The Practitioner Model of the Whole Systems Framework:
Self-Awareness of Values

 

By

Jaye Harry

 

For

Richard Ramsay

 

SOWK 333

Faculty of Social Welfare
 The University of Calgary

March 1989

 

 

 

Note: The hard copy of this paper was scanned and digitalized. Hopefully, all related errors have been corrected. Minor editing was carried out.

 

The whole systems framework of social work is composed of four components for which models can be mapped out: person-in-environment (PIE) domain, paradigm of the profession, domain of practitioner, and method of social work. Separately and cumulatively, the framework’s models are designed tetrahedrally according to natural systems theory. To be succinct, the tetrahedral natural systems design epitomizes structural stability with adaptive flexibility. The common conceptual framework that evolves from this is a functional mechanism for us to understand the myriad aspects and holism of social work. As practitioners utilizing this framework, we can interrelate with the whole, its parts, and their multiple interfaces, enhancing mutual regeneration of the systems involved.¹

Natural systems theory holds that the behaviour of whole systems is unpredictable from the behaviour of their parts.² This has given rise to a basic social work motto - that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I would suggest this maxim could be expanded to: “The whole is interrelated with, and different from, the sum of its parts - and neither the whole, the sum, or the parts can be exclusively regarded.” As each part is more fully dissected and expanded the sum changes, as does the whole; they are interdependent. This is holism; it is not possible to delineate which perspective is most important for all spheres interconnect and are equally vital to one another. Overlooking component parts can lead to the simple, but practically inapplicable, generalization that everything affects everything else. Conversely, focusing on the minute components without recognition of their co-existence within the whole is similarly unbeneficial. However, if one retains an overall perspective along with an ability to dissect components, the whole systems framework can be utilized to its fullest.

For this paper, a minute component will be dissected - the importance of a practitioner’s self-awareness in regards to his/her value systems. I will look at some value-related issues of the practitioner’s single and validator otherness that affect the social worker’s practice. The practitioner has his/her own domain; the practitioner’s self surfaces in the professional paradigm along the pathway of the social worker. The professional paradigm interacts with the PIE domain along with the client’s orbit. The method of social work runs through the PIE domain and professional paradigm, including the professional/practitioner self.³ Thus, as practitioners we are interrelating with the PIE domain, professional paradigm, and methods of social work - both systemically and systematically. The practitioner’s single and validator otherness both influence, and are influenced by, all four components of the natural systems framework. Awareness of this inter-influence is crucial, but of such complexity that all its aspects cannot be addressed in this paper. The omission and inclusion of certain points is based on economical necessity and a personal judgment of pronounced relevance. The limitations of set boundaries do not detract from my fundamental assertion - that self-awareness of one’s values and their influence in all aspects of practice is imperative for the practitioner who aims for beneficent effective, holistic practice.⁴ Beyond this, the translation of human values into different behaviours is a topic of personal intrigue. Additionally, I am aware of how my values have contributed to or ameliorated interpersonal conflicts in the past. This paper has been a channel for me to further expand my knowledge base and self-awareness of values, hopefully enhancing my capabilities as a social work practitioner in the future.

Values can be defined in different ways. One conceptualization is that the values of a person are “‘dispositions to behave in certain ways... tendencies to devote resources to the attainment of certain ends,’ which are regarded as beneficial, and as making ‘life better than other ways would.’”⁵ They cannot be regarded as ultimate truths, for their essence is each person’s ideal reality, not necessarily everyone’s existent reality. We each retain a personal and cultural value system (usually integrated as one), enmeshed within our lives through socialization and experience.⁶ As social workers, we are also socialized into agency, professional, institutional, and societal value systems. The accepted, implicit power of these institutions and their values cannot be overestimated; our actions as practitioners derive from these bases in addition to our personal constructs.⁷ These actions are applied to others whose valuated reality may not be our valuated ideal.

It is interesting to note the similarity between the above definition of values, and social work’s purpose and primary value: We seek to enhance others’ lives (individually and on a societal level), and we fundamentally believe in and respect others’ dignity, worth, and integrity.⁸ Responding to these foundational precepts helps to fulfill the practitioner’s need for satisfaction and self-fulfillment, a sense of purpose and meaning which reinforces his/her values. Our need for a balanced, healthy self-concept as practitioners partially depends on our clients’ success as a means of validations.⁹ Client success inherently implies our fundamental values have been fulfilled; our values and needs thus mutually influence on another. Our professionalism, however, necessitates an ability to “rise above our needs and give priority to the needs of others.”¹⁰ This engenders empathic objectivity, and thus the opportunity for a client to meet his/her issues in a personally relevant and meaningful manner. If, however, a practitioner’s own validation needs are not met, rising above them is difficult, to say the least. Maslow makes this point well through his hierarchy of needs; even the retention of his self-actualization stage calls for the maintenance of level and lower needs.¹¹ We cannot be effective or objective as practitioners if our valuated needs are unfulfilled, just as our clients cannot be. Conversely, the client-worker relationship will not thrive where the practitioner’s needs control or dominate the interaction. When our need for validation as person or practitioner becomes anchored to the client’s success or feedback, the working relationship is no longer being undertaken for the client, but for the worker.¹² The client’s and practitioner’s needs and values co-exist, as natural systems theory shows us. A balance must be reached between respective needs, and the values governing those made explicit, or the quality of the working relationship is vulnerable to distortion. In this working relationship a practitioner is filling a role as an instrument of change in helping endeavours.¹³ Change is a vital component in the process of growth and life enhancement, but it also implies that what is being altered is inadequate in some way.¹⁴ Our values profoundly affect the perception of inadequacy being addressed in practice, and whether or not that perception is in sync with clients. We can make effective use of ourselves as instruments of change socialized into a multi-level value system through awareness of what our self contains. Self-awareness if the first imperative step to rising above our needs and values, prioritizing clients’, and viewing their presenting issue objectively - as they see it. We cannot be truly objective is we do not even know what it is we are trying to objectify, or how our personal being is influencing our impression of that; without awareness we have no base with which to control our subjectivity.¹⁵ Awareness of our valuated frame of reference does not imply an obligation to negate personal needs and values, but with it we can avoid imposing them on others.

The values a practitioner operates with are influenced by his/her particular agency, the profession, and institution of social welfare as a whole. The practitioner’s role carries out professionally shared values and purposes, which ultimately respond to the relationship between the social welfare institution and society.¹⁶ Through methods of enhancing others’ lives, we facilitate greater social contribution. Our enhancing role is thus highly influenced by the values society sees as contributory; our value base as practitioners emanates from and legitimates the existing social order. These broader value bases have a profound impact on the client, as they are interpreted through the practitioner. They are associated with the interventional practices and resources we utilize.¹⁷ A practitioner’s value awareness encompasses not only introspection, but also an examination of the multiple level value system of social work.

By virtue of the practitioner’s role within an institutionally legitimated profession, the practitioner possesses a type of power over clients, which also contains valuated qualities. This authority can be categorized as follows: power of expertise (through knowledge), influence (through interpersonal skills), and legitimated power (through accepted norms and values).¹⁸ As dispersal agent of an organization’s controlled resources, the practitioner is in a position of dominance with respect to the more vulnerable client who seeks to use these resources. The agency itself has even more authority and, in turn, is influenced by broader powers (i.e., the institutions of social welfare and the state). This hierarchy of power is kept in check by norms and values - instituted in our Code of Ethics, professional standards, and agency rules and regulations - which define the acceptable value parameters of the practitioner.¹⁹ Clients also wield their own power. They are seeking resources and so expect the legitimated authority of practitioners to enable fulfillment of their needs. They have claims on the expertise the practitioner is offering, and can choose to accept or refuse the services. Clients also enter an agency with their own resource base; the extent of this determines their personal power and influence in relation to the agency and practitioner.²⁰

This client power hierarchy and its safeguards are acknowledged. Some even consider it essential to the existence of our exchange-based profession. Despite this, both client and practitioner often underestimate this power. Power and its underlying values can be incorrectly assumed as homogeneous with the working partners; it can be used to control or manipulate; or it can be used to protect personal, professional, or institutional beliefs.²¹ Morell²² extrapolates on this, asserting that a broad gender-related power structure exists in social work. She argues that practice models are derived from male thinking and reflect male values. The result is a practice that is often ineffective for women. This postulation is debatable, but the point being made is that power relationships operating in social work on many levels are highly influenced by values, and directly or indirectly affect the practitioner’s working relationships. Ramsay²³ suggests that existent vertical hierarchies impact on practitioner selectivity in applying professional or personal values, depending on which hierarchical direction those qualities are being aimed at. By changing our perspective and viewing our relationships as co-existent, we can drop the vertical hierarchy down to more of a mutually regenerative horizontal synergy. But to enable this the practitioner’s awareness of power relationships, their underlying values, and how those are influencing interpersonal work relations remains crucial: “… when the values and politics remain hidden by claims of neutrality and objectivity… the change implied by social work’s values will be thwarted… by social work’s own practice.”²⁴ We must subordinate our own interests to those of our clients’ in order to effectively represent them,²⁵ but objectifying and balancing existent power relationships to ones of benefit for all concerned entails a priori, awareness of those powers and their related values. Anything less is, as Morell so eloquently says, is merely a claim of objectivity, which serves to undermine, not facilitate, the change we seek for our clients’ well being.

The arena of cross-cultural interaction is particularly vulnerable to discord between value systems and an underestimation of power’s influence.²⁶ Decisions and interventions emanating from one value system and superimposed on another can create misunderstanding, conflict, and damage for those involved. One prominent area where this has happened is in past provision of child welfare services to Native people - mandated through non-Native legislation and dispensed through non-Native staff.²⁷ Describing one widespread Native value - non-interference - will help to illuminate the misunderstanding accruable through value non-awareness. Non-interference for Native people reflects, among other things, respect and concern for others through allowing self-determination.²⁸ It is a value derived from survival benefits in historical roots.²⁹ Our profession, representative of the dominant White culture, also holds self-determination and respect/concern for others as fundamental values.³⁰ However, the translation of this into manifested behaviour is quite different between the two cultures. In regards to child welfare services - whose prime mandate is the protection of children - Native non-interfering childrearing patterns can, and have, been viewed as neglect. Social services’ interpretation of concern for others and beneficent interference has often been seen as congruent with apprehension of Native children for their protection. As a marginalized, powerless minority, Native people have been subject to apprehension directives emanating from an alien, dominant frame of reference. The extreme damage of value imposition onto Native people has been well documented. Native suicide, family breakdown, and community disintegration have been exacerbated through such value imposition. Ironically, this unfortunate portion of social welfare’s history contradicted our foundational value of enhancing others’ lives and respecting others’ worth, but can still be utilized as a vital lesson. A healthier provision of Native child welfare services is, fortunately, being addressed through various means ³¹
 
To demonstrate further, we can compare some generally accepted characteristics of Japanese and North American (hereafter N.A.) communication patterns. Communication patterns emanate from and reflect cultural value systems; variations in interactional patterns are as prone to subjective misunderstanding as their underlying values. For the Japanese, silence, non-verbally implied messages, and indirect verbal expression are common modes of interaction. This reflects cultural values of politeness, maintaining a group emphasis, and avoiding self-aggrandizement and confrontation. In N.A., verbosity and explicitly stating personal opinions characterize communication patterns. Among other things, this reflects the values of self-assertion, direct confrontation, and the maintenance of an individualistic orientation.³² Working purely from a N.A. context, the Japanese communication traits could easily be misconstrued as resistance, indifference, or some other negative (according to N.A. standards) attribute. Conversely, N.A. assertiveness is commonly misconstrued by other cultures as rudeness.³³ Such culture-specific interpretations have profound implications for client-practitioner intercommunication. Since communication is a major tool of social work, it is crucial that the implications of one’s communicative frame of reference, derived from values, be recognized and clarified. Social work practice generally places a high premium on communication as legitimated by N.A. values - including verbal expression and examination of inner processes as a channel for change.³⁴ Interventions emanating from this generic belief may breach our ethical and professional concerns for client well-being if the client is not using the same valuated communicative frame of reference.³⁵

That knowledge of cultural diversity and value systems is imperative for effective social work practice is a more pervasively accepted precept now than it used to be.³⁶ But this knowledge is only a fragmented solution unless it is accepted and incorporated into practice. To do so, the practitioner must be aware of how this knowledge melds with his/her own values and related interactional patterns. Addressing value discord in the PIE/practitioner interface necessitates, in the first instance, a practitioner’s awareness of his/her operating value systems - or the discord is unrecognizable. We cannot fully assimilate knowledge of cultural diversity into holistic practice if we are not aware of the self this is being assimilated into. Moreover, knowledge by itself may address the common cultural traits, which do exist, but the PIE domain includes factors beyond cultural contexts; those factors also operate in the client’s formulation of values and perspectives. By approaching a cross-cultural interaction with a focus on generic knowledge about cultural diversity, the client’s individual diversity may be whitewashed.³⁷ To check this danger, a clear awareness of one’s own individuality may help the practitioner remain simultaneously conscious of another’s individuality as well as his/her cultural frame of reference.

Value issues are susceptible to ethical dilemmas; value disparity can both emerge from and violate our ethical principles. Among our profession’ ethical values are included: a responsibility to respond to client needs; a non-judgmental attitude; client self-determination; and a respect for human dignity, integrity, and worth.³⁸ We will not be responding to client needs if our responses are restricted according to our own value systems. Where a client’s perception of needs is not in sync with the practitioner’s, the practitioner may violate the principle of self-determination through trying to fulfill his/her sense of responsibility from his/her perspective. Self-determination is perhaps the most obviously restricted in third-party referrals, but wherever one’s power or values are imposed on a client, self-determination is hampered. A non-judgmental attitude is difficult where one’s values induce negative affect toward a client. A client’s dignity and integrity are violated when practice interventions defy and attack one’s value system. We seek both objectivity and empathy while striving to maintain our ethical principles; keeping this all in balance throughout power and value differentials is an ongoing struggle.³⁹

When we can work objectively and in sync with a client’s value system, ethical dilemmas can become inherently non-existent. To use a cross-cultural example again, let us consider the mutual dependence and external locus of control that is part of the Japanese value system. The N.A. interpretation of self-determination leans towards a sense of independence and an internal locus of control.⁴⁰ For a N.A. practitioner, the Japanese client could be seen as overly dependent, their self-determination undermined. The practitioner could feel responsible to transform the dependence to independence and an internals locus of control. This intervention would be alien, meaningless, and likely resented according to the Japanese value system. The practitioner could feel responsible to transform the dependence to independence and an internal locus of control. This intervention would be alien, meaningless, and likely resented according to the Japanese value system. The practitioner’s ethical principles of responsibility, non-judgmentalness, self-determination, and respect would have been violated - because the client would not feel those values were fulfilled. If one was to rise above the N.A. perspective, it becomes clear that from a Japanese perspective self-determination is congruent with mutual dependence. Our ethical values become, in fact, highly satisfied when we seek to enhance clients’ lives according to their perspective. Practitioners are powerful instruments who influence the change a client undergoes. Part of this change is to increase a client’s awareness of his or her own reality. It is unethical to practice influence in aiming for a client’s awareness change if one is unwilling to personally undertake this same awareness of self. It is a contradiction between what one practices and what one preaches. To mutually negotiate and co-create an interpersonal reality with clients demands awareness of how one’s values influence, channel, and determine ethical dilemmas.

Value awareness includes recognition of our limitations, how our own domain may restrict our objectivity or the meshing of our professional and personal self. There may be areas of practice where we feel too great an aversion or feel ourselves at too great a risk to be effective practitioners. Value disparity between the domains of PIE and practitioner may be too uncomfortable for a beneficial working process. If our focus is on self, or client, to the neglect of process, our ethical responsibility then lies in addressing and resolving this disparity so client needs are still responded to. This may necessitate, for instance, sharing one’s concerns - and possibly the case itself - with a supportive colleague.⁴¹ This is not to advocate selective compassion or tolerance, nor is it to condone avoidance or rising above one’s own needs and values. Rather, it is to suggest that the practitioner concerned with clients’ well-being and integrity will be willing to examine existing conflicts, realize their unsolvable propensities under certain conditions, and still ensure service through alternate means.

It is clear that a practitioner’s self-awareness of his/her value systems is critical to facilitate effective working relationships and interventions, utilize power relationships for mutual benefit, and satisfy ethical principles. It is difficult to describe, however, just how one goes about this self-discovery. Ramsay⁴² suggests that self-awareness is an ability to recognize one’s limitations, accept change, perceive with clarity, and respond honestly to others - that it is primarily a quality of being unafraid of oneself.⁴³ Even for those to whom self-awareness comes naturally, it is an ability which can infinitely improve. Practitioners are, like all human beings, constantly experiencing new input and correspondingly reevaluating their life experience and process in relation to self. This is the base for self-awareness. We receive new input through our senses, through our cognitive abilities to think both concretely and abstractly, and through our feelings. Thus, self-awareness is the culmination of exchange between external and internal stimuli; improvement of this ability would seem to call for intensification of this exchange. One can do this by purposely seeking out new experiences, and watching introspectively how they react, how they feel, in relation to them. These experiences may include externalized actions (i.e., contact with people who live under a different value system), or it may be an introspective journey of finely dissecting the day’s interactions to see how one’s values influenced them, or how one’s feelings were influenced by values. It does call for a quality of being unafraid and honest with oneself - for when self-awareness is undertaken there is always a risk one will not like what one sees. By the same token, change of those things is not forthcoming unless we are aware of what we want to change. Self-awareness is basically a meshing of the senses, the mind, and feeling which engenders a greater understanding of oneself. To improve on this ability necessitates a willingness to intensify one’s senses, expand one’s boundaries of thought, and confront and examine all of one’s feelings honestly.
 
I have addressed the value component of validator and single otherness within the practitioner model of a whole systems framework. My fundamental assertion has been that the practitioner’s self-awareness of values is crucial for beneficent and effective practice. There are salient implications for this in meshing the domains of PIE and practitioner, perhaps especially so for cross-cultural interactions. However, awareness of the practitioner’s value disparity or correlation in other realms - interpersonally, agency-linked, professionally, institutionally, and societally - is also imperative. Through awareness of values we can, indeed, rise above our needs and values - neither negating nor imposing them, but balancing and objectifying them to empathically meet the needs of clients within their domain.

The natural whole systems framework of social work incorporates the many levels of values influencing the practitioner model; it is a functional mechanism to get at the task of value discovery. A value component, or at least valuational influences, permeate all four models of the whole systems framework.⁴⁴ Addressing the practitioner’s values implicitly addresses the total whole systems model; a practitioner’s value awareness inherently facilitates a more effective meshing of all four models in the whole systems framework. The whole is thus clearly epitomized as interrelated with, and different from, the sum of its parts. Neither the whole, the sum, nor the parts of any value system can be exclusively regarded without detrimental reverberations to the practitioner or - our priority - the client.

Endnotes
 
1. Ramsay RF (1987). Social work’s search for a common conceptual framework. In Y Kojima & T Hosaka (eds.), Peace and social work education. Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Schools of Social Work, August 27-31, 1986, Tokyo, Japan, 53-57.
Ramsay, R.F. (1988, July). Is social work a profession? A 21st century answer to a 20th century question. Unpublished paper, 52-79. Presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.
2. Snyder J (1971). The world of Buckminster Fuller (16mm Film). No place of distribution: Master and Masterworks.
3. Ramsay RF (1988, October 31). Lecture presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.
4. Although this paper will be utilizing a natural systems framework, I feel it is very relevant that the importance of value awareness for effective practice is repeatedly mentioned in the literature in relation to myriad foci of social work, and within many varied frameworks. The diversity of my references is partially meant to indicate this, as some of the sources utilize models other than the tetrahedral one. Please keep in mind that when a source refers to a model other than a natural systems one, it is an indication that all models of social work attest to the importance of value awareness (i.e., it is not that the specifically referenced model is the only one mentioning a particular point).
5. Siporin M (1975). Introduction to social work practice. New York: Macmillan, 351.
6. Goldstein H (1973). Social work practice: A unitary approach. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 12.
    Ivey AE, Simek-Downing L (1980). Counseling and psychotherapy: Skills, theories, and practice. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 154-155.
7. Rein M, White SH (1981, March). Knowledge for practice. Social Service Review, 55(1), 14-16.
    Siporin M Op.cit., 350-355.
8. O’Neil MJ (1984). The general method of social work practice. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 45.
    Ramsay RF (ed.). (1983). Canadian Association of Social Workers: Code of ethics (p.2). Presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.
9. Ramsay RF (1988, November 7). Lecture presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.
    Ramsay, RF (1988, November 14). Lecture presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.
10. Perlman HH. (1979). Relationship: The heart of helping people. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 67-70.
      Ramsay RF (1988, July). Op.cit., 70.
11. Siporin Op.cit., 352.
12. Ramsay RF (1988, November 14). Op.cit.
13. Goldstein H Op.cit., 5-6.
      Ramsay RF (1983). Op.cit., 2.
      Ramsay RF (1988, October 31). Op.cit.
14. Gibb JR (1986). Defensive communication. In J. Stewart (ed.), Bridges not walls: A book about interpersonal communication (4th ed.). Toronto: Random House, 257.
15. Perlman HH. Op.cit., 58-59.
16. Rein M, White SH Op.cit., 4-5.
17. Ibid, 3-6.
18. Hasenfeld Y (1987, September). Power in social work practice. Social Service Review, 61(3), 470-471.
      Ivey AE (1988). Intentional interviewing and counseling: Facilitating client development (2nd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 241.
      Perlman HH 1957. Social casework: A problem-solving process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 69-70.
19. Hasenfeld Y Op.cit., 469-483.
      Ramsay RF (1988, July). Op.cit., 61-62.
20. Fisher DV (1988, November 4.) Lecture presented to SOWK 315.03, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.
21. Hasenfeld Y Op.cit., 469-483.
      Rogers CR (1986). The interpersonal relationship: The core of guidance. In J. Stewart (ed.), Bridges not walls: A book about interpersonal communication (4th ed.). Toronto: Random House, 358.
22. Morell C (1987, March). Cause is function: Toward a feminist model of integration for social work. Social Service Review, 61(1), 144-155.
23. Ramsay RF (1988, November 7). Op.cit.
24. Morell C Op.cit., 150.
25. Hasenfeld Y Op.cit., 479.
      Ramsay RF (1988, July). Op.cit., 70.
26. Ladak D, Rodway MR (1985). Toward intercultural understanding: Bridging the gap between the helping professions and ethnic groups. Multicultural Education, 13(1), 23.
      O’Neil MJ Op.cit., 45-49.
      Sue DW, Sue D (1977). Barriers to effective cross-cultural counseling. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 24(5), 420.
27. There are vast amounts of informational resources on this topic. For a general overview of some of the issues around Native child welfare, and as an inclusive reference for the following discussion, please see:
      Johnston P (1983). Native children and the child welfare system. Toronto: Canadian Council on Social Development in association with James Lorimer.
28. Good Tracks JG (1973). Native American non-interference. Social Work, 18(6), 30-35.
29. Dewdney S (1975). They dared to survive: The Native peoples of Canada. Toronto: Macmillan.
30. O’Neil MJ Op.cit., 12.
31. Indications of change in provision of child welfare services to Native children include, for instance, the following: recent revisions to the Child Welfare Act, increasing band control of Native child welfare services, and implementation of programs utilizing a Native value base and employing Native staff (i.e., the Calgary Native unit of Alberta Social Services and Community Health).
32. Cushman DP, Cahn DD Jr. (1986. Cross-cultural communication and interpersonal relationships. In J Stewart (ed.), Bridges not walls: A book about interpersonal communication (4th ed.). Toronto: Random House, 325-326.
      Ladak D, Rodway MR Op.cit., 23.
      Sue DW, Sue, D. Op.cit., 421-425.
33. Good Tracks JG Op.cit., 30.
      Ivey AE Op.cit., 182.
      Sue DW, Sue D. Op.cit., 421.
34. Ivey AE Op.cit., 183.
      Sue DW, Sue D Op.cit., 421.
35. One example of potential disparity in this area is the treatment of alcoholism through the Alcoholics Anonymous/self-disclosure method. This has been shown world-wide to be a very effective treatment, but for some people this channel can feel demeaning. For an example of this please see the following source:
Jones DM (1976, January). The mystique of expertise in social services: An Alaska example. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 3(3), 341-342.
36. Gelfand DE, Fandetti DV (1986, November). The emergent nature of ethnicity: Dilemmas in assessment. Social Casework: The Journal of Contemporary Social Work, 67(9), 542.
37. Ibid.
      Sarbaugh LE (1986). Some boundaries for intercultural communication. In J. Stewart (ed.), Bridges not walls: A book about interpersonal communication (4th ed.). Toronto: Random House, 315.
      Sue DW, Sue D Op.cit., 428.
38. O’Neil MJ Op.cit., 12.
      Ramsay RF (1983). Op.cit., 2-8.
39. Perlman HH (1979). Op.cit., 57-59.
40. Cushman DP, Cahn DD Jr. Op.cit., 326.
       Ivey AE Op.cit., 182-183.
41. Marinucci F (1988, October 28). Lecture presented to SOWK 315.03, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.
      Ramsay RF (1988, November 14). Op.cit.
42. Ibid.
43. The rest of this paragraph is my personal interpretation of what self-awareness, and improvement of that ability, entails. The absence of references is due to the fact that this section is purely my own understanding of self-awareness.
44. Ramsay RF (1988, July) Op.cit., 53-79.

References

Cushman DP, Cahn DD Jr. (1986). Cross-cultural communication and interpersonal relationships. In J. Stewart (ed.), Bridges not walls: A book about interpersonal communication (4th ed., pp.324-352). Toronto: Random House.

Dewdney S (1975). They dared to survive: The Native peoples of Canada. Toronto: Macmillan.

Fisher DV (1988, November 4). Lecture presented to SOWK 315.03, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.

Gelfand DE, Fandetti DV (1986, November). The emergent nature of ethnicity: Dilemmas in assessment. Social Casework, 67(9), 542-550.

Gibb JR (1986). Defensive communication. In J. Steward (ed.), Bridges not walls: A book about interpersonal communication (4th ed., pp. 255-260). Toronto: Random House.

Goldstein H (1973). Social work practice: A unitary approach. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

Good Tracks JG (1973). Native American non-interference. Social Work, 18(6), 30-35.

Hasenfeld V (1987, September). Power in social work practice. Social Service Review, 61(3), 469-483.

Ivey AE (1988). Intentional interviewing and counseling: Facilitating client development (2nd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Ivey AE, Simek-Downing L (1980). Counseling and psychotherapy: Skills, theories, and practice. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Johnston P (1983). Native children and the child welfare system. Toronto: Canadian Council on Social Development in association with James Lorimer.

Jones DM (1976, January). The mystique of expertise in social services: An Alaska example. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 3(3), 332-346.

Ladak D, Rodway MR (1985). Toward intercultural understanding: Bridging the gap between the helping professions and ethnic groups. Multicultural Education, 13(1), 22-27.

Marinucci F (1988, October 28). Lecture presented to SOWK 315.03, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.

Morell C (1987, March). Cause is function: Toward a feminist model of integration for social work. Social Service Review, 61(1), 144-155.

Snyder J (1971). The world of Buckminster Fuller (16mm Film). No place of distribution: Master and Masterworks.

O’Neil MJ (1984). The general method of social work practice. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Perlman HH (1957). Social casework: A problem-solving process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Perlman HH (1979). Relationship: The heart of helping people. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ramsay RF (ed.). (1983). Canadian Association of Social Workers: Code of ethics.

Ramsay RF (1987). Social work’s search for a common conceptual framework. In V Kojima & T Hosaka (eds.), Peace and social work education. Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Schools of Social Work, August 27-31, 1986, Tokyo, Japan, pp.53-57.

Ramsay RF (1988, July). Is social work a profession? A 21st century answer to a 20th century question. Unpublished paper. Presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.

_______ (1988, October 31). Lecture presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.

_______ (1988, November 7). Lecture presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.

_______ (1988, November 14). Lecture presented to SOWK 333.01, 1988 Fall term, The University of Calgary, Calgary.

Rein M, White SH (1981, March). Knowledge for practice. Social Service Review, 55(1), 1-41.

Rogers CR (1986). The interpersonal relationship: The core of guidance. In J. Stewart (ed.), Bridges not walls: A book about interpersonal communication (4th ed., pp. 352-358). Toronto: Random House.

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