Research states that self-awareness is a necessary component of social work practice (Kondrat, 1999). The three approaches to professional self-awareness are simple conscious awareness, reflective awareness, and reflexive awareness (Kondrat, 1999). These approaches agree with the concept of your personal identity and the assumptions of the person you are. On the one hand, simple conscious awareness focuses on one’s direct experiences of self. Self-awareness means you become aware of your present realities, surroundings, perceptions, feelings, and behavior. You can recognize what you are experiencing by your sensations, perceptions, and impressions. When you have reflective awareness, you turn your attention from yourself to experiences, which includes aligning the self to the professional aspects. Your awareness reflects on your professional “behaviors, attitudes, interactions, and accomplishments” (Kondrat, 1999). Development of self-awareness results in a deeper understanding of our professional values, ethics, limitations such as biases, and what we need to abide by as professionals, and biases. At times our values and beliefs can contradict and cause biases in our profession.
On the other hand, reflexive awareness helps us see how our clients understand who we are. One can do this by stepping back and performing an objective self-reflection. How are you presenting yourself professionally to clients? The self-reflection allows one to understand how history, the world, and one’s clients impact professional performance. It enhances awareness of how you interact with clients to establish meaning and identities. Moreover, using the different self-reflection approaches assists a social worker in the knowledge of their performance in the professional field. In this paper, I will do a self-report to examine my awareness and understanding of self, the world, and “correspondences and contradictions” based on Mary Ellen Kondrat’s model for practitioner awareness (Kondrat, 1999).
Society Structures Related to Power, Inequality and Marginalization
The concepts of power, marginalization, and inequality are theoretical explanations of how the contemporary world operates as well as the inherent fundamental relationships. The social factors are different, inherently connected, and permit social causality independently. The economic structure is determined by power, which is directly influenced by accumulated wealth. The means of wealth acquisition and distribution create inequality and power differences. It explains the existence of the caste system in a society. The poor tend to be marginalized in terms of the provision of public amenities and healthcare services, which advances economic, healthcare, and educational inequalities and disparities.
My society is composed of several structures such as family, status, and social roles among others. My parents divorced when I was very young. I lived in a single-parent and lower-middle-class household. My father is an alcoholic while my mother worked a lot to pay bills and put food on the table. Class, gender, race and ethnicity, and sexual orientation were never discussed in our house. However, I remember my dad had a black friend whom he often called a coon, which I learned was very racist.
How Society Rationalizes the Existing Structures
These structures are typically based on values, sociocultural norms, beliefs and practices, and groups and institutions/organizations. The interrelationship between these elements leads to social acceptance, support, and the existence of social structures. Such features are abstract and influence social perceptions, and interactions, and determine the emotional stability of an individual. Presumably, the differences between my parents in terms of their values affected their relationship and led to the divorce. Besides, divorce and single-parenting are socially accepted within my society. The wide acceptability of the social practices makes it possible for partners to choose them as alternatives when relationships deteriorate and threaten the health and well-being of one or both parties. In a situation where a father figure is absent, it is sensible for the mother to raise the child alone. Society dictates different obligations based on gender. There are obligations for husbands and roles for mothers.
Low-income and poor households experience and reflect socioeconomic inequalities in a society. In the case of our family, my mother’s low income and struggle to raise me is a reflection of inequality in society. While economic inequalities predetermine access to health care, educational opportunities,, and low-income earners’ quality of life, social norms and practices such as the marginalization and discrimination against single mothers affect their social mobility. For example, my mother experienced numerous hurdles in the question to create wealth and buy property. The existence of a patriarchal system poses a lot of challenges for single mothers and women within lower social strata in society. Single parents are generally categorized into delineated economic groups. People use this basis to rationalize the existence of such social structures.
