Building an equality-based rapport with service users represents one of the essential pillars of effective social work. In fact, the very concept of partnership as the process of collaboration between the participants involved must be seen as central to the proper implementation of social service goals and supporting clients (Empowering patients, service users and communities, 2022). In order to ensure that partnerships function as expected and allow clients to develop the necessary skills, including resilience, self-sufficiency, and self-esteem, relevant tools and strategies are required. Due to the focus on the increased role and agency of service users in the therapy and the identification of frameworks for improving their well-being, user inclusion and empowerment will help create more equal partnerships.
As a concept, service user inclusion within the context of social work suggests that social workers should embrace the idea of collaborating with clients. The specified concept of cooperation within the social work environment implies that customers are introduced to the notion of exploring their self and their unique needs. Therefore, a social worker must prioritize the approaches based on respect of clients’ unique needs and characteristics that make them particularly vulnerable to prejudiced and biased perceptions.
Specifically, a social worker must focus on building self-awareness and understanding of core emotional and mental-health-related needs in the client. For this purpose, customers need to be exposed to a range of available resources and provided with sufficient guidance in exploring them. Additionally, clients must be encouraged to ask questions regarding their health issues, as well as health, in general, thus, structuring a knowledge system that they will navigate in the future. Consequently, patients will gain awareness concerning essential threats that they may face, as well as the means to mitigate the threats in question. Thus, a social worker will have to spend extra time providing patient with the necessary information about their condition, the means of managing it, and the strategies for maintaining excellent quality of life, including active participation in the community life, communication with friends and family, and the relevant activities.
The process of promoting self-awareness in patients will, in turn, increase the extent of engagement alongside a rise in inclusion. Specifically, clients will become enabled to shape their progress to a noticeable extent, with the role of the social service worker being contained to that one of guidance and support. Additionally, a social worker will have to introduce corrections into the process of the client’s progress to ensure that core issues are addressed and that the necessary behavioral changes are made. For this reason, approaches involving shared decision-making, in the course of which the client will be granted increased agency and be able to exercise it accordingly, will be required (Empowering patients, service users and communities, 2022). Shared decision-making and the enhancement of community-based support along with the strategy of social prescribing will allow the patient to have the full range of experiences needed to increase the extent of their engagement in the therapy process and, thus, build a strong partnership with the social worker.
Since user inclusion and empowerment suggests that service users should have a larger role in identifying and navigating the therapy process, thus, becoming more independent, the specified strategies should eb regarded as the gateway to creating equal partnerships. Specifically, the introduction of the specified options will enable social workers to build stronger connections with clients by enabling them to become active agents of change in their own behaviors and attitudes. Thus, the efficacy of interventions and the relevant strategies is expected to increase substantially.
Reference
Empowering patients, service users and communities. (2022). Local Government Association. Web.