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Hannah Wirkkunen
March 7, 2019
Dan Wulff
SOCIAL WORK: REFLECTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 2
meaning that individuals give to their unique experiences and perceived realities. As
social workers, it is critical to acknowledge and respect these unique realities and lived
experiences when interacting with clients. The ideas of Tom Andersen and Harlene
Anderson similarly draw upon the aforementioned ideas that now guide and support
contemporary post-structural social work practice with families and individuals. The
philosophies of Collaborative Therapy and Reflecting Processes that most closely align
with my personal and professional values and beliefs include honoring and respecting
the client as expert, acknowledging that social work and clinical practice is a mutually
Social work practice has evolved over time allowing helpers to select theories
and approaches that more closely align with their personal values and beliefs, as well
as the unique experiences and needs of their clients. Likewise, child welfare or child
intervention practice has also evolved over time. In Canada, Alberta included, child
welfare practice initially focused upon level of risk, however, overtime, this practice has
evolved into a strengths-based approach that seeks to acknowledge and honor the
that the ideas offered by Tom Andersen and Harlene Anderson align with my clinical
practice experiences within the child welfare system, specifically working with youth and
practice with families and youth while still abiding by both agency and legislative
requirements.
The Alberta child intervention system supports youth and young adults until the
age of 24, meaning that youth who reach the age of 18 while in care, are eligible to sign
a legal agreement between themselves and the department to receive ongoing support,
including financial and emotional maintenance. In the city of Red Deer, there is a
designated youth services team who work alongside young adults between the ages of
16 to 24. The mandate is to support lasting healthy transitions into adulthood, including
relational, physical, cultural and legal connections. Every youth supported into
adulthood has a unique lived experience resulting in incredible strengths and resiliency.
It is also necessary to consider the complex needs that youth may be or have
experienced, such as trauma including abuse and sexual exploitation, addiction and
intervention system requiring a unique approach to practice. While many of these youth
have been in care from infancy or childhood, youth often have ongoing relationships
relationships can be multifaceted and at times youth request support in navigating the
complexities. However, I believe that the most important contributor to clinical practice is
the formation of a positive therapeutic alliance between the helper and the client. Perry
(as cited in Smyth, 2017) explains that opportunities for healing and positive change
occur within safe and healthy relationships, furthermore, respect and trust must be
SOCIAL WORK: REFLECTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 4
present within the helping relationship in order for youth to address their intrapersonal,
with a client involves honoring the client as the expert. This includes respecting client’s
unique lived experiences, contextual realities, identified preferences and their right to
our lived experiences. Both Tom Andersen and Harlene Anderson’s work reference the
Part of working alongside youth within children’s services involves ensuring youth
identifying their own goals and collaboratively defining success. Harlene (2012)
emphasized that clients are experts of their own lived experiences, as such, clients
I recall working with a youth client who was struggling with addiction. This
particular youth moved to Central Alberta from a large Ontario city where he frequently
was to address the level of risk and concern for safety. While attempting explain the
with substance use, the youth interjected and advised that he independently navigated
the city streets for many years and understands the risk associated with his behavior. It
was then that I realized that what I believed to be collaborative was actually me
SOCIAL WORK: REFLECTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 5
operating as the expert. In doing so, I failed to recognize his own lived experience.
importance of developing solutions based upon the lived experiences and preferences
of our clients, while continuing to abide by our ethical and legislative mandates. This
idea aligns with the importance of acknowledging that as helpers, we can never
being informed by the client and in this process, we are always learning more, both from
what the client has said, and what the client has not said. In addition to building a
positive and collaborative relationship with youth, both Anderson and Andersen
workers, we often discuss a client’s stage of change within the transtheoretical model in
our own willingness to be changed within the process of helping. As humans, social
workers possess values, biases and beliefs that have the power to form preconceived
Anderson and Goolishian (2018) believe that such judgements can be used as
opportunities for curiosity to explore deeper, but in order to do so, we must be willing to
have our values, beliefs and judgements challenged and even changed. I believe this is
especially important within the child intervention system as our decisions can have
devastating impacts for family systems. Within helping relationships, once a positive
SOCIAL WORK: REFLECTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 6
therapeutic alliance has been formed, mutual exchanges occur between the helper and
the client (Andersen, 1987). Andersen believed that because each person has
therapy. In my experience working with youth and their families, I have allowed myself
to be vulnerable in the sense that I am willing to have my beliefs challenged and even
changed. I am open and willing to learn from my clients in our partnered journey.
When working with youth, some have experienced negative relationships with
challenged one’s beliefs, includes writing a letter acknowledging these experiences. Dr.
William Masden (as cited in Smyth, 2017) encourages helpers to remind youth that they
are respected and thank youth for their contributions to our professional learning and
upon our work as helpers, but also requires us to search for the language to sufficiently
Tom Andersen and Harlene Anderson both wrote extensively about the
Goolishian, 1988). In line with Tom Andersen’s philosophies, helpers engage with
clients in a way that further develops their own understanding of the client’s perception
allowing clients the space to discuss their own perception of the problem is especially
important within mandated agencies, such as child intervention or other systems such
as corrections. This space provides clients with an opportunity to share their lived
experiences in relation to their perceptions of reality and the meaning they associate
with the identified problem. The meanings that we apply to our experiences are context
specific and evolve over time depending upon or interactions, including therapeutic
interactions with helpers, such as social workers. Client’s may also have not yet had an
opportunity to share the meaning they associate with their lived experiences. This is
important, because Tom Andersen believed that when clients have an opportunity to
share verbally their inner dialogue for the first time, both the client and helper can be
impacted in new ways (Gehart, 2018). I believe that this practice allows social workers
and changing based upon the language we use to interact with others and ourselves
(Anderson & Goolishian, 1988). These interactions and experiences influence our
individualized and shared realities. Anderson and Goolishian maintained that systems
such as families have unique modes of interacting based upon their shared
experiences, contextualized meaning and applied language, and over time, these
methods may evolve. When families experience challenges, helpers such as social
workers may be invited or mandated to provide support. The helper must attempt to
learn, understand and interact using the family or client’s language. Anderson and
Goolishian also explained that the language used by individuals and systems such as
SOCIAL WORK: REFLECTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 8
families is a metaphor for their lived experiences. For example, the words and
associated meanings that clients use are representative of their contextual realities.
individual, the helper and client can collaboratively generate meaning together that best
reflects the perceptions of those involved in the system, such as family members or
friends. Further, I also believe that by allowing client’s the space to apply their own
and language that can contribute to our own evolving and ever-changing realities. As
previously mentioned, all human systems generate both meaning and language based
upon social interactions and shared experiences, the space shared between a social
worker and client is also privy to such changes. This is an opportunity to co-create
meaning with clients in our attempts to understand those who we share spaces with.
While not all social workers guide their practice based upon the ideas of Tom
Andersen and Harlene Anderson, these approaches to practice do align with the values
and principles outlined by the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW). The
practice of respecting all clients as experts of their lived experience abides by the
CASW value to respect and uphold the inherent worth and dignity of all clients.
Honoring clients as experts of their own realities, respects their right to self-
determination (CASW, 2005) and allows clients to make decisions for themselves based
upon their self-identified goals. Further, the action of allowing clients to identify their
personalized definitions of problems, goals and success, honors the CASW value of
service to humanity by supporting clients in pursuit of their unique goals. Lastly, while
therapeutic alliance is formed in order to serve the needs of the client, in accordance
with the principle of integrity within professional practice (CASW, 2005). The principles
and approaches utilized within Reflecting Practices and Collaborative Therapy not only
abide by the Canadian Association of Social Workers, but also provides an opportunity
for social workers to truly work with our clients in pursuit of their preferred lives.
SOCIAL WORK: REFLECTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 10
References
Andersen, T. (1987). The reflecting team: Dialogue and meta-dialogue in clinical work.
Preliminary and evolving ideas about the implications for clinical theory. Family
from https://casw-acts.ca/en/Code-of-Ethics/casw-code-ethics-values-and-
principles
Combs, G., & Freedman, J. (2012). Narrative, poststructuralism, and social justice:
1060.
Gehart, D. R. (2018). The legacy of Tom Andersen: The ethics of reflecting processes.
Connections.
Shotter, J. (2015). Tom Andersen, fleeting events, the bodily feelings they arouse in us,
Strong, T. (2000). Six orienting ideas for collaborative counsellors. European Journal of