Relationship-based Social Work with Adults by Heidi Dix Sue Hollinrake Jennifer Meade

Author:Heidi Dix, Sue Hollinrake, Jennifer Meade [Heidi Dix, Sue Hollinrake, Jennifer Meade]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912096275
Goodreads: 40890656
Publisher: Critical Publishing
Published: 2019-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

Offering carers a separate assessment of need, in private, away from the person being cared for, on the face of it does not sound like systemic practice. However, some carers do not always feel able to speak openly and honestly in front of the person they care for. Complex feelings of guilt, resentment, fear and helplessness can be mixed with satisfaction, love, duty and obligation. Narrative methods, with a ‘tell me your story?’ style of questioning can open up with carers how the nature of their relationship with the cared-for can influence how they feel about caring. Talking with Mary about her life before her husband’s ill-health and increasing frailty revealed a story characterised by caring. Giving up a promising career once she married, to care for family and home, which she felt was her duty and obligation as a woman, wife and mother was tinged with resentment that social norms of the day expected that of her. She felt she should care for her husband but found the physical and emotional stresses and strains she now encountered difficult to manage. While both men and women can be carers, traditionally, it has been seen as a woman’s role, reflected in Mary’s sense that she should care as a reflection of how she sees herself, and Gilligan (1993, p 17) has commented that women ‘define themselves in a context of human relationship (and) judge themselves in terms of their ability to care’. Giving carers the opportunity to talk freely about themselves can be an effective way to contextualise the current situation. This must be facilitated within a trusting and containing relationship context. With Mary’s consent, the social worker spoke with Bill about how she was feeling, and he agreed that some support to help his wife would be an acceptable compromise to their situation. One of Bill’s fears stemmed from a concern that home carers may try to ‘take over’ their lives or invade their privacy.

Narrative approaches or story telling are effective methods applied by systemic practitioners. People can experience problems when the stories of their lives (as they themselves or others have constructed them) do not represent their current reality. ‘Re-storying’ is considered a therapeutic way to re-tell or reconstruct a narrative that better fits with reality (White and Epston, 1990). In the foregoing example, the social worker could assist Mary through a narrative approach to unpick how social constructions of women’s roles have influenced how she has attributed meaning to her role, which has prevented her from taking care of herself as well as her husband. This may help her to appreciate the potentially oppressive nature of societally determined roles for women and help her to achieve more agency. This can be done through a series of questions that can draw attention to how the problem (her sense of duty and obligation arising from social norms and expectations) has affected her relationships, her view of herself and how helpful or unhelpful this has been for her. By externalising the issues, the sense of guilt or failure can be mitigated (White and Epston, 2005).

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