Progress (#9)

Social injustices are still prevalent in society today. Some social injustices that commonly occur throughout society are racism, oppression of other groups/races, sexism, discrimination, and the list goes on and on. The social injustices that one may experience can build up one’s self and even build up a community or it can plague individuals within a society. Discrimination among gay and lesbian individuals are indeed prevalent and in occurrence in our society today. It seems as though that some people are becoming more accepting of same sex marriage but it is still a work in progress. The ban on same sex marriage is a big issue that the U.S. is facing and is still not accepted in many states. The rights that are given to a heterosexual couple such as the institution of marriage, taxation compensation based on marriage and adoption privileges is where equality for homosexuals does not exist (Blackwell, Ricks, and Dziegielewski, 2004). The people in this community are in a constant struggle to gain equal protection of their human rights and moral equality. After learning more about the LBGTQ community last week I came across an interesting article of another state that has legalized gay marriage. The Hawaii Senate has approved legislation to legalize same sex marriage on Wednesday (Shapiro, 2013). If the bill passes in the Senate Hawaii will be the 15^th state to legalized same sex marriage (Shapiro, 2013). If gay and lesbians have human rights and human rights are supposed to be universal and everyone has an entitlement to them, why do social injustices occur in a society where there are theories and perspectives that are used to help guarantee social justice among individuals equally then. So why are gay and lesbians banned from marrying in some states?  Social activist are in a constant struggle to pass legislation for the LBGTQ community to have equal rights as heterosexuals.

http://news.msn.com/us/hawaii-senate-passes-bill-to-legalize-gay-marriage

Observation

Today I went trick or treating for cans to donate them to the Austin Capital Food Bank area.

Eye Opener (#8)

 

 This week in our social justice class we talked about Heterosexism, Transgender, and Oppression. We live in a society that defines the way we view gender roles and how we perceive men and women. The gender roles in society today have flipped and there are a lot of people who don’t identify with society’s gender roles, yet heterosexism still dominates our society. We had a wonderful guest speaker named Shane Whalley who works for the Gender and Sexuality Center on campus talk to us about the LBGTQ community. I really enjoyed hearing Shane speak and I gained a lot of information that will be valuable to me and my career. During this week I realize that there was a lot of information I did not know about this community besides the stigmas that they fight for. I realized that I did not understand all the language that this community uses. I know that language is really is important to individuals and the way that they use their language to identify themselves is also important. Not knowing their language and what language that this community feels is offensive, is the one thing that I did not know about. Learning more about this community of people has opened my eyes more.  As social workers we have to know the context of a community to help clients and need to have a knowledge and information of every population (if that is possible) because there are still going to be things that we do not know and things that we have to continue to learn, if we want to advocate for the people in our society.

Observation

                  While watching the news this week, I came across the story of a 14 year old boy who killed his teacher in Danvers, Massachusetts. On the other hand I looked on the GSC website to see what events they had coming up and they will be celebrating their 3^rd annual Cabaret tomorrow.

http://ddce.utexas.edu/genderandsexuality/ut-and-community-events/

An Open Book (#7)

I really enjoyed watching the Ted talks from Brene’ Brown this week in class. I have listened to these talks in some of my pervious social work classes, but actually listening to the talks again put a lot of things into perspective for me. I appreciate her for studying human connection and how the power of vulnerability plays into that human connection. I gained so much information from this video and learned that vulnerability is not a weakness but is a tool that is needed in making connections. Before I even heard about Brene’ Brown’s research I always viewed vulnerability as a weakness and felt that many people would judge me and see me as weak if I did let my emotions show. I have been told that I am too vulnerable (emotional) by guys but I guess being caring makes you vulnerable. I also doubt myself sometimes before I even try to anything and I think this is where the shame and fear comes in that Professor Brown talked about. As she conducted her research on shame and fear she found that excruciating vulnerability lies within these to emotions, and listening to her explain this more I totally agree. I feel that a lot of us put up walls and have these stoic personas to us. I am also a person who does this because I don’t want people to judge me and at times I am afraid to let people see the real me, unless they are really close to me. The fear/shame that we have as individuals keeps us from doing many things in our lives and making connections with people. Nobody in this world is perfect and there is no such thing as perfection, so why are we still afraid to be vulnerable around others?  

This talk was more intriguing to me the second time around because I was able to apply it to my own life and in my work as a social worker. The one thing that stuck out to me that I feel is good for social work practice is where she said “we can’t practice compassion with other people if we cannot treat ourselves kindly.” This is the number one key competent I feel is essential to your work as a social worker especially on a micro level when you are working with your clients. In order to help others we have to know how to help ourselves first (self-care). As social workers I feel that we are empathic towards our clients and their situations but at the same time we have to control our emotions to help our clients achieve their life goals (we can be vulnerable but not too much because we have to draw a line between business and personal). The connections that we build with our clients and the empowerment that we give our clients (by showing them that they are worthy of more) is what I want to strive for throughout my career as a social worker. At the organizational level I feel that we have to be compassionate about the people in our community and understand the community that we are  living in and show the people in our community that they are worthy of belonging.

Observation

There will be an a human trafficking talk on October 21^st held at Gregory Plaza from 7-9pm where students can talk and connect with organizations working to end human trafficking and the issues that led to this. https://www.facebook.com/events/155520127991799/

The Follow Up (#6)

I recently wrote a blog post questioning the continuation of abuse of abused and neglected children in the foster care system. I criticized the system flaws in the system and kind of bashed Child Protective Services (CPS) for not doing anything about for two years. Texas has been under scrutiny for so long for poorly supervising children during their time in foster care. After the death of two-year old Alexandria Hill and other children something is now being done for children who are still abused and neglected within the foster care system.

 As I stated once before in my pervious blog Texas Mentor is the third largest foster care contractor in the state that places children in foster homes. Texas Mentor is a private company that finds homes for foster children could lose tens of thousands of dollars in the upcoming months (Ball, 2013). Texas Mentor is now on the verge of trying to fix its discrepancies that have caused children more danger and trauma. The Department of Family and Protective Services has stopped placing children with Texas Mentor late last month due to many violations in it foster care homes, such as inappropriate punishment and poor supervision However the agency will still continue to care for the 600-puls youths currently in its foster homes, but will not receive any new children or the money that comes with taking care of them, which is between $1,300and $5,600 per month/per child (Ball, 2013). This suspension is the strongest penalty that the state can levy against the 350 agencies that contract to recruit licensed and train foster families in Texas. Suspending financial funds for a child placing agency can cost the agencies finances to decrease depending on how long it takes to get off of suspension (Ball, 2013).  According to Ball (2013) the state has cited Texas Mentor at least a dozen of times over the past two years for failing to ensure that criminal background checks were done for residents or frequent foster home visitors were done or updated. Texas Mentor is now in the works of a correction plan (developed between them and the state) that includes the company strengthening it background checks that expand to include all immediate family member within a 150-mile radius, adding oversight to the approval process for foster parents, bolstering the financial review for prospective families, and implementing an Internet and social media screening for current and prospective foster parents (Ball, 2013).

I wish they would have caught these red flags a long time ago because this could have saved so many other children lives, but due to the lack of extensive back ground checks from Texas Mentor on foster care families who make about $650 to $700 a month to care for foster children (Austin American- Statesman, 2013) can cause more harm than help to these young children and can cause children to be afraid of their foster families. Some of these families may just be in it for the money and may not care about the child’s well-being. Children are so precious and should not be taken for granted and I hope that Texas Mentor rightfully serves children after this. Overall, the foster care system is in desperate need of repair.

Observation

Yesterday I volunteered at the University Presbyterian Church Micah 6 Food Pantry. This food pantry helps low-income families and homeless youth meet their basic needs for food.

The Shutdown!!! (#5)

The government has now been shut down for the last two days. How long is this going to go on? Many people are affected by this shutdown and some federal workers have been furlough. More than 800,000 federal workers are now facing life without a pay check (Yan & Cohen, 2013). I think that it is time to get off the Affordable Health Care Act band wagon and stop trying to dismantle the funding for it. I feel that this is not something that they should repel because this affordable care act allows all people to have access to health insurance now which many people may not had before.  The government needs to figure out way to negotiate this health care act before we go into another economic crisis. I feel that the Republican’s strategy  to shut down the government was just flat out stupid because this shutdown does not allow people to have access to certain things that the government funds.  I was watching Anderson Copper 360 on CNN and came across they story of a woman who is battling an rare cancer, but due to the shutdown she is not allowed to enroll in a clinical trial for approval. This also means that children battling cancer will also not be approved for a clinical trial because of this. Also social service agencies that depend on government funding are deeply affected by this. The people in our society who utilize these agencies to allocate resources may not fully benefit from the resources now because there is no funding for now. The Wic program, which provides low-income pregnant women, new mothers and children up to the age of five with healthy food, is not funded as of Tuesday morning (McCann, 2013). However some social service agencies may have put money aside for a rainy day like this, which will still allow them to help their clients. I feel that this shutdown has already put the economy in debt so far and could be on its way to hitting the debt ceiling. Can we agree to disagree and figure out a solution ASAP before this happens, after all Obama Care has already been passed.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/01/politics/government-shutdown/index.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/29/us-government-shutdown-services-affected

Observation

As of yesterday people are able to enroll to for the Affordable Health Care Act to receive health insurance nation wide and there are places where you can go and sign up.