The area of social work which will be the focus of this essay is work with adolescents. More specifically, the group work Mentoring program I have both observed and participated in at Fusion South Sydney Youth Services – an organisation driven by the belief that every young person should have the opportunity to envision and achieve their full potential and best life. This positive practice experience helped to exemplify critical best practice and how group work with adolescents can be applied cross-culturally to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
What is critical best practice?
Critical best practice is contested in terms of its definition. What is portrayed by the media regarding the social work profession focusses …show more content…
Malekoff 2004 pp.6)”. Literature indicates that in order for adolescents to become healthy adults, they must be able to feel a sense of worth as a person, develop and achieve the ability to make informed choices and have a positive belief in a promising future with real opportunities (ed. Malekoff 2004 pp.16). The mentoring program inadvertently prepares adolescents for greater participation in community life (ed. Malekoff 2004 pp. 17) as collaboratively with youth workers they are able to stretch their emotional, intellectual and social limits in a challenging and healthy way (ed. Malekoff 2004 pp. 10). What has made the mentoring program an example of best practice, was because group work as a means of early intervention and prevention with young people at risk assists in addressing adolescent needs and finding ways to better mediate the various systems impacting on their lives (ed. Malekoff 2004 pp.17) which consequently reduces poor …show more content…
Individual behaviour and personal prejudice has to be understood in the wider structural and cultural context of society (ed. Thompson 2006). In order to work effectively with adolescents from a range of backgrounds, it is extremely important that youth workers recognise the influence of individual values, norms and traditions and its impact on the way individuals within groups think and behave (Jack & Donnellan 2013 pp.85). This model relates to the mentoring program as the practice involved shifting shared negative perceptions/beliefs of self in the adolescents that have been enforced by society. For example, numerous adolescents in the program believed that because they come from a Polynesian background, that they did not have the potential to be a leader. This prejudice is based on oppression that is sewn into the fabric of society (ed. Thompson 2006). In this sense, the workers would actively challenge norms and oppression created by society at an S - structural tier (ed. Thomson