I’m often frustrated with my classmates. They just don’t seem to get it, “it” being the social work profession. In class, I’ve heard comments like “I do not approve of homosexuality, so I’m just going to counsel kids so I never have to deal with homosexuals in practice and have to choose between social work ethics and my own beliefs.” I would like to see what world these people live in, where children never have homosexual parents, never come out at an early age, never ask about homosexuality.
I have a hard time seeing so many self centered people in the program. It’s not about the counselor, it’s about the client. It’s not my job to judge clients, it’s my job to help them. My best example of this:
At a crisis center I used to work at, I had a client come in and tell me he was robbed and stabbed the night before. He said he needed money to attend his mother’s funeral out of state and asked if our agency could help with gas money. He was freshly bandaged and offered to show me his hospital discharge papers. There were agencies that could help but none could help in time for him to attend the funeral. He was upset and left, never saw him again. Two days later, someone at the agency showed me an article about that man. He had murdered someone and the wound was from his victim fighting back. He was trying to get money to leave town.
I was shook by this article and talked to my supervisor. While talking she asked what I would have done if I had suspected he had murdered someone. Or if he had told me he murdered someone. Would I have arrested him? Accused him of murder? No. It’s not my job. It’s not my job to judge. It’s my job to start where the client is, even if they client is in a lie. The police arrested him, the judge will accuse him of murder. That’s their jobs, to determine who is lying, to seek the truth.
The situation that set me off thinking about all of this:
A classmate is giving a case study presentation. She says her client is unemployed. Later, she says her client is a stripper at a local club. When she is done, I ask if the client is no longer a stripper or if she is not counting the stripping as employment. She says she is not counting the stripping as employment, she thinks the client is prostituting on the side. The prof kind of blows off my comment, a couple classmates quietly agree that stripping is a job.
Even if my classmate doesn’t approve of stripping as a job, it still is one and it should be regarded as a strength. This client has mental and substance abuse issues. However, she manages to come to work on time,put on a smile and do her job and manages to hold on to some money to pay the house fee every night she works. For a substance abuser to be able to hold on to any money is amazing. For someone with severe mental disorders to put on a sexy act for hours is also impressive. It’s not like there’s a shortage of women willing to strip for money. If she was causing a disturbance at work, she would have been fired. As for the prostitution, my classmate didn’t mention it anywhere in her presentation so it might have been based more on assumption than fact.
Recognizing this client’s employment is a minor detail of my classmate’s work with her client. However, it bothered me enough to comment on it in class and write this way too long entry.