page 123). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

such circumstances and so many feelings can be expressed and worked out that, whenever possible, an effort should be made to ensure this type of interaction. Direct contact also gives the worker an opportunity to observe the client, and much can be learned from such observation.

Throughout the relationship and particularly the assessment stage, workers continually evaluate behavior, carefully bearing in mind that interpretation of such observation is based on judgment and that such judgments can be erroneous. For example, people often use humor or attempts at humor to deal with anxiety, and the worker, instead of considering this inappropriate behavior, must realize what it actually is. Often behavior does not jibe with what the client presents orally. For example, one who presents himself as a reasonable, considerate person may actually be aggressive or attacking.

The worker needs to be a keen observer, noting the actions, determining causation as far as it is possible, and often, when it is appropriate, pointing out any discrepancy between the reality of the situation and the behavioral response to it. Such recognition of this discrepancy may be a relief for the client, particularly if the decision to behave in a certain way is conscious, or on occasion, it may provoke anger and denial.

In this initial step, workers can only proceed from their general knowledge of people and social situations and their awareness of themselves, with knowledge that the clients involved will be judging them and what they represent at the same time that workers are evaluating their clients. Preconceived opinions about a worker’s clients and their situations, their problems, and their solutions, as well as emotional biases, prejudiced attitudes, anxiety, fear, and hostility on the part of both the worker and the client, can operate to make honesty in engagement difficult. An essential part of workers’ equipment is objectivity, open-mindedness, and capacity to be aware of and to control these reactions in themselves. An equally important skill is the ability to discern the existence of these attitudes in clients and to deal with them either directly or indirectly. Workers may do this by encouraging open expression of and discussion about them and by demonstrating through the shared working experience that they need not be the determinants of outcome.

In modern parlance, engagement involves a “selling” job. In a sense, workers are selling themselves and their services, and the task is much easier when their position and status are clearly defined for the client. Even teachers, physicians, and lawyers— members of the long-established and high-status helping professions—are subject to questions concerning their motivation, their knowledge, their skills, and their attitudes toward their clients. T

he prevalence of such attitudes makes the task of starting where the client is and presenting self and service in a manner that is relevant to the client’s need a little more difficult. While it is the responsibility of clients—insofar as they are able—to make themselves and their needs understood, workers carry the greater share of the responsibility for enabling them to do so. Engagement can be achieved only in terms of the concern of the people involved. When the worker is sensitive to what this concern is and can communicate this sensitivity, engagement can begin on the basis of the worker’s service being relevant to the client’s need. he engagement process should provide opportunity for the client to express expectations of the worker and the institution that the

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worker represents. People see helping individuals and services differently and often will withdraw when they are disappointed. he results of the engagement process should be these: (1) he worker is part of the situation; (2) initial communication channels have been opened; (3) the worker and the client stand together in an approach to a common concern, with some definition of the role of each based on expression and clarification of the client’s expectations and what the worker has to often; and (4) there is agreement on the next step in the process. Assessment Assessment is the appraisal of a situation and the people involved in it. This process of assessment has two purposes: It leads to a definition of the problem, and it begins to indicate resources for dealing with the problem. Workers move from operating on the basis of general knowledge to operating on the basis of specific knowledge of a specific set of circumstances and people. They collect pertinent data, test and analyze these data, and arrive at conclusions. Factual material (and we must always be aware that feelings are facts) about any one individual or social situation is limitless. Therefore, it is essential to apply the “principle of parsimony”: he worker must collect only that information that has relevance to the situation at hand and is essential to the formulation of valid working judgments. But even in the provision of specialized services, the totality of the individual must be considered, although emphasis will be on the particular aspect of individual functioning for which the service is designed. If, for example, the problem is a physical handicap, the worker will concentrate on this, but she or he will also determine the cause-and-effect relationship between this difficulty and the other aspects of the client’s self. A physical handicap has a marked effect on a person’s self-image, and this will affect that person’s capacity to relate to other people, perhaps his or her capacity to learn and the ability to utilize his or her potential for happiness and achievement. Effective service must take all of these relevant aspects into consideration.

Sources of data are many. he primary one is the client. What clients are and how they feel and behave should be given first consideration. After all, it is their needs about which we are concerned, regardless of whether the client is an individual or a total community. Historically, workers have moved from a stance that demands checking of the client’s statements and observations with a variety of outside sources, to one that considered the client’s view to be the only information necessary, to the present attitude, which considers the client’s view to be of major importance but only one aspect of the matter. Above all, workers must be realists, and reality presents different faces to different people. These diferences constitute a signiicant part of assessment. Clients know how they feel (but often not why), what they are concerned about, what they have done to try to alleviate the situation, and the results of these efforts. They know that they want relief from discomfort and, much of the time, how they would like to go about getting it. Checking of outside resources should be done with the client’s knowledge and permission. he significant people in a client’s life experience constitute a secondary source of information. These include both people with whom the client has personal relationships, such as family and friends, and people within the more extended systems of which he or

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she is a part, such as church, job, and so on. In considering whether and how to use other people as sources of data for assessment, the ideas, feelings, wishes, and capacities of the client are of primary importance. he client has both a need and a right to know who is being involved and to participate in getting the necessary information.

The final sources of data are records, test reports, studies, and evaluations of various kinds. In utilizing this material, the worker must keep in mind that its reliability is based on the validity of the testing instruments used, on the competence of the people who did the testing and prepared the reports and studies, and on the capacity for objective judgment by the person or people through whom the results were filtered.

Though the collection, testing, and analysis of pertinent data are listed here as separate steps in a process, they usually occur simultaneously. In talking with the client and others, in reading reports, and in studying tests, workers are constantly assessing what they are learning and observing. hey look for assets and liabilities within the individuals, the situations, and the relationships; they observe and weigh the important feelings and attitudes of the people involved; they contemplate the causes of the current situation and look at how such problems have developed and been dealt with in the past; they consider the availability of resources both real and potential within the client and the community that will meet the evident needs. his assessment is done in terms of the various systems involved, the relationships that exist within them, and their relationship with each other. It is particularly important to look for the places where pressure is likely to be exerted to retain the status quo within the system as well as where effective intervention should take place.

Definition of the Problem

Definition of the problem can in no sense be considered a simple process. It has been compared to peeling an onion in its multilayered composition and its effect on the participants, but its complexity must be understood if defining a problem is to be dealt with effectively. Any problem can be considered conceptually, both horizontally in terms of its ramifications in the present and vertically in light of past, present, and future etiology. It is currently fashionable to decry the significance of causation, particularly in work with crisis and in encounter groups. It is considered a cop-out, an excuse, a refusal to face the reality of the here and now. Consideration of causation can certainly be misused as a substitute for responsible action, but this does not justify ignoring it. Workers who do so are failing in a basic aspect of their role. We can fully understand the present only in light of what has happened in the past. We can interrupt the course of an ongoing event effectively without knowledge of basic causation, but we cannot ensure effective prevention. For example, we can halt the course of an epidemic by closing the path through which the contagion is spreading, but the basic problem remains unchanged—the cause of the disease still exists. To prevent recurrence, we must isolate, understand, and alter the causative factors. Three factors determine how causation can be used by workers to define a problem: (1) the wishes and needs of the client, who wants relief from the discomfort of the present situation; (2) the role of the worker, who may be charged only with responsibility for dealing with the current problem; and (3) the nature of the problem itself, which may

Levine, Joanne. Working with People: The Helping Process (Page 126). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

be one that can be effectively dealt with in terms of the immediate situation or one that must be attacked at the root.

Often there is variance between what the client sees as the problem and what the worker sees. he original definition, however, must be based on what the client sees, as this is what appears relevant to the client at the time. Defining the initial problem differently often results in losing the client.

The concept of a client’s problem is not static but changes as work progresses, just as in the total life experience coping with one demand leads to another. In addition, we rarely deal with a single problem but rather with a constellation of problems, each related to the others. he worker’s task is to focus on the primary problem, which will open the way to consideration of those peripheral to it once an initial solution is reached. It can be useful to think about problems in three frames of reference:

1. Immediate problem: he one about which the client is most concerned, which is causing the current difficulty, and in terms of which the client perceives the need for help. his is usually only one aspect of the whole. (e.g., Willy Jones comes into juvenile court for breaking the windows of the Garcias’ house when bouncing his ball against their wall.)

2. Underlying problems: he overall situation that created and tends to perpetuate the immediate problem. (he high-density population area where Willy lives has inadequate play space for growing children, and Willy has too little supervision from his working parents.)

3. Working problems: hose contributory factors that stand in the way of both remedy and prevention and must be dealt with if change is to take place. • The anger and frustration of Willy Jones and the Garcia family. • he absence of free space in the neighborhood. • he ignorance and apathy of the parents. • The inadequacy of service programs such as YMCA/YWCA, park department, and so on. • The indifference of city officials and real estate promoters.

It is obvious that each of these working problems involves many similar ones that must be dealt with as the process continues.

Setting of Goals

Definition of the problem should lead logically to the setting of a goal. Actually, one is done in terms of the other. The purpose of a goal is to lend direction to efforts. Without such a focal point, activity tends to become aimless, random, and often ineffectual. This does not mean that a goal is rigid and unchanging. Life being a dynamic process, a fixed goal, except in a large overall sense, can be stultifying. If we define health as the capacity for maximum functioning as well as the absence of disease, the overall goal of human services (a healthy society made up of healthy individuals) is too lofty to be useful pragmatically except in determining a philosophical base.

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Using the Problem-Solving Process When Ethnic Differences Are Involved

The basic problem-solving process so commonly used in Western society remains for workers the most useful way to approach members of different ethnic groups as well as other clients. As always, it is important to remember that this is the worker’s way of thinking and planning and is not necessarily shared by clients. The rational gathering of data, weighing of alternatives, anticipation of outcomes, and selection of the most desirable may not be the method clients have learned to use in their own cultures. Workers must be sensitive to this and respect different approaches while at the same time using, for themselves, their own disciplined way of looking at problems. A frequently desired goal of problem-solving work is to teach clients this method through example, but this needs to be done selectively with consideration of the needs and wishes of the particular client and the problem being considered. The first step in this process, engagement, which involves establishment of communication channels and of the worker as a trustworthy and capable person, is vitally important. Contingent on it is the success of subsequent steps. Clients may have trouble accepting that workers of a differing background and experience can ever understand their problems, and workers must demonstrate willingness to do so and to learn. It is often necessary to go more slowly while this learning takes place. Language differences are barriers, but not impenetrable ones. While it is the worker’s responsibility to ensure that written and verbal content is understood, fundamental attitudes that will open or close communication channels are most often conveyed nonverbally. Workers must listen, observe, and learn as they go, for words and actions have different meanings for different people. Such differences can be worked out, and one of the best ways to do this is by demonstrating a concrete ability to help with immediate problems as the client sees them. he gathering and analyzing of data, assessment, is a process that begins long before actual contact with clients. All assessment must be made in light of ethnic reality, past and present. Newcomers bear the major burden for adaptation to a different culture, and such adaptation can be viewed as existing on a continuum. Even members of a family group, for example, are often at different places on that continuum. Available resources, too, must be evaluated in light of this continuum in terms of whether they are geared to

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meet the perceived and/or actual need or whether they are so geared to the needs of the dominant culture that they are not relevant.

Workers are continually involved in assessment, and with ethnic peoples, as with all clients, it is important that the clients themselves be involved in the assessment process. he establishment of a climate of trust will determine whether clients will feel free to look critically at both the people and systems involved. Newcomers who may not fully understand, who are uncertain of their futures, or for whom previous efforts to use resources have been unsuccessful often have difficulty in looking objectively at what is taking place.

In problem definition, it is particularly important to observe the old mandate to start where the client is and to move at his or her speed. Dealing with the immediate problem as perceived by the client is essential, especially if it is a “real” one such as need for food or shelter. If feelings are involved—and they always are—they must be dealt with, and this can be done more easily if workers have established trustworthiness, effectiveness, sensitivity, and respect for differences in dealing with concrete problems. Different cultures mandate different ways of dealing with feelings, with family situations, and with outsiders. If, on the basis of objective assessment, the worker determines that herein lies the problem and success depends on dealing with this, it must be done in light of the cultural determinants.

A particularly delicate problem to define and work with occurs when the client feels that all of the problems exist because of ethnicity—that she or he is unemployed or does not get advancement, is lacking in education, or cannot live in a good neighborhood because of it. There is often an element of truth in this, but it is not the whole story, and if the worker is going to be of help to the client in improving social functioning, it is essential to face and deal with this. T

The next three steps in the formal problem-solving process, setting of goals, selection of method, and establishment of a contract, again must be considered in light of both individual or group need and ability, of the existence or possibility of creation of essential resources, and of the ethnic reality. he worker’s presence in the situation, however, is predicated on knowing more and better about how to deal with the problem than the clients themselves. As one mother in a multiproblem family commented, “We know things are bad. What we need to know is how to change them.”

Workers must have a clear idea about what goals are immediate and doable in achieving the desired results, how to take the steps upon which their achievement depends, and what the necessary roles and tasks of the clients are in this process. These need to be viewed in light of the demands of the ethnic culture, but with awareness that the larger culture will adapt to these differences only so far and slowly. Newcomers to a society often must make major changes in thinking and behavior in order to survive, and the worker’s task often is to facilitate such change. It is even more important that clients here have the opportunity to be involved in the steps of the process, in decision making about accepting new ideas, for therein lies much of the secret of motivation to help them succeed. What the worker sees as a problem may not seem a problem to clients who are members of an ethnic group wherein such behavior or experiences are a culturally accepted way of life. The task of the worker is to develop a relationship in

Levine, Joanne. Working with People: The Helping Process (Page 133). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

which the client can be enabled to see the contradiction between what is necessary to allow adaptation to a new way of life and what the past life has dictated. The final step, evaluation, which, as always, should be continuous and ongoing, needs to involve both worker and client. It is both a professional thing for workers to do, and a natural step in the process of solving life’s problems, particularly when the decision making and role performance have been shared. It is the worker’s responsibility to create a climate in which evaluation can be honest and open. If evaluation results in termination and if the working relationship is a meaningful one, workers must be sensitive to how the ethnic culture marks such occasions. his is an opportunity to look back, to think and talk about what has happened, and to consider the future. It must leave the door open for future contacts, for life is essentially a problem-solving process and future help may be needed.

Levine, Joanne. Working with People: The Helping Process (Page 134). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Levine, Joanne. Working with People: The Helping Process (Page 133). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.