Assignment 2: Written Assignment (Reaction Paper – Self Help Meeting)
• The student will attend a traditional 12-step meeting or other non-traditional self-help arena. Please do not attend a group that is lead by a professional facilitator. One place to locate 12-step meetings is by looking on the Internet. Papers where only a video of a meeting is watched will not be accepted.
• Compare at least 5 academic references and class content to your experience and throughout the paper to make academic sense of your observations.
Use ALL headings.
1) Briefly describe the meeting, including location, time of day, and composition of the group (including sociocultural aspects such as gender, class, race, etc.)
2) Describe a story that was told at the meeting. Organize the story with the headings of the Jellinek chart, using both the downward spiral and the process of recovery. (Sometimes people are not comprehensive about all the stages. It is up to you to meet this requirement. Sometimes people talk with the person afterwards. Sometimes people make up the missing parts.)
3) From a theoretical point of view, how do the 12 steps work as therapeutic tools?
4) In a paragraph or three, describe your personal experience of the meeting. What dynamics resonated with you? What dynamics discouraged you? What is your personal opinion about the usefulness of 12 step groups for people with addictions and give a rationale for your opinion.
1. I attended an NA meeting in Cherry Hill called “The Recovery Stop”. It was located at Michael’s Lutheran Church and started at 6:00 pm on Sunday. It was an open meeting and each week they either had “step meetings”, “Basic Text”, “speaker meetings” or “just for today”. The group consisted on men and woman of all race and color. Being in Cherry Hill, NJ, they were middle to upper class. Their ages ranged anywhere from 20’s up.
2. This meeting discussed Step 1 “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable” and the speaker who has over 25 years sobriety talked about his addiction to both alcohol and cocaine.
Mr. X talked about he started drinking at the age of 13 when he was a freshman in high school. “X” talked about how as a freshman, he made the varsity football team and wanted to fit in with the older crowd. In the beginning, “X” admitted that it didn’t take a lot for him to get drunk but as the more he drank, the more it took for him to get drunk. By the time he was a senior, he was able to drink all night and still be able to attend school and maintain a 3.6 grade point average. He then went to talk about how he received a scholarship to go to Widener University but decided to take a year off so he could work to earn some extra money to buy a car. So he started working in the construction field as a roofer and sider. The more he drank, the more he needed it to help stop his hands from shaking so he could work. One day, one of his coworkers noticed how bad his hands were shaking so he offered him 2 lines of cocaine to help stop his hands from shaking. He couldn’t believe how good it felt and how he was able to work faster and his hands no longer shaking. Before he knew it, he was now drinking and using cocaine.
This is where “Mr. X” moved on to a few years later. By now, he was drinking and using cocaine everyday but still didn’t feel he had a problem. He thought he could quit at any time but why, he was making good money in construction and he was now surrounded by people who thought he was the life of the party. Even when he couldn’t remember what happen the night before, he still didn’t feel he had a problem. By now, his family and close friends started to notice a difference in him and they started to become concern.
Moving forward a year later, he talked about being involved in an auto accident due to one of his friends being under the influence of both alcohol and drugs. Mr. X stated that due to the accident, he had permanent damage to his left hand and could no longer do construction even though he tried numerous times. He noticed that all the money he was making as a roofer was gone because of his drinking and cocaine use and had nothing saved. At this point, he had asked his family to borrow money to help pay bills but spent it on cocaine. He talked about how the alcohol no longer had an effect on him so he just used cocaine. After 3 years of struggling, borrowing money, stealing, and selling anything he owned of value; he had nothing left.
Then one day he received a phone call from his mother saying that there was a problem with his father and he needed to come home asap. When he got there, he saw his whole family, close friends and his ex-girlfriend sitting in the living room. This is where he realized that it was an intervention. He admitted that he was hesitate at first but decided to stay and listen to them talk. For most part he didn’t pay too much attention to it until his youngest sister started talking. She talked about how she missed her older brother and the relationship they had but it was the next statement she said that made him realize that he needed help. On one occasion when he was supposed to pick her up from a friend’s house. He never showed up so she call one of his friends who was his drinking buddy and asked for a ride. On the way home, he pulled off the side of the road and tried to rape her. She was able to escape but asked her mother not to say anything because she was both embarrassed and didn’t want him to go after his friend. That when Mr. X started to cry and after listening to what the guy who ran the intervention had to say, he agreed to go into inpatient treatment.
For the first few days, it was hard and he didn’t think he could do it, there was even a few times that he thought about leaving but he remembered his sister and what happened and he decided to stay. He was in treatment for six months, then he was in outpatient for another three months after that. He lived in a half-way house for a year while going back to school for computers. Moving ahead 25 years later, he is happy, sober, healthy, a closer relationship with his family. He met someone through NA 10 years ago and they are now married and have 2 children. He sponsors 3 people and still attends meetings at least 3-4 times a week.
Number 3: This is where research can be used.
Number 4: I really enjoyed the meeting and being in recovery myself, I was inspired by how he overcame all the obstacles in his life. I would say that the dynamics of the group was great. Everyone was polite and welcomed me to the group. Although I attend NA meetings myself, this was my first time at this particular one. They had coffee, bottled water, there was plenty of room for sitting, and they had a 10 minute smoke break. But the best dynamic of the group was they went over the time limit so other people could share and they even took the time to acknowledge my 8 year anniversary of sobriety. There was no dynamics that discouraged me.
For this part “What is your personal opinion about the usefulness of 12 step groups for people with addictions and give a rationale for your opinion” you can express this yourself.
The following table explains the highlighted competencies for this course, the related student learning outcomes, and the method of assessment.
Competencies/ Knowledge, Values, Skills Student Learning Outcomes
Method of Assessment
Professional Identity?Identify as a professional social worker and conduct oneself accordingly.
Social workers competent in Professional Identity:
? Serve as representatives of the profession, its mission, and its core values.
? Know the profession’s history.
? Commit themselves to the profession’s enhancement and to their own professional conduct and growth. 1. Advocate for client access to the services of social work. Recovery Intervention in Group Settings
Long-term Recovery Interview and Paper
Class Participation
2. Practice personal reflection and self-correction to ensure continual professional development.
3. Attend to professional roles and boundaries.
4. Demonstrate professional demeanor in behavior, appearance, and communication.
5. Engage in career-long learning.
6. Use supervision and consultation.
Ethical Practice?Apply social work ethical principles to guide professional practice.
Social workers competent in Ethical Practice:
? Fulfill their obligation to conduct themselves ethically and to engage in ethical decision-making.
? Are knowledgeable about the value base of the profession, its ethical standards, and relevant law. 7. Recognize and manage personal values in a way that allows professional values to guide practice. Group Project – Recovery with At-risk Populations
Class Participation
8. Make ethical decisions by applying standards of the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics.
9. Tolerate ambiguity in resolving ethical conflicts.
10. Apply strategies of ethical reasoning to arrive at principled decisions.
Critical Thinking?Apply critical thinking to inform and communicate professional judgments.
Social workers competent in Critical Thinking:
? Are knowledgeable about the principles of logic, scientific inquiry, and reasoned discernment.
? Use critical thinking augmented by creativity and curiosity.
? Understand that critical thinking also requires the synthesis and communication of relevant information. 11. Distinguish, appraise, and integrate multiple sources of knowledge, including research-based knowledge, and practice wisdom. Long-term Recovery Interview and Paper
Policy Impact and Implications Paper
Class Participation
12. Analyze models of assessment, prevention, intervention, and evaluation.
13. Demonstrate effective oral and written communication in working with individuals, families, groups, organizations, communities, and colleagues.
Diversity in Practice?Engage diversity and difference in practice.
Social workers competent in Diversity in Practice:
? Understand how diversity characterizes and shapes the human experience and is critical to the formation of identity.
? Recognize that the dimensions of diversity reflect intersectionality of multiple factors including age, class, color, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, immigration status, political ideology, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.
? Appreciate that, as a consequence of difference, a person’s life experiences may include oppression, poverty, marginalization, and alienation as well as privilege, power, and acclaim. 14. Recognize the extent to which a culture’s structures and values may oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create or enhance privilege and power. Group Project – Recovery with At-risk Populations
Class Participation
15. Gain sufficient self-awareness to eliminate the influence of personal biases and values in working with diverse groups.
16. Recognize and communicate understanding of the importance of difference in shaping life experiences.
17. View themselves as learners and engage those with whom they work as informants.
Human Rights & Justice?Advance human rights and social and economic justice.
Social workers competent in Human Rights & Justice:
? Acknowledge that each person, regardless of position in society, has basic human rights, such as freedom, safety, privacy, an adequate standard of living, health care, and education.
? Recognize the global interconnections of oppression and are knowledgeable about theories of justice and strategies to promote human and civil rights.
? Incorporates social justice practices in organizations, institutions, and society to ensure that these basic human rights are distributed equitably and without prejudice. 18. Understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination. Reaction Paper to Self-help Meeting
Group Project with At-risk Populations
Class Participation
19. Advocate for human rights and social and economic justice.
20. Engage in practices that advance social and economic justice.
Research Based Practice?Engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research.
Social workers competent in Research Based Practice:
? Use practice experience to inform research, employ evidence-based interventions, evaluate their own practice, and use research findings to improve practice, policy, and social service delivery.
? Comprehend quantitative and qualitative research and understand scientific and ethical approaches to building knowledge. 21. Use practice experience to inform scientific inquiry. Group Project with At-risk Populations
Policy Impact and Implications Paper
Class Participation
22. Use research evidence to inform practice.
Human Behavior?Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment.
Social workers competent in Human Behavior:
? Are knowledgeable about human behavior across the life course; the range of social systems in which people live; and the ways social systems promote or deter people in maintaining or achieving health and well -being.
? Apply theories and knowledge from the liberal arts to understand biological, social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual development. 23. Utilize conceptual frameworks to guide the processes of assessment, intervention, and evaluation. Long-term Recovery Interview and Paper
Class Participation
24. Critique and apply knowledge to understand person and environment.
Policy Practice?Engage in policy practice to advance social and economic well-being and to deliver effective social work services.
Social workers competent in Policy Practice:
? Understand that policy affects service delivery, and they actively engage in policy practice.
? Know the history and current structures of social policies and services, the role of policy in service delivery, and the role of practice in policy development. 25. Analyze, formulate, and advocate for policies that advance social well-being. Policy Impact and Implications Paper
Class Participation
26. Collaborate with colleagues and clients for effective policy action.
Practice Contexts?Respond to contexts that shape practice.
Social workers competent in Practice Contexts:
? Are informed, resourceful, and proactive in responding to evolving organizational, community, and societal contexts at all levels of practice.
? Recognize that the context of practice is dynamic, and use knowledge and skill to respond proactively. 27. Continuously discover, appraise, and attend to changing locales, populations, scientific and technological developments, and emerging societal trends to provide relevant services. Recovery Intervention in Group Settings
Group Projects with At-risk Populations
Long-term Recovery Interview and Paper
Class Participation
28. Provide leadership in promoting sustainable changes in service delivery and practice to improve the quality of social services.
Engage, Assess, Intervene, Evaluate?Engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate with individuals, families, groups, organizations and communities.
Social workers competent in the dynamic and interactive processes of Engagement, Assessment, Intervention, and Evaluation apply the following knowledge and skills to practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
? Identifying, analyzing, and implementing evidence-based interventions designed to achieve client goals
? Using research and technological advances
? Evaluating program outcomes and practice effectiveness
? Developing, analyzing, advocating, and providing leadership for policies and services
? Promoting social and economic justice 29. Engagement:
Substantively and affectively prepare for action with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
Use empathy and other interpersonal skills.
Develop a mutually agreed-on focus of work and desired outcomes. Recovery Intervention in Group Settings
Group Projects with At-risk Populations
Long-term Recovery Interview and Paper
Class Participation
30. Assessment:
Collect, organize, and interpret client data.
Assess client strengths and limitations.
Develop mutually agreed-on intervention goals and objectives.
Select appropriate intervention strategies.
31. Intervention:
Initiate actions to achieve organizational goals.
Implement prevention interventions that enhance client capacities.
Help clients resolve problems.
Negotiate, mediate, and advocate for clients.
Facilitate transitions and endings.
32. Evaluation: Critically analyze, monitor, and evaluate interventions.