I recently decided that I want to be a social worker, which led to writing many application essays for masters of social work programs. In these application essays, they ask you to focus on one of the core ethics of social work. I chose to focus mine on the importance of human relationships. In the experiences I’ve had, it seems to be the biggest agency for change.
In my experience with the Adolescent Diversion Program (ADP), where I was working with a youth, the relationship I built with him was the one thing that helped my experience in ADP flourish. My youth underwent trauma on a daily basis, and he had few positive relationships in his life. By never giving up on him and simply being there to talk to him about things that weren’t his trauma, and by showing him what a healthy relationship is, our conversations planted many seeds. I also gave him the resources to connect with positive relationships in his community, which provided him with people to potentially look up to and connect with. Feeling like someone cares is the first step to healing..
My youth and I worked on SMART goals, but when he was focused on surviving on a day-by-day basis, the academic goals weren’t always realistic. Following Maslow’s Hierarchy, without basic needs, you can’t reach self-actualization (Mcleod, 2023). We worked on goals a lot, but there are times when everyday conversations trumped those goals. Just being people and talking about his dreams and aspirations is highly fundamental. In social work, you meet people where they’re at in their cycle of change. With ADP, many youth are not in the same place as their mentor, so it’s about finding where they’re at and going from there. An example with my youth is that he struggled to read, so we worked on literacy and how to fill out job applications together. I read him questions on a job application and he provided the answers, which helped him learn resume-building and reading at the same time. I accommodated to where he was and his learning style. In doing all of these things, I learned that a professional relationship is built with trust.
My youth needed someone to believe in him, and seeing what one good relationship did to his life has made me feel grateful for the relationships in my own life. It’s easy to take things for granted until you see what it’s like for someone who doesn’t have those things. Not everyone has healthy relationships in their life, but as a future social worker, I’m dedicated to helping everyone find at least one. The Adolescent Diversion Program is a great resource and experience to work as a mentor for youth in the criminal justice system, and an additional mentorship program is Big Brother Big Sister.
There are many essential skills that come with building meaningful relationships with clients in the mental health field. Joyce Meyer, an American author, once said, “We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.” This directly connects to one of the aspects of ADP. The Adolescent Diversion Program doesn’t punish; we only reward youth using tools such as behavioral agreements or rewarding them after accomplishing a goal. It’s important to be encouraging and not critical to be strength-based. It’s important with relationships to point out the strong and good qualities in someone. For example, instead of focusing on the fact no one in a kid’s family graduated high school, focus on the fact that the kid is super smart and will be the first one to graduate.
I’m a social practitioner at Genesis House, which is a clubhouse for adults recovering from mental illness, and this is also part of their mission. The clubhouse model is strength-based and focuses on person-centered planning where members that attend come up with their own goals and focus on what they want to focus on. There are five elements of social practice, and one of those is in fact relationship development. According to Fountain House, the very first clubhouse to exist in New York in 1948, “Mental illness often leaves many individuals without social connections or close friends, and difficulties in navigating or maintaining different types of relationships. Factors like fear or distrust along with a limited social skillset could lead to continued isolation. The focus on relationship development directly combats isolation and loneliness by providing the opportunity to cultivate social networks.” This describes a secondary reason as to why relationship building can help. Not only does it give people to look up to, but it also gives people friendships to encourage them to get out of the house and fight the temptation to stay at home in isolation.
Other skills and elements that are important are relational capability, following diversity, equity, and inclusion, and advocacy. It’s important to have cultural competence, which is “the ability of individuals and systems to response respectfully and effectively to people of all cultures, classes, races, and ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and faiths or religions in a manner that recognizes, affirms, and values the worth of individuals, families, tribes, and communities, and protects and preserves the dignity of each.” Educating oneself about other cultures and not making assumptions on someone due to their culture, as well as being accepting is extremely important. It can help build trust with relationships as well. The part of relational capacity that I feel I have used the most is emotional intelligence, which is the ability to “be aware of their own emotions; be able to understand and manage these effectively within relationships; be motivated to similarly understand the emotions of others; and to communicate within relationships” (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Morrison, 2007). In the context of my experiences, it means helping a client form a script of what they are going to do when a certain situation arises. It’s about helping them know their emotions so that when a trigger does happen so they have a plan of how to cope best through those emotions. It’s important to know this for both oneself and as a social worker. For example, if something comes up that you know is triggering to you, it’s important to have a plan of how you’ll deal with it and pursue self-care.
There are so many different elements to relationship building, and so many positive benefits that come with it as a whole. Even if you aren’t looking into social work, just gravitating yourself around relationships that are healthy for you and helping others do the same can go a long way.