Question Description

The first purpose is to increase your knowledge about how to work in a culturally competent manner with children and families of underserved populations. The second purpose is to increase your critical thinking skills. The third purpose is to introduce you to some important scholarly journals in social work as well as the fields in which social work is commonly engaged.

Your paper should be 6 - 7 pages long, excluding the title and reference pages. Your paper must follow APA style. Be sure to use the APA tutorial in the course and your APA manual.

Your Tasks:

• Describe a client population that you hope to work with in the field of social work that is an underserved population. Identify this population and explain why they are an underserved population.
• Conduct a literature search to find articles about how social work serves or doesn’t adequately serve this underserved population. Choose five articles that discuss culturally competent practices for working with this population.

It is recommended that your research articles be recent, within the last ten years. You can use something that is more than 10 years old, if it is the seminal work but you need to make it clear that is why you are using it. For example we are using an article for this class about Genograms from the 1990s because it is the pinnacle of work with Genograms. The reason we want you to use articles less than 10 years old is because research and technology advances and changes. What worked 10 years ago might be disproven in today’s world.

• Thoroughly describe the culturally competent social work practices for working with this population that are identified in the articles or are implied by the articles. Use this research and your course textbook to elaborate on these questions:
  • How has this group been treated historically in our culture? What is the history (e.g., laws, experiences, etc.) related to this type of oppression? What assumptions, beliefs, or attributions appear to drive the oppression or discrimination of this group?
  • What are examples of specific oppressive or discriminatory practices that this group has encountered as they interact with various institutions? You may include social, economic, educational, faith, and health care institutions in your discussion, as well as any other institutions of relevance.
  • What may be the outcomes or implications of these experiences for the marginalized group? Consider the range of bio-psycho-social-spiritual outcomes and other issues of relevance.
  • What examples of strength and resilience are, or have been, evident within members of this group?
  • What may be implications of these oppressive practices for social workers who work with individuals from this population? What are 2-3 specific understandings or actions that you see as crucial to supporting non-oppressive practices with the group you have chosen?
• Identify a current SBIRT intervention(s) and provide a rationale/explanation about why this type of SBIRT intervention has been identified is appropriate given the particular cultural or ethnic characteristics of this population.
• Reflect and write a few paragraphs on the knowledge and insight you gained from completing this assignment. Discuss how you feel, what you think, how you react to the notion of serving this minority population in the area of social work you identified in the paper. Be descriptive.

Remember, when writing your papers please adhere to the following expectations:

1. Organization - Five sentence paragraph with an introduction, three supporting sentences, and a conclusion sentence. Think about this same organization for your whole paper: five paragraphs in this paper, one paragraph as an introduction, three supporting paragraphs, and then your conclusion paragraph. (Please note: This format is only a suggestion, you may need more paragraphs to reach the expected length of each paper).
2. Don't rely too heavily on quotes. Take several articles and point them together into a unique way. We want your thinking supported by research. An example of this is to remember to paraphrase the work that you are researching and make it your words but still cite the source. We want to see more of your words and less quotes. When using the TurnItIn program the similarity should be 20% or less.