The Winter Count
Length: Varies – minimum length 6 pages
No Internet images please. It has to be created by own. Students will not be judged for drawing skills but It should make sense for social workers. For Instance a picture of a flower to compare with social worker in terms of self care if social workers take care of themselves then they can spread happiness in world as flowers spread fragrance , and work as role models etc

Indigenous peoples that lived on the Prairies practiced a specific form of literacy called the winter count. The winter count was a symbolic way to recall significant events that occurred in the lives of the people. Symbols descriptive of the event were painted on buffalo robes by community members skilled in those ways. 
Your task is to create your own series of winter count-like symbols (without the use of google, letters or words) that represent your learning in this course. You are required to create one winter count-like symbol for 5 different classes (you can choose which ones) and provide some written explanation and interpretation of the significance of the symbol to your thinking, feeling, and learning in relation to the ideas and topics we have discussed. At the completion of the course, you should have created 5 symbols with interpretations.  Your task is to consider these both individually and as a synthesized whole, regarding them as a compilation of your thinking and feeling as we moved through the various aspects of the course. Your job is to review these symbols, along with the related explanations, and use them as inspiration to write a synthesized statement that tells the ‘story’ of your experience in this course. 
This assignment is not meant to test your artistic skills but to instead support you to find different ways to think about the topics we discuss and to consider them in a holistic manner.  You will not be graded on your symbols themselves, but rather on your interpretation and analysis of the symbols and your process.
Day 1 January 8
? Introductions and course orientation 
? Course overview: goals, learning objectives
? Trauma informed practice reminders
? Trauma exposure response – negative impacts
? Trauma exposure response – positive impacts
Austin, et al, Chapter 3
(Available on BlackBoard) 
Hernandez, P., Gangsei, D., & Engstrom, D (2007). Vicarious resilience: A new concept in work with those who survive trauma. Family Process, 46(2) 229-241. (Available on Blackboard) 
Days 2 & 3 January 9 & 10 
? Professional Resilience 
? Grief and Loss  Grant & Kinman, Chapters 4, 8, & 9 
Day 6 January 13 & 14 
? Moral conflict in social work Practice – Advocating for yourself to “be the social worker you want to be”.
? Boundaries
? Difficult work environments
? Organizational issues
? Making mistakes – coping with guilt and shame in social work practice Grant & Kinman, Chapter 3, 8, 10 
Gibson, M. (2014). Social worker shame in child and family social work: Inadequacy, failure, and the struggle to practice humanely. Journal of Social Work Practice, 28(4), 417-431. (Available on BlackBoard)
Difficult Work Environments
Check-in
?
How have you, as a student or as a worker,
been impacted by workplace dynamics?
How can we understand workplace
dynamics in the context of trauma
exposure?
Lateral violence
? Peer-to-peer acts
? Seen as connected to larger violence and
oppression
?
Leaking
What happens when we are struggling?
Workplace impacts
? Feeling powerless and unable to
change anything in your workplace
? Negative connection to others – work
relationships become about
complaining about others –
triangulation
? Putting struggle onto co-workers and
managers
How does this impact client/worker
relationships?
Boundaries erode
? Oversharing
? Other thoughts?
?
Where have you noticed that your times of
struggle with the difficult nature of being a helper
has leaked into your workplace relationships?
Have you noticed times when you are stuck in
negative conversations about work? Do you see
yourself talking to everyone but the person you
are upset with? Has debriefing turned into
complaining? Do you feel unable to effect
change within your workplace?
Triangulation: Basic concepts
?
?
?
?
?
Relationships are most
“stable” in triangles
Rescuer
Triangular relationships
helps each member of the
triangle deal with anxiety
Triangles are resistant to
change
Motivations of all
participants are different
but all equally toxic
Conflict and
Persecutor
communication works best
when direct
Victim
Triangulation: Motivators
Rescuer:
Fear
Persecutor:
Anger
Victim:
Sadness or
Shame
Triangulation: Change
?
?
?
?
Any member of a
Rescuer
Triangle can change
the relationship
Roles will often shift
Most effective way to
change a triangle is
to not participate
Watch for
Persecutor
professional
triangulation
Victim
Triangulation: Typical
scenarios
Rescuer:
Helping
Professional
Persecutor:
Colleague
Victim:
Colleague
Triangulation: Typical
scenarios
Rescuer:
Colleague
Persecutor:
Management
Victim:
Colleague
Healthy Conflict Resolution
Person
Person
Triangulation: Healthy use
• Empower “Victim” to manage
situation
• Try not to take sides but offer
perspective
• Provide support and
encouragement
• Ensure safety
• Encourage direct resolution
“Persecutor”
“Rescuer”
“Victim”
Have you seen how triangles work in your
professional life?
In what ways have you put yourself in the various
roles (“rescuer”, “persecutor”, “victim”)?
Unhealthy peer support
?
Ineffective Peer Support
?
?
?
?
possible contagion
triangulation
negative work environment
Feeling unsafe
Healthy peer support
?
Effective Peer Support
? Encourages connections between people with
similar work experiences
? Builds positive supportive work culture
Trauma informed organizations and staff
?
?
Extending trauma-informed care to those who work for the
organization – remembering that all staff can be impacted.
Understanding impact of working with trauma for staff members
What does this mean for
organizations?
?
?
The frame needs to change from which staff
are effected by trauma exposure (or if staff are
effected) to trying to understand the impact for
each staff member.
All will be effected; we need to work towards
understanding what trauma exposure means
for staff.
? This is akin to changing from “what is wrong
with you” to “what happened to you” in
trauma informed practice.
How do organizations impact trauma
exposure response?
Organizational issues are often identified as the factor which
exacerbate negative trauma exposure impacts and lead to
leaving employment. Not necessarily causal but more of a last
straw.
Creating barriers to helping: helpers “. . . found the work more
difficult because of the institutional barriers within the . . . systems
that their clients were forced to navigate” (Bell, Kulkarni, & Dalton,
2003).
?
?
Chino, Benton, and Kim (2009) found that passive defensive
organizational cultures had a negative impact on the
retention of early career social workers (defined as working
one day to three years). Passive defensive cultures were
defined as those that were concerned with following rules,
assigning blame and resistant to change.
Agencies appear to focus on TIP for clients, but there is little
evidence that the same effort is made for staff (Wolf, Green,
Nochajski, Mendel, & Kusmaul, 2014)
?
?
Disregard for safety and comfort of staff. “A safe, comfortable,
and private work environment is crucial for those social workers
in settings that may expose them to violence” (Bell, Kulkarni, &
Dalton, 2003).
Only providing evaluative or administrative supervision. Clinical
supervision is needed to allow practitioner to process emotional
reactions to their work. Some suggest that administrative and
clinical supervision should be separate roles (Choi, 2011)
Supervision
Peer
Support
Effective Supervision
Effective Peer Support
• Provides a safe space in which
the helper could express
frustrations and emotions,
• Honestly examine practice, be
challenged to make changes
• Encourage self-care.
• Encourages connections
between people with similar
work experiences
• Builds positive supportive work
culture
Ineffective Supervision
Ineffective Peer Support
• Shame-based
• Unsafe supervision
• Solely Administrative
• Possible contagion
• Triangulation
• Negative work environment
• Feeling unsafe
• Sliming
Group task
Discuss how you might cope with a power
imbalance in your workplace as a beginning
social worker.
? Discuss with larger group.
?
Grief and Loss
What does this mean to us as social workers?
Check-in
Tell us about a time that you have experienced
professional grief or loss through your work
Recognizing Loss
?
?
Loss is not just about death
Loss happens with any
change
? positive ones and difficult ones
?
Trauma exposure creates loss
? Identity, competency, world
views
?
Framing trauma reactions as
grief reactions can help make
sense of the emotional
experience.
Ways in which we experience grief and
loss in social work practice
Death – work with populations with higher risk of
death – suicide, health, risk factors
? Loss of relationship
? Lack of information about what happens next
? Loss of world view
? Loss of safety
? Loss of hope
?
Dual role
?
Professional support person
?
Personal experience
?
Organizations (and others) may not see the
grief of a professional as valid.
(Strom-Gottried and Mowbray, 2006)
Ambiguous Loss
?
Pauline Boss coined this term relating to losses
that come from experiences other than death
and are characterized by uncertainty.
? e.g. A parent who is physically present and
psychologically absent (mental health, addiction) or
psychologically present and physically absent (at
war, not involved in the child’s life).
Ambiguous Loss
Described as frozen grief because the essential
uncertainty of the situation means that the
individual does not know how to respond to the
loss.
? The individual struggling with ambiguous loss
does not often experience the social supports
provided to those who experience more
recognized losses and this can make it difficult
to express grief.
?
Disenfranchised Grief
The experience of unrecognized and
unacknowledged loss other than death.
? Loss of independence, innocence,
relationships, or status are examples of this type
of grief.
?
Impact on Social Workers
?
Cumulative, unexpressed losses
?
No formal recognition of the loss means lack of
support for loss
?
No social rituals to support grieving
Creating Ritual
?
Rituals can be public or private
? e.g. hospital conducting regular service for staff vs.
personal ritual
What are the elements of a funeral?
? Composed of metaphors, symbols, and actions
in a condensed, dramatic form
? Serve to acknowledge grief and loss and to
facilitate grieving
?
Small group task
?
Work together to create a ritual to recognize
the losses you may have experienced through
your work. Each group will be assigned one of
the following types of loss to create a ritual for:
? Loss through death
? Loss to addiction or other issues
? Loss through professional change (e.g. caseload
changes , client leaves program)
Assume that you have a significant relationship with
this person.
Creating a ritual – questions to consider
What would make this ritual meaningful?
(should be personal)
? What metaphors or symbols are needed?
? What physical actions/behaviors are needed?
(Actions are better than words sometimes.)
? What components should be included to
facilitate emotional processing?
? Who is to be present?
? Setting? Timing?
?
Present your ritual to the large group.
Tell us about the scenario you are addressing
? Demonstrate parts of your ritual
? Talk about how you see this connecting to the
theory and why you chose the elements you
selected.
?
Welcome to SOWK 445
Practice Realities
Hard stuff . . .
?
This class exists to give us the space and time to
talk about things that we may not have had
space and time to talk about so far.
Introductions
?
Sentence starter
Class structure
Check – in
Content
Small group work
Expectations
?
What are you hoping to get out of this class?
?
Is there anything that you are hoping we will
talk about?
Creating safety
?
Find a partner. Discuss what helps you to feel
safe in a classroom.
?
What makes you feel unsafe?
?
Large group discussion
Course outline discussion
?
http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/aswt/indi
genous_pedagogy/#observing-practicebeyond_a_pedagogy_of_fort
1778—The great wind.
1779—When it hailed in winter.
1782—When they took the shield.
The capture of a shield was an important coup. Being both
an article of war and a religious item, the shield was a much
sought-after trophy, especially those of the Crow tribe, which
were highly decorated similar to Blackfoot shields.
1801—When we took the stars and stripes
from the River Indians.
Capturing a flag from the enemy was considered an important
act. Flags were regarded as having power as war medicines.
The people referred to are Pend d’Oreilles..
Small group work
Create a group of three people
? This group will stay consistent throughout the
course
? Create group norms – focus on trauma
informed practice principles
? Each class a different person will facilitate the
group – create a schedule
?
Making Mistakes
Guilt and Shame in Social Work Practice
Check-in
?
When you think about your work so far, what
have you noticed about how other helpers
manage making mistakes?
?
“When we are in shame, we do not see the big
picture; we don’t accurately think about our
strengths and weaknesses. We just feel alone,
exposed, and deeply flawed.” Brene Brown
?
“Making mistakes and feeling inadequate or
not ‘good enough’ are inevitable human
experiences, yet they are not always tolerated
by society, by social work organizations or even
by social workers themselves” (Gibson, 2014, p.
418).
?
Shame is connected to high levels of emotional
distress for practicing social workers
Video
?
https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listeni
ng_to_shame?language=en#t-514212
Sources of guilt and shame
Shame-based supervision
Increases impact of negative trauma exposure
outcomes
? Focused on blame
? Supervision should be empathy focused and
allow for mistakes (Jankowski, 2010)
?
How have you coped with guilt and
shame?
?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdtabNt4S
7E
Self Compassion
Essentially the same as having compassion for
others
? Noticing struggle
? Being emotionally impacted by the struggle –
care about what is happening
? Empathy for self
?
?
“Self-compassion involves acting the same way
towards yourself when you are having a difficult
time, fail, or notice something you don’t like
about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain
with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell
yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how
can I comfort and care for myself in this
moment?” Kristen Neff
Self-kindness vs. Self-judgment.
Warm and understanding towards self when you
struggle or make mistakes
• Being imperfect is inevitable and are gentle with
themselves as a result
“People cannot always be or get exactly what they
want. When this reality is denied or fought against
suffering increases in the form of stress, frustration
and self-criticism. When this reality is accepted with
sympathy and kindness, greater emotional
equanimity is experienced.” Kristen Neff
•
Common humanity vs. Isolation.
?
?
The feeling that you are the only one who makes
these kinds of mistakes results in isolating yourself
from others.
“The very definition of being “human” means that
one is mortal, vulnerable and imperfect. Therefore,
self-compassion involves recognizing that suffering
and personal inadequacy is part of the shared
human experience – something that we all go
through rather than being something that happens
to “me” alone.” Kristen Neff
Mindfulness vs. Over-identification.
Balanced approach – negative emotions neither
ignored or exaggerated.
“Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind
state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as
they are, without trying to suppress or deny them.
We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for
it at the same time. At the same time, mindfulness
requires that we not be “over-identified” with
thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up
and swept away by negative reactivity.” Kristen Neff
?
Group exercise
Self-compassion exercise –
? Write a self-compassionate letter to your future
social worker self – share with group –discuss
what it felt like to do that
? Use the markers to add pictures/symbols that
you might find helpful.
?
Moral Conflict in Social Work
Practice
Advocating to be the Social Worker you want to be
Check-in
?
Tell us about a time when you were required to
do something that you did not agree with as
part of your work.
Moral Distress
Conflict between what the helper considers to
be morally correct and what the helper is
required to do as part of his/her role.
? This might include organizational constraints or
limited resources.
? Policies/practices that are incongruent with
social work values and ethics.
?
For example, child protection social workers
provide mandated services with severely
limited resources and the workers have no
control over the number of clients they are
required to serve.
? The social workers may be directed to practice
in what they consider to be unethical ways by
management, policy, or by the legal system.
?
?
Mantarri-van der Kuip (2016) found that 77% of
the social workers studied frequently felt that
they were not able to conduct their practice
according to their standards. They further noted
that 36% of the same social workers reported
that they were often forced to work in a
manner that was in direct conflict with their
values.
Pressure to be the “ideal” social worker
?
What messages to we get about how to
practice?
?
Where do these messages come from?
?
How do we balance this with real life?
Small Group Task
Describe the barriers to “being the social worker
you want to be”
? Work together to create a plan for selfadvocacy
? What resources could you use?
? Create as detailed a plan as possible and be
prepared to share it with the class.
?