In this section, I will speak to three of my core values, how these values have been shaped and my social location. In doing so, I hope to share how my unique experiences, lens and privilege have created a foundation through which I will shape my future practice as a social worker. I invite the reader to explore these prompts based on their own identity to understand which values resonate with them, how these values were formed and their privilege or barriers. Perhaps they will resonate with what I have shared, or there may be great differences between us even if we share similar pieces of our identity.
Three of my Core Values:
Integrity
Social Justice
Authenticity
Integrity in social work means being honest, responsible, accountable and trustworthy by accurately representing oneself, being transparent about endings in practice, taking appropriate action if there is a breach of professional practice and working within one’s scope of practice (Canadian Association of Social Workers [CASW], 2024).
Social Justice in social work means supporting individuals while simultaneously seeking to transform the forces that generate and benefit from oppression and inequality (Mullaly & West, 2018). Social workers seek to understand the social determinants of health to understand the ways in which educational, racial, socioeconomic, and other social inequities influence the well-being of all people while advocating for fair and equitable access to services, benefits, and opportunities (CASW, 2024).
Authenticity in social work means understanding the “use of self” and using collaboration and transparency in practice. It is the use of self that enables social workers to strive for authenticity and genuineness with the clients that they serve while at the same time honouring the values and ethics that are so highly valued in social work practice (Walters, 2014). Being authentic in practice occurs with recognizing that this process should be participatory, collaborative, inclusive of differences, and affirming personal agency (CASW, 2024).
Pictured Below: I created and hosted employment workshops for the employment program participants during my time at Nanaimo Foodshare. I strived to create entertaining presentations for topics that are often considered a bit dry! I created workshops around resume and cover letter writing, interview preparation, resigning from a job appropriately and workplace communication. I used to be unable to speak publicly, and although I still get nervous, I did enjoy hosting these workshops during intakes!Making unique presentations helped me to feel authentic in my role and share my personality with the participants in a way that still focused on them.
Shaping My Values
My values growing up were predominantly shaped by my upbringing. My parents instilled in me that hard work was the key to success. Because I grew up with privilege (I will discuss privilege when I discuss my social location), I was under the impression that hard work could mitigate most barriers. I understand this mindset is not completely accurate as there are many barriers that exist based purely on aspects of a person’s identity that they cannot control, and hard work alone cannot remove these barriers. Additionally, this mindset did inflict harm on my own self-esteem, but I did not realize how damaging it was until I was almost thirty years old. Growing up believing that hard work was the most important factor to achieving my goals meant I created a narrative in which I was never “working hard enough” if I did not meet my goals instead of recognizing systemic barriers that contributed to my challenges.
I still value hard work, but I am now aware of systemic barriers and oppressive systems that exist to maintain a “status quo” for the dominant narrative, regardless of the amount of work an individual puts into meeting their goals or, in some cases, just making ends meet. This has taught me the value of meeting people “where they are at” because, based on aspects of our identity alone, we can see different outcomes despite our best efforts, and some of us may be born with a “leg up” in society. Additionally, ideas such as “hard work” are very subjective. For example, getting out of bed is something I would not consider challenging for myself, but if I lived with chronic fatigue or mobility issues, it would be a much bigger obstacle for me. I would be arriving at work having depleted a lot of my personal resources already. I will always do my best to value hard work for myself, but I will never judge a service user based on what hard work looks like for me. Instead, I will celebrate their strengths and recognize the barriers that may prevent them from “showing up” in the same way that I do. For example, I could never fault my service user who takes the bus for being late when I drove to work in my car.
My parents also deeply valued honesty and integrity. I still resonate with those qualities, and I feel that my volunteer work and education have further strengthened my commitment to these values. These qualities resonate for me as I prepare for practice because social workers must accurately represent themselves in their professional and working relationships (CASW, 2024). I understand how damaging false hope or empty promises can be when working with vulnerable populations, and because of this, I prioritize transparency in practice. Unfortunately, at times, I will still have disappointing outcomes regardless of my best intentions, and I feel it is important that I am upfront and honest with service users so that we can mitigate disappointments to the best of our ability and regroup as a team to approach the issue again.
Pictured Below: Me and my dad in June of 2022 at the graduation for the Social Services Diploma at VIU.
Pictured Below: Volunteering with the CMHA is important to me because it allows me to continue developing skills for my future practice, including rapport building, anti-oppressive practice, and understanding of person-in-environment theories. Developing these skills strengthens my understanding of social justice and my role in advocacy by allowing me to experience micro-level interactions with a diverse variety of people and understand the barriers they experience and how to mitigate them.
Social Location
I am a thirty-year-old white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, university-educated woman living with a neurological disorder. I am also a domestic abuse survivor. I was raised by upper working-class British immigrant parents; my mum was a Registered Psychiatric Nurse in an Island Health Long Term Care facility, and my dad is a Corrections Officer for the Canadian Federal Government. In my future practice, I must remember that as a white, cis-gendered, hetero-sexual social worker, I possess the power and privilege that comes with being educated, working class and a member of the dominant culture (Shebib, 2022).
I do identify as someone living with a disability, but I have lived 29 years experiencing the world as someone who did not realize they had a neurodevelopmental condition. My other privileges allowed me to still “succeed” in the way that the dominant narrative defines success. It was not without its challenges, but my ability to mask, combined with my privilege, made it so I seemed to be keeping up with my peers, which meant there was never a “need” for me to be assessed. Because of this, I grew up feeling as if I did not fit in with my peers, and I wondered why it seemed so much harder for me to achieve the grades that I did. I showed strength in classes such as English and History but could not understand basic math equations. Unfortunately, some teachers saw that as “laziness” or “stupidity,” They could not comprehend that I was able to excel in some subjects and perform so poorly in others.
Because of this, I believed that I was lazy and unintelligent for most of my life. In reality, I was living with an undiagnosed neurological disorder that impacts brain development and areas of the brain that support executive function, focus, motor activity and other functions. I can identify with others living with an invisible disability. However, I do recognize that we may have had very different experiences based on other aspects of our identities. It is never a competition, but while I recognize my privilege, I must also recognize parts of my identity where I have experienced oppression myself. This does not erase my privilege, but I believe it is okay to admit we have had challenges despite our privilege.
As a woman, I have experienced barriers that do not exist for my male counterparts. Before returning to university, I obtained my air brakes ticket and drove a cabinet delivery box truck. In that position and my previous positions delivering auto parts, it was pretty routine for me to experience sexism or sexual harassment thinly veiled as a “joke.” I was once sprayed with chemical brake cleaner down the front of my pants, followed by an inappropriate joke. Although I did not enjoy the experience, I worried it might be more triggering or traumatizing to another driver. I told my boss in an attempt to protect the other drivers, only to be harassed about “not being able to take a joke” on my next delivery to that shop.
When I had pleasant interactions, there was often a reference to my gender. For example, “Wow, you drive that forklift as well as any guy!” That always made me laugh because the male forklift operators I worked alongside were highly skilled but often rushed and, therefore, damaged products. I did not feel as skilled because I had less experience, but because of that, I took my time and used caution, so it was rare for me to damage the product. I do not attribute that to gender, only confidence levels. I did tend to be more cautious because I was often closely watched by customers who did not believe I routinely operated the forklifts. I did not leave the field because of how I was treated, but as I continue to learn about my social location, I cannot help but see those interactions through an intersectional lens and wish I had spoken up when I experienced discrimination. It had become so normalized to me that I did not recognize that I was being discriminated against and harassed.
However, I have only experienced these barriers as a cis-gendered, straight, white, working-class individual who is not living with chronic illness or a physical disability. I do not experience systemic racism; my financial barriers are more minor than someone living with a lower socioeconomic status; I am not afraid to openly share my sexual identity and orientation, and I am not living with chronic pain or trying to navigate buildings that are not built with mobility devices in mind.
Because I have grown up operating in the dominant narrative, I am still susceptible to oppressive practices and dominant-subordinate relationships, which is why I must allow my future service users to guide me in their lived experience and be aware of how my privilege and social location may have shielded me from barriers I had not considered (Mullaly & West, 2018).
Pictured Below: My delivery truck from my cabinet delivery days. I really enjoy driving, and I loved that Hino dearly! However, I did not feel I was reaching my full potential in that role. At the age of 27, I decided to challenge my learned belief that I was *“stupid” and return to university. Now, I am in the last semester of my social work degree at VIU!
* I do not believe anyone who drives trucks is unintelligent; I just believed that pursuing my class 3 and driving would be the only way I could have a career without going to university. I did not believe I could succeed at university due to my low self-esteem.
Conclusion
In this section, I have discussed my three core values and related those to social work practice, shared how these values likely originated and shared my social location. In doing so, I have explored the qualities I admire in myself while recognizing values that have inflicted harm. I allowed myself to be vulnerable in sharing experiences of oppression and discrimination in my life while acknowledging that I do come from a place of great privilege. In doing so, I invited the reader to consider their own social location and the understanding that shared experiences are still shaped by other facets of our identity. I hope this section has given the reader a clear image of me while also encouraging them to reflect on their own social location and values.
