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Personal Practice Model Assignment
Modified Personal Practice Model Paper
Objectives:
(1) To provide an introspective experience that helps students
clarify “natural helping skills” and “personal values” they
bring to social work practice.
(2) To exercise written communication (self expression) and expository
skills.
(3) To provide exposure to the Personal Practice Model as a Master’s
Project option, and to create an actual Portfolio learning product for those
completing the Portfolio Masters Project
Assignment:
Read the PPM Manual available on the social work website:
http://www.d.umn.edu/sw/MANUALS/MSWDepartmentHandbooks.htm
Your paper will be focused upon the following portions of the PPM Manual:
Natural
Helping Skills (NHS)
….Your natural helping skills (NHS) are those which:
1) you may have acquired from the influence of any relevant genetic tendencies
toward helping behaviors, 2) you acquired from your “growing up” experiences
i.e. from being socialized. These are skills that were usually acquired with
little or no conscious awareness on your part at the time that you were indeed
acquiring them. They are the helping skills you use spontaneously, not requiring
forethought or planning. In many instances of your professional activities
these skills will remain in continuing spontaneous use along with whatever
additional helping skills you have or will acquire through formal training.
In this paper you should comment on the following six NHS categories: Empathy; Role-Modeling; Provider of Concrete Assistance; Self-sharing; Offering Positive Regard; Advocate. Under each of these headings, you will describe how this skill has been a part of your life and work. Give concrete examples, tell stories, talk about important influences, role models or formative experiences in developing the skill. Each section should be a “rich description” from your experience. This is meant to be your unique expression of each skill, not an ideal definition of the skill.
After you have described each skill, you will provide an informal evaluation of the relative importance of each skill as follows:
On a scale of 1-4 indicate how effective you have been at using this skill.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Effectiveness | Slight/no Effectiveness | Moderately Effective | Strongly Effective | Very Strongly Effective |
| Extent of Use | Rarely Used | Often Used | Fairly Frequently Used | Frequently Used |
Social
Work Values
The term “value” refers to a quality that one holds to be worthwhile.
One may personally value certain physical activities such as jogging or swimming.
Nonphysical qualities can also be values such as patriotism, personal freedom,
and helpfulness. Sometimes these kinds of value examples are called attitudes
but are nonetheless values because for those who possess these attitudes,
they are held to be worthwhile i.e. of value.
Value orientations in social work refer to the material and non-material qualities social workers prefer for their clients because they believe them to be worthwhile for client wellbeing. Sometimes values held by the profession for their clients are referred to as “rights” although rights and values are not necessarily synonymous. Some of the dominate values held by the profession for clients pertain to respect for human diversity, client self-determination and the right to experience the benefits of social justice.
You could begin your work on the component of social work values by thinking
about your own personal values and write a paragraph describing some of the
values that you feel are most important for your personal life. Describe
only those that you feel comfortable discussing. Next, describe
some of your social work values. Some of these may overlap or be nearly the
same as some of your personal values which you should point out if this is
the case. Do you hold what
might be called traditional social work values such as the three mentioned
above or perhaps you hold other values for social work that you may think
are being neglected by the profession? Describe what you believe to be the
primary source(s) of the social work values you hold in your PPM. For example,
you may believe that some come primarily from your parents and how your
were raised. You may believe that some were derived from rational thought,
religious beliefs, or your professional education.
Lastly, discuss your personal values related to your professional values.
Do you believe that they are compatible or do you perhaps see a degree of
conflict between one or more of your personal and professional values? If
so, briefly describe and discuss what you believe are some of the implications
of this conflict for your PPM.
Paper format:
- Two main sections as described above, with clearly delineated subsections covering the assigned material.
- Typed in Word, 12 point Times New Roman font. (I’ll send it back if it’s not in this format.)
- APA format See Social Work website for APA resources
- Length 8-10 pages approximately. Take the space you need to do a quality paper.
- This paper will be a portfolio work product, for those selecting Portfolio as a master’s project.