The main idea of the first chapter titled An International Approach to Helping concerns the fact that social work is a mediator between the client and social surroundings and systems that are important to him. The topic’s main idea relates to the social work profession since it provides the students with a deep understanding of their mission and what they should do in the future. Apart from that, the author in this chapter acknowledges the importance of the integration of social workers’ personal self and professional self (Shulman, 2016). Since social work implies interpersonal interaction and communication of the worker and client, the former should take into account not only professional values but personal ones as well. This ability will enable the social worker to effectively build the communication strategy for each client’s problem and solve it at the end.
The information given in the chapter also stresses the importance of professional ethics for the social worker since there exist issues that the client does not want to discuss or the worker cannot address. Thus, the workers should always remember about code of ethics and consult agency ethics committees for help with ethics-related issues (Shulman, 2016). The information from the chapter may be easily applied in practice. For instance, one of the most severe violations of the professional, ethical norms concerns friendship between the client and professional. It is officially acknowledged that any non-professional relationship between clients and clinicians should not exist since it involves bias and prevents the latter from doing his job. Thus, social workers should not foster such kinds of relationships and communicate with the clients only for the purposes of work performance.
Reference
Shulman, L. (2016). An International Approach to Helping. In The skills of helping individuals, families, groups and communities. Cengage Learning.