Understanding The Role Of A Youth Worker: Essay On Organizational Fundamentals Communication.

Responding to Victims of Neglect and Abuse

Discuss About The Organizational Fundamentals Communication?

It is a common fact that every person has faced an issue of neglect and abuse in some point of time in his or her life. Every social worker interacts with a person who is a victim of neglect and abuse. It is necessary for every worker to know the way of responding such call for a help.

Any social worker, who comes across a youth facing problems due to neglect and abuse, should be empathetic enough to understand the gravity of the situation. A youth worker should be calm and pacified enough to assure the victim a feeling of security and minimizing the feeling of guilt or anxiety. The youth worker should be able to reassure victim, installing confidence. The worker should be rational and be able to install a feeling of comfort in order to help the victim realize his or her potential to overcome the crisis or guilt (Payne 2015).

The youth worker has the responsibility of understanding and empathizing with the revelations of a victim. A social worker has to work under certain limitations under which the response should be made. A youth worker should only listen and provide assistance but not investigate. The youth worker should stay calm and be sympathetic towards the victim, should be aware of possible medical evidence that might be required and provide comfort to the victim (Thompson  2015).

The youth worker should not press the victim for more details, promise to keep secrets, pass on the information to other who are not in concern regarding the issue, contact the abuser or be judgmental about the situation and gossip (Dolgoff , Harrington and Loewenberg 2012).

The limitation of the youth worker is to pass on the information to the concerned manager on line or contact the necessary services if required. In case the referral has been made yet the individual does not wish to proceed with an investigation then this should be brought into immediate notice and recorded. This could be helpful in discussion the best measures to protect the victim from further harm. The youth worker should maintain a precise note of the incident and describe the circumstance in which the disclosure has been made along with the witnesses present during the disclosure. Ensure proper validation of the date, time and location for future investigation.

The Department of child protection can carry out its responsibilities if the act is classified under Children’s protection Act 1993 (SA). These responsibilities can be carries out if the act recognizes the abuse/neglect under sexual, psychology or emotional in nature. The law does not requires valid proof but just a notification to ensure the safety of the children In case of any notification the worker would take down relevant information and make assessment of the level of threat to the child or young individual which is then send forward to the closest District centre of the victim. In terms of any emergency like an abandoned child or grave threat to the safety of the child, a rapid response can be initiated out of the office, the Child Abuse Report Line can perform instant action before being forwarded to the District Centre. With reference to, this of the victim is in grave threat or abandoned then an emergency response can be initiated to protect and safeguard the individual from further harm and abuse.

Limitations of a Youth Worker

Assuming a child of 10 years of age is going through an emotional turmoil in his family due to the sudden death of his own father. Years later, his mother marries another man whom the child has difficulty in accepting and assuming his father. The child’s parents tried to convince him but eventually failed in convincing him and gradually started ignoring, neglecting and abusing him. After years of facing this situation due to this emotional distance, physical and emotional abuse, the child starts skipping classes at his school and his grades starts falling. He starts getting involved into anti social activities with several other individuals with his family least concerned eventually developing more aggression towards the child. The child eventually realizes about his guilt and wrong company and falls under a guilt eccentric turmoil and approaches to his teacher for help. They eventually appoint me as their youth worker to help them in their advocacy of rehabilitation. In youth work the sole aim is to meet and re-instate peace amongst the both parties, both victim and his family.

The primary purpose is to listen to the victim, understand and empathize in his situation and the events that eventually led him to drift apart from his family. The secondary need is to understand the need of the victim’s family and their needs. After listening to both the sides it is necessary to establish a connection and try to create a positive outlook and rapport between the both ends. In this manner, a youth worker can help both the victim and his family to ensure a peaceful relationship between them by executing a valid advocacy (Rubin and Babbie 2016).

Every youth worker has a in and out of the scope responsibilities and capabilities. In scope are the possible ways in which a youth worker can help his client or do things that his client can be benefitted. Out or scope refers to the things that are out of the limitations of a youth worker (Banks 2012). Goals refer to the principles that every youth worker needs to follow and implementation of these principles while dealing with the clients.

In scope includes the youth worker to stay calm and listen to his clients, be sympathetic towards his client, should be able to connect with the client and aware of the possible methods of gathering evidence in terms of abuse. The worker should be supportive, treat the information seriously and try to comfort his client. In serious cases the worker can fix an appointment with any other counselor, talk to the client’s family on their behalf in order to establish a smooth bridge. The out of scope prospects of a youth workers is that he cannot pressurize a client for more details, promise to keep the information confidential, passing of information to other non relative persons and being judgmental.

Department of Child Protection

The goals of the youth to serve the primary client, their work should be non-discriminating, emphasis on empowerment, believing in non-corruption, maintain transparency and confidentiality, maintain cooperation and proper knowledge and retain self-awareness (Turner 2017).

This identification of the urgency is extremely important since certain situations demands rapid action. The nature of response varies in nature depending on the type of emergency that might rise.

Certain cases of abuse where the safety and security of a child is at risk such as the security of a child has been jeopardized, in such cases urgent actions can be executed prior any official information being passed on. In such case, an out of office initiative can be deployed to protect and safeguard the individuals from grave danger.

Advocacy is one of the important in scope responsibilities of a youth worker. Apart from understanding the issues that needs urgent help and attention, a youth worker can contribute his efforts into advocacy of mutually resolving an issue.

A youth worker can initially interact with his client and depending upon the need of the client’s family, the worker can initiate an interaction where he can speak with the family members on behalf of the client to be able to explain the crisis in a easier manner. This interaction can be helpful due to the unawareness of the family members about the client’s turmoil and inability of the client to discuss certain issues with the family members. In this case, the worker can help create a bridge between the client and his family (Sue, Rasheed and Rasheed 2015).

A youth worker should be have the power of speech that can lay an impact on the client who is looking for comfort. He should be able to pacify the disturbed client and bring out problem that the client is facing. The worker should know how to break the ice and get to know each other first to neutralize the situation. The worker should have patience to handle difficult clients as well.

Creating safe environment requires ongoing planning, obligation and maintenance. The purpose of these strategies is to ensure that identify appropriate policies to identify and minimize the risk to children and young people in synchronized environments (Healy 2014).

To manage certain strategies have been chalked out such as, a statement of commitment, code of conduct, measures for handling disclosure and qualms, strategy for communication and support, policies for recruiting and managing employees (Padgett 2016).

Understanding Social Advocacy through an Example

The ways to identify the risks that the individuals are facing is to observe closely the behavior and the performance of the individuals at work. A poor performing employee could probably going on through emotional turmoil resulting in poor performance.

The strategies that can be used is, to discuss the reasons of poor performance, rectification of self criticism in terms of job, help coping with frustration, prevention of suicides due to inability to handle overload.

Despite identification of the crisis and proper counseling, if the situation persists and continues to escalate, assistance from others should be taken into consideration.

In spite of regular counseling if the individual continue to exhibit the signs of disturbance then the individuals can be referred to proper psychiatric counseling to prevent any mishap.

Elements such as implementation of risk-minimization strategies, maintaining a safe environment for young people, Prevention of violent behavior, securing the safety of clients are to be equipped to handle crisis.

They are as follows, a confidentiality policy, a clearly defined process for identifying and regularly updating a community resource index , processes for networking with other agencies, including attending relevant interagency, guidelines for case conferencing, referral protocols, a policy for how long client information is kept after clients are no longer involved with the service.

A note should be made on the victim’s revelation,  describe the circumstance in which the revelation was made, noting down the witness during the disclosure, in case of cuts or bruises or a body map should be used to indicate the location, sure the information you write is factual. Using of a pen or biro with black ink so that the report can be photocopied. Try to keep your writing clear, signing and noting the date time and location of the setting.

Employees especially the young and newly appointed employees will have the tendency of having bad or abusive behavior with more frequent escalations. Thus, an effective planning should be implemented in order to reduce the rate of escalation (Burton, Hoobler and Scheuer 2012). Thus, effective determination of the requirement of the young employees is important. Accordingly, it should be identified that what will cause escalation for them and what will not. In addition, the job role should be designed accordingly and continuous monitoring with the help of generating feedback should be initiated. This will help to identify any chance of escalation from the young employees.

Understanding the Scope and Goals of a Youth Worker

Initiation of the job profiles keeping in mind the considerations of the young employees will have both positive as well as negative implications. One of the key positive implications will be the enhanced job productivity of the young employees (Wood et al. 2012). This is due to the reason that, consideration of the factors acceptable to the young employees will help to increase their level of motivation and thus it will eventually enhance the rate of productivity of the employees.

On the other hand, the key negative implication will be the lack of consideration of the aftermaths of the escalations. This is due to the fact that, this plan will concentrate more on the prevention rather than managing the aftermaths.

All the relevant team members will be equipped in dealing with the bad behavior of the employees. Thus, team members will have employee data, which will help them in determining the individual criterions of the employees  (Ortlieb and Sieben 2012).

This will help in dealing with issue with them. Moreover, team members will have the access with their senior management. In case of any issues, they can directly reach to their superiors.

Physical restraint will be the last possible options to refrain a person for escalating his bad behavior. Thus, any situation being aroused, which cannot be regulated or controlled by any means should be taken care by physical restraint. However, this concept will also have both negative and positive implications.

The positive implication will be the effectiveness. This is due to the reason that, physical restraint will involve body contacts and thus, it will create more impact on the client. The negative implication will be the safety concern. Due to the involvement of body contacts, safety may be hampered for the stakeholders being involved (Berzlanovich, Schopfer and Keil 2012). Thus, a risk quotient is being involved in this case.

In the case of emergence of physical restraint, a backup or help may be required. Thus, the co-workers being present in front of the incident will be first approached for help. They will be aware about the need for restraint to the client and will make them comfortable with the originated issue.

To communicate effectively with aboriginal or Torres Strait people, conventional and latest communication channel should not be used. This is due to the reason that, the communication channel being used by the modern day society will not be applicable and acceptable for them (Shockley-Zalabak 2014).

Identifying Urgent Situations and Emergency Responses

It will not generate any positive outcome. Thus, in order to effectively communicate with them, the communication technique of them should be inherited and accordingly they should be communicated in their own style and medium. This will have positive outcome from the communication process. 

To process information from the perspective of the young person, it is required to think like the young people. The considerations of them should only be effectively determined if they can be identified from their side only (Gutman and Schoon 2013).

Thus, the more will be the determination of the situation from the identifying the considerations of the young people, the more will be the effective analysis of their situation.

To detect and identify the issues such as discrimination and stereotyping with the employees, it is of prime importance that, the attitude and personality of mine should be effectively determined.

It is to be seen that, how much my own attitude and personality is adhering with the organizational culture. If there are any areas being identified for improvement, then it should be rectified by me in order to effectively adhere with the organizational culture.

The young people’s culture should be respected due to the reason that they are having more updated information than anyone else is. Thus, their opinions should be effectively determined.

The key communication skill that is required to explore various aspects of young people is the effective use of non-verbal and verbal communication rather than formal way of communication (Leathers and Eaves 2015). Having the technological skill will also be beneficial.

The young people should be motivated and be aware about the circumstances along with their consequences. It will help them to understand the situation more effectively. They will have more clear and precise idea and accordingly they can change.

The young person will be given proper training and development schemes. This will help them in equipping them in dealing with the organizational challenges in their workplace. Providence of training and development with the change in the business scenario will help them to gain competitiveness and experience (Jehanzeb and Bashir 2013).

In addition, the maintenance of the working environment, which will motivate the young employees, will also be beneficial their issues in the workplace. Periodical generation of feedback from the employees will help to determine the issues and grievances of the employees, which can be rectified if properly identified.

References

Banks, S., 2012. Ethical issues in youth work. Routledge.

Berzlanovich, A.M., Schöpfer, J. and Keil, W., 2012. Deaths due to physical restraint. Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, 109(3), p.27.

Burton, J.P., Hoobler, J.M. and Scheuer, M.L., 2012. Supervisor workplace stress and abusive supervision: The buffering effect of exercise. Journal of Business and Psychology, 27(3), pp.271-279.

Dolgoff, R., Harrington, D. and Loewenberg, F.M., 2012. Brooks/Cole Empowerment Series: Ethical Decisions for Social Work Practice. Cengage Learning.

Gutman, L.M. and Schoon, I., 2013. The impact of non-cognitive skills on outcomes for young people. Education Empowerment Foundations, London.

Healy, K., 2014. Social work theories in context: Creating frameworks for practice. Palgrave Macmillan.

Jehanzeb, K. and Bashir, N.A., 2013. Training and development program and its benefits to employee and organization: A conceptual study. European Journal of business and management, 5(2).

Leathers, D.G. and Eaves, M., 2015. Successful nonverbal communication: Principles and applications.

Ortlieb, R. and Sieben, B., 2012. How to safeguard critical resources of professional and managerial staff: Exploration of a taxonomy of resource retention strategies. The international journal of human resource management, 23(8), pp.1688-1704.

Padgett, D.K., 2016. Qualitative methods in social work research (Vol. 36). Sage Publications.

Payne, M., 2015. Modern social work theory. Oxford University Press.

Rubin, A. and Babbie, E.R., 2016. Empowerment series: Research methods for social work. Cengage Learning.

Shockley-Zalabak, P., 2014. Fundamentals of organizational communication. Pearson.

Sue, D.W., Rasheed, M.N. and Rasheed, J.M., 2015. Multicultural social work practice: A competency-based approach to diversity and social justice. John Wiley & Sons.

Thompson, N., 2015. Understanding social work: Preparing for practice. Palgrave Macmillan.

Turner, F.J., 2017. Social work treatment: Interlocking theoretical approaches. Oxford University Press.

Wood, S., Van Veldhoven, M., Croon, M. and de Menezes, L.M., 2012. Enriched job design, high involvement management and organizational performance: The mediating roles of job satisfaction and well-being. Human relations, 65(4), pp.419-445.