Day 30

I finally managed to find a way to look for more journals and to find more articles, ironically by tweaking my search term from a noun to a verb. Somehow it appears that more articles appear when I use "aging" as opposed to "elderly" or "older adults". This is odd as I was previously aware of the need to find as many synonyms as the word you were searching for, but I had not thought that looking for a similar word in a different form would work. However I still have more articles on help-seeking behaviour for the elderly than I do on counselling for the elderly itself (though I need to double check this to see exactly how many articles I have of each type), and it feels like help-seeking articles were easier to find than counselling articles. This still does not detract however from how happy I am that I managed to find a search term that works, as well as figuring out finally how to make proper use of Ovid as an article search engine.

I am very pleased that I managed to find quite a few good articles through this search method though. Ploughing through each article will be a bit of a time-consumer however, gauging by how it took me almost the entire afternoon to plough through a 27 page article. I remember I used to actually skip the main methodology sections and jump straight past results as well and to discussion back when I was first starting university. Obviously along the way we were told that to do so would be entirely silly as then we would not be able to tell if the results reported by the researchers were actually as significant as they claimed them to be, and if the implications they drew were actually credible. Thankfully the more articles I read, the more I begin to get the hang of what each statistic or number means, and my past experience in research modules has helped as well.

I have also (finally) started thinking of themes and headings and some sort of basic structure for the literature review, although I still have a lot to work on for it as I am not sure how to craft it as yet. I am still doing the basic summaries of each article, so that I know how to group the literature and find out what points I can draw on from each article. The difficult part right now is figuring out what I want to present in the literature review, and how relevant it is going to be to what is necessary for the review.Hopefully I can start getting something out by the end of the week, if not I will be lagging quite far behind I feel.

Day 29

I finally finished up the FGD analysis by adding in the discussion portion, and sent it in to my supervisor. I am (obviously) very very thankful that it was received positively, but there is still a lot of tweaking and amendments that I need to do and look at, to make it flow better and to improve the structure of the entire analysis. One thing I had to constantly look at was to make sure that I was not repeating myself and was being as concise as possible, as I ramble on and go in circles quite easily. Especially with regards to the discussion, I was quite anxious to make sure that it was clear and made sense, and that I was not merely repeating what I had said earlier when reporting the findings. I am unsure if I want to throw in some theories, or if there are theories which I can relate to the discussion itself (will need to do more research to find that out). I am also unsure if I have addressed sufficient issues in my discussion that were raised when reporting the findings. I will probably need to take note of that and figure it out.

I am beginning to develop a backlog for my reflections as well, which is not a good thing as they do take quite a while to clear. Thankfully I have developed the habit of somehow taking short notes and saving them as drafts before publishing a brand new reflection each day, so that even if I am unable to publish a new reflection on the blog, at least I will be able to remember what I did and what I learnt when I finally do get down to writing out the blog entry reflections in full.

I also started looking for better ways to source for more literature for the literature review. Because I know that the review is due soon, I need to start focusing on the literature review again, and not become too engrossed o\in the FGD analysis alone. I find that I still need to find a better way to manage my time and split my time up between my work, as I tend to get stuck on one and become reluctant to leave it to go on to the next one (even though that is necessary to ensure that I do not over work just one portion of my brain - or at least that I do not run out of time to complete the other piece of work). I know that the literature review is due soon, and I iwll nee to start focusing on that as well and not merely on the FGD analysis. However, as usual, it was quite a frustrating day to search for articles, because there is as usual a lack of articles.

I am really beginning to sense a huge gap in research which for some reason has not garnered the attention of researchers sufficiently enough for anybody to start pouring new research into.

hopefully tmr will be better for that at least.

Day 28

I have literally just been scouring through journal after journal for the past few days, including today. I remember just the day before yesterday I thought I had struck gold by picking up on a new idea to look at gerontological journals instead of merely psychology, psychiatric, counselling, and social work journals. The rationale behind this would be of course that, these journals having everything to do with the elderly and older adults, that they woul definitely have something specific in relation to counselling for the elderly.

I was unfortunately sorely disappointed. I realise that even when it comes to gerontological journals that counselling is not that "hot" a topic. I find so many articles on other issues such as physical health, mental health, and so on and so forth. You would think that mental health would coincide with counselling as well (unfortunately no). I even find several articles on tai chi, which amazes me somewhat because I have always thought it to be quite a "niche" subject and had never anticipated that it would be of sufficient note to have entire articles written about it. Yet something that one would consider to be quite important and worth examination does not appear in the journals.


Despite "discovering" the term geropsychology (and realising that several articles or journals do refer to it) and incorporating it into my search, I realise I am still not finding much information on counselling for the elderly. This means I might have to go back to searching under the counselling journals once again - which does honestly feel a bit depressing. I am beginning to wonder how many articles I should include in the literature review as well, because I know that the search will never end (there will always be more articles I can look at, more articles I should include or which fit the description). And if I do not make myself stop, I might find that I do not have sufficient time to write the literature review, even after reading and finding all the articles.


I also have begun to wonder how articles are classified - as in how do you determine where to publish your article? For example, if you have an article or research paper on counselling for the elderly, would you go and publish it in a gerontological journal, or a counselling journal, or a social work or psychology journal? Would you publish it in more than one journal (is that even allowed)? And I realise that part of the reason why I do not know where exactly (or how to) look for these journal articles is because I do not understand how the authors and researchers classify their research papers (i.e. where they choose to publish). I wonder if there are specific guidelines set up that I could possibly refer to.

Day 26

Finally finished up the very first complete draft of the analysis! All that is left is for me to edit it a bit more and then send it in again, particularly as my supervisor is going on leave and will not be able to access any additional work I do on the analysis until Monday itself. This means I need to work fast to get the work done. And with the literature review on the back of my mind, I anticipate that I will probably need to stay back a bit later to get more work done (in the coming weeks).

I am beginning to understand now why it is so easy to OT in such jobs, because the work is almost endless and you are handling mutliple projects and meetings at a time. So not only is time management important, but sometimes it is simply not possible to get everything done on time within the 8-9 hours you work a day. Bearing in mind that I am only doing a small part of what everyone else here is doing, I think it is quite amazing that people manage to go home on time, or that they do not become overly stressed about the work here.

I continued doing research (or trying to) to find articles for the literature review. It is truly getting frustrating that I am unable to find articles regarding the elderly and counselling. It makes me wonder how there could be such a serious gap in research literature. As I look at the content and abstracts of the various articles I come across during my article search, I find many of them sound interesting - but many are also too niche, as if they are attempting to look into one particular aspect in a bit to make a name for themselves by taking on such a different area in research. While I do think that niche areas need to be researched, it appears that everyone is so busy trying to find these interesting niche areas that something as "common place" as evaluating the effectiveness of counselling for the elderly becomes neglected and actually becomes obscure (or at least not common place).

And then I find that there are several topics that seem to be over-researched, that I keep seeing as I try to find articles on counselling - things such as counselling elderly with HIV, or with alcohol problems, or even drug use. Which makes me wonder then - are the elderly not the only ones who think that counselling should be left for those with "serious issues"? Are even researchers (and perhaps even practitioners themselves) holding onto the mindset that if you are "okay" or without mental or physical health problems that you do not need counselling? If that is the case, then we might need to not only educate the elderly and the public about the uses for counselling, but even remind researchers and practitioners that counselling can be for everyone, no matter how big or small your problems are, as long as you are in need of a listening ear or a fresh perspective on a problem, or even if you want to improve your interpersonal relationship skills.

Day 25

I continued with the analysis today, and it is almost done! I am still trying to ensure that I have sufficient quotes to support the findings however, as I realise that a lot of what the participants "said" were not really said by them. Instead, they mentioned something, my supervisor helped to reframe it and clarified if this is what they meant to say, and then they agreed with the clarification. While this does give evidence to support our findings, it means that I cannot safely give what that particular participant said or affirmed as it was not spoken by them personally.

However when you think about it, it is true that it is important for the words to come from the client. As the interviewer, very often it is easy for us to be seen as an "authority figure", or for participants to think that because they were fortunate enough to get chosen, for them to want to give answers that will be pleasing to the interviewer, or simply because they want to help our cause. Interviewer bias thus could become a serious problem if we were to take such quotes to represent "what the client said", even if it was truly mere clarification and not coercion at all. Thus we have to be careful to ensure that, for the sake of the credibility of the study and findings generated, that we stick as closely as possible to what the participants themselves said.

To ensure that I do not lag too far behind in my literature review as well, I continued reading some articles and getting the essential parts out of them to collate into my basic summary of journal articles. This is to ensure that when I do begin writing the literature review in its entirety, it will be easier for me to know what important points to take note of, which articles support these points, and also make it much simpler for referencing. The only issue is that as I look at the summary of the articles, I begin to worry that I have insufficient articles for the literature review.

This means that I might have to resort to taking the systematic reviews which I found and use the articles they revewed to hel p"beef up" the review report. This tends to be a "trick" that my friends and I use in university - when we find an article that is useful and good for our asisgnment or research (particularly when we are having trouble finding articles related to our topic or subject), we take note of the references used in the article and search for those articles as well. I am not sure how good or valid or reliable a research method that is )as it could frnakly lead to some bias - since those areticles were chosen to support the initial article and so might not give the full objective picture) but it is a way to get around not having sufficient material for research.

Day 24

Finally finished the analysis for the FGDs! I am quite happy that it is more or less done - now all that is left is to put in the quotes, which will take some restructuring of the report itself (to ensure that the quotes flow and do not "stick out" of the report). I have started worrying about the literature review however because I essentially stopped reading and reviewing articles when I started working on the transcripts and analysis for the FGDs, which is not good as it means I have quite a bit to catch up on. I need to ensure that I finish sorting out the analysis soon so that I can begin sourcing for more articles again, particularly as I know how difficult it is to find articles related to the elderly and counselling.

The network today was very interesting, and I was fortunate enough to be able to listen to all the different speakers share. Hearing about the differnet types of dementia and how the disease affects different parts of the brain was very interesting! It explained how some symptoms turn up in some patients with dementia but not in others, and why some are seen as being "more manageable" than other elderly with dementia. It had not occurred to me that dementia would affect more than one part of the brain as it has so many different symptoms, and how by affecting specific parts of the brain more so than other areas that it would mean that specific symptoms would develop more acutely than other symptoms.

It was also interesting to see them using the A-B-C framework to do with dementia, as it reminded me of CBT, although in a different context. It reminded me that sometimes theories are not merely useful for the specific things they hope to explain, but that we can borrow their frameworks and ways of looking at things and adapt them to new contexts. It was quite enlightening to look at the "antecedents" to problem behaviour not just being the dieasease that affects it, but the environment as well (like if they dont like the activity and are bored they woule act out more than if they were occupied). The way we ourselves act and react towards them can have a huge impat on their behaviour as well, and can actually result in the very consequences we were hoping to avoid initially.

Dementia has always scared me, both in terms of what if my parents get it (as I do not know how I would cope being a caregiver, given mine and my brother's potential working hours, reluctance to get a maid, and potentially not being able to cope with work and care), and also in terms of what if I get it. I do not like the thought of not being able to control my mind; losing control of the body is very scary as well, but at least you can help to strengthen it, prevent itm and it is relatively simpler to treat the body. Losing control of the mind is something I fell i would have less control over somehow - in addition to the fact that the mind controls the body and so many other things (so in all likelihood if the mind goes, the body will too - but not necessarily vice versa). Without the body, you can still think, talk, interact with people. However, if you lose the mind, you cannot do so much, and cannot think straight. This is when it would be easy to become a burden to others, as when you cannot think for yourself, others have to constantly think for you. This is something I would not want for myself, as losing your ability to think is almost akin to losing who you are as a person in fact.

Watching the elderly perform also reminded me of the time I helped to conduct a practise research at SAGE toa payoh last year, where we worked with the elderly for 12 weeks to put up a miniature performance. It was a little like reminiscence work in the sense that we tapped on their memories about the past and and asked them toe reflect regularly. So for me, to be able to see the final product of a programme that was run for a much longer period was intersting. I must say that the actors were very good, and the play was relevant in terms of the issues it raised - they were easy to identify with and would be good for an audience of all ages.

This makes me begin to wonder if it would be possible to do something similar with movement. I can see why eldelry would hesitate when it comes to movement because it is something that can easily highlight their frailty, and possibly show up their inability to do certain things (due to wear and tear with age). But given how the elderly are so active in the community clubs in activities like chinese dance and ballroom dance, I am sure that there is a away to do movement expression with the elderly as well! This is something for me to think about, particularly given my interest and intention to go into dance, and what with the aging population in Singapore, this could be a new need (either a service gap or a market opportunity) for me to look into.

Day 23

I am finishing up the analysis today! Have finally combined both the service and non-service user FGD analyses, grouping them together under the headings I finally managed to come up with for the overarching themes. However I will need to ensure that the phrasing of the words is analytical so that it does not become a mere fact-finding report, which will be important. This is particularly so as there is so much data to report and include. I also will need to make sure that I do not become too "long-winded" in my report as that is something that I tend to do in my assignments in general as well.





I also need to examine the structure of the report, to figure out how to place the various themes (to ensure that there is a logical flow in the report), and also how to "blend" or meld the two different groups of participants together. As of now this is a bit difficult, partly because I think I am trying ti find a way to make it such that I do not have to do too much rephrasing (or actual rewriting on the whole). This might be quite difficult however as I would need to make it an entire and cohesive report, as this is one FGD series, rather than two separate ones.





Another consideration I need to keep in mind is that each "theme" has several "subthemes", which I will need to make clear during the report. However, I am as yet unsure if I should put headings for these subthemes, or leave everything under singular main themes. There are pros and cons to both; personally, I just worry that it might be a bit choppy if there are headings for all the subthemes as well. For now though it really is about the phrasing and "converting" what I have on hand from a basic summary to an analysis.





Soon I will have to start looking at what quotes I could use to substantiate the findings in the report, and I have to ensure that there are sufficient quote from all the FGDs if possible, balancing between the service and non-service users. This is important as I want to pick out the quotes that best represent the findings and the implications as such. Thankfully I can make use of multiple quotes, to give a more wholistic and substantial foundation to build the report findings on.





I also am beginning to realise that when I start getting into this sort of work (to do with actual crafting of reviews and reports) that it is very easy to lose track of time, and to not attempt to go deeper in terms of my reflections (whether it is while doing work itself or after work). Interestingly I did not anticipate this until I started trying to write my journal reflections - then I realise that I was beginning to get stuck.





I think that this is truly what happens when we start getting involved in work, as we get lost in the flow of work that keeps coming in we forget (so often) to stop and reflect about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and the implications this can have both for ourselves, our clients, and the social work sector as a whole. This could actually limit how far we can push ourselves and the sector, as reflections actually do help us to gain deeper and fresher perspectives, allowing us to look at what we are doing again and giving our minds the space to fully absorb what is happening and generate better ideas and thoughts that we can build on.





I wonder if it would be possible to set aside 15 minutes at the end of the work day for workers to reflect on things that happened during the day? Although it might be seen as a chore for people to have to spend the last 15 minutes or so at work to think deep, as it would be easier to merely drift off into space and let the mind "rest" and "blank out".

Day 22

Today marks the second day of work on the analysis of the focus group discussions. Earlier I decided to split the analysis into service users and non-service users, but as I tried to analyse the content of the FGD in this way I found that it was not economical and not effective, as there was too much of an overlap in terms of the information generated in the groups. I also realised that I had never seen any other report split an analysis in such a way previously, particularly when there were very similar questions asked in the different groups. However I continued with the analysis (or reporting of the findings) of the service and non-service users separately first so that I would have actual material to work with, before combining the two into the final analysis report.





So in order to figure out how I should do the analysis, I made use of my access to e-journals and found an FGD analysis online, so I could take a look at the general structure and structure my analysis accordingly. I realise that it helps to reference other works as such, particularly when they are credible and well respected journals (and researchers), as then I would be basing my report on reports found to be credible and reliable with good structure - setting a much better foundation than if I had attempted to fumble along on my own.





This led to me eventually drawing up basic overarching themes that the content of the FGDs mostly addressed, whether in the focus groups for service users or non-service users. Doing so allowed me to be able to fit the questions (whether in the original semi-structured questionnaire or added along the way) according to both the issues the question was addressing as well as the responses drawn out from the questions themselves, via theme. The basic overarching themes were generated according to the objectives of the FGDs, how closely associated they were to other themes (i.e. could a more specific theme be added to another to create a more general theme), and findings generated. From here I began to see where the various paragraphs of the individual analyses could be combined, where I should keep them separate (as not all questions were posed to both FGD group types), and where I needed to rework both the service and non-service users together.




This will need more work over the next few days or so in order for me to fully be able to make the report cohesive and comprehensive enough though. So I since today I focused on the service users and intergrating that into the combined report, tomorrow I will see how to intergrate the non-service user FGDs into the combined report. I must keep the flow in mind though.

Day 21

We visited 2 different SACs today, which was an interesting experience. Not having really visited an SAC for the purpose of looking at its programmes and activities before, I was quite excited to look at what was happening at the ground level for the elderly.





I was very impressed at how one SAC clocked 180 programmes in one year, aside from running daily programmes and activities. Of course after being told that you can have as many as 40 programmes in one week during Chinese New Year, I adjusted my level of "being impressed" - however given how that centre has only 2 people running it, I am still quite amazed that they managed to do that even with the duties and programmes that run daily at the centre itself.





One thing I did notice however is how much space the second SAC had - more so than a lot of VWOs and FSCs that I have been to! The first SAC in comparison (and even the one at Kaki Bukit where we went for the FGD) are much much smaller in comparison, and this means of course that the programmes they can provide for the seniors there are necessarily much more limited due to space constraints, leading to a big difference in their ability to serve the community there. This makes me wonder if this is taken into account when assessing their KPI at the end of each year.





It also makes me wonder how the government also allots space for social service providers, particularly in areas that require several different types of service providers (e.g. FSC, SAC, etc.) because as I heard there was one SAC that could no longer expand because there was simply no space left. In such a case how is it possible to provide sufficiently for residents and clients if the SACs themselves do not have the resources? Again, this boils down to competition for resources and being creative enough to know a) how to get those resources (particularly if they are out there but not necessarily easily within reach, or if you have to compete for them), and b) how you make the most of and stretch the resources you already have.





One of the SAC managers also shared that someone at the same position as herself (a manager) at another centre was on the board of directors for her centre, which I found extremely strange and odd, particularly as this is someone on the same level as her, and within the same organisation itself, and also within the same (public) sector. This makes no sense to me, and does not seem entirely right somehow. If it were between sectors (public and private), I could understand to some extent. If it was between different organisations, it would also not be as odd, although I might still find it a tad questionable. However, for this to happen within the same organisation and for someone who is supposed to be at the same level as herself being placed above her as a superior on her board of directors seems almost wrong to me. If i were her, I wouild feel extremely small, and be quite demoralised. For a peer to be elevated to such an extent by your bosses such that she practically becomes your boss would be extraordinarily uncomfortable, and to me messes up the entire hierarchy of the organisation itself.





I can imagine it would be even more demoralising if all this was going on, and you are actually doing a good job at work, and you yourself know it, but your higher ups and bosses do not see it and keep comparing you to someone with whom it is actually impossible to compare. Someone who has an infinite number of years of experience over you, and with more man power, will obviously do better in terms of KPI etc. There is no way you could surpass her given your constraints and limitations. However, somehow her bosses seem to expect her to do so, which is entirely unfair, particularly as they do not acknowledge how good a job she has done in turning the centre around in such a short frame of time. Rather than encouraging and affirming her, they put her down - and put her down even further by elevating her colleague/peer to the status of being her boss.





Listening to her talk about all this made me feel sad and quite indignant on her behalf, particularly as I would expect people in the social service sector to "know better", being involved in a sector where treating people with dignity and affirming the self-worth of each individual is of top priority (and amongst one of the main reasons why the SACs were formed in the first place)! Yet this is something they do not seem to be practising within their organisation itself, with their staff. I believe that if an organisation is going to "sell" something, they have to practice it in their own "back yard" first, within their organisation.





The sad thing is that she is so full of passion for the work, but she is leaving the job. In this sector, there is a huge necessity for passion for the work you do, if not you burn out very quickly. As you do not need to be trained in social work to do this job, getting a social worker into this sector would be difficult. However, you still must get someone with a heart for the elderly, and yet has fantastic administration skills, is extremely resourceful (as you have to find your own resources), has great PR skills, have good rapport with the elderly (as you need to connect with them to keep them coming to the SAC), and be able to multi-task and have good time management, because you have to do all this at once, and run several programmes and activities and organise all of them at the same time (or concurrently). There is so much work to do, yet the pay is not amazing, and without recognition and affirmation from your bosses, it is no wonder that it would be easy to burn out in this sector.





I did think that it might be good to bring in a special counsellor or community worker into the centres whose sole job/purpose is to work with the elderly, build rapport, build strong ties with the community, and provide counselling services as well - all the "extra" parts of what the SAC manager seems to be doing (but is not exactly directly within the job scope). However, there is insuffucient budget, social workers might still not want to go into this sector (because it has no prospects - it is essentially a dead-end job), and also there would be an overlap of resources with already available counselling services (such as the 3 main counselling centres for the elderly). Also, I realised that yes, one must keep in mind what the purpose of the SAC was - to increase social interaction of hte elderly through programmes, and keep them from becoming isolated socially, especially as these are the elderly living in one or two-room flats. Thus we need to make sure that they have people looking out for them, particularly the frail elderly who are not sufficiently ambulant. As a community, we need to keep them busy and occupied - and this is the very first objective that the SAC must fulfill first.

I also do wonder about the system, with the CEL in place now and how necessary or helpful it is at all. It is still in the early stages and early years, so it is too early to see just how useful it can be as a "one-stop centre". However, it decreases collaboration at the ground level - I would not know which worker I am working or collaborating with, would not know what the worker is like (and if their working style would suit my client), and it might also be difficult to see how far along the collaboration is and what is happening with my client "at the other end". It might make the social service sector more impersonal, as collaborating becomes more impersonal, and this might take its toll on the sector, as social services have been thriving on a lot of personal links and connections all these years (with workers developing relationships working with each other and tapping on those to better serve clients). So the question is, with CEL now in place, would it be possible to still keep these ties? And would the CEL system be as or more effective than using such networks, or less so?

During the time spent talking to the managers at the SACs, I noticed my supervisor using a lot of micro skills with them. It was very interesting to see tracking, probing, reframing, affirming, etc. coming into play even with people within the sector. Then slowly the SAC manager started opening up, from being very bubbly and being extremely positive and optimistic about how things have improved at the SAC, to actually talking about matters close to her heart that were bothering her, and finally to hinting that she might be resigning. What I realised was that a big reason for her being able to open up is that with the use of the micro skills, there was a sense of trust that she could talk to and open up to my supervisor (and I am sure she also wanted to prepare them for her resignation). It is quite amazing to see how micro skills can really come in and help people to open up.

That being said, it appears that there are a lot of people leaving the sector, which makes me wonder if it is just a coincidence or if there is something which the sector and the major players in the sector (such as NCSS or MCYS and the various organisations in charge of the SACs) need to address. Social workers would not go into the sector because they would not want a job that cannot go anywhere, yet it is not as if it is easy to groom individuals with the passion for working with the elderly and who have the people skills to do so coupled with the administration and resource skills necessary to run such a centre (particularly as there are likely to be better paying jobs out there that require people of similar skills). In that case, the government might need to step in to find ways to keep people in this sector - just like how they need to find ways to keep social workers in the social services, and find new ways to "entice" people to join the profession.

Day 20

I have finally started analysing the FGDs after collating the information. I still need to reference other research projects though to fully understand what I need to do and how to do it. Picking out specific themes that run through out the FGDs will be interesting, and having summarised all the FGDs will help with being able to pick out these themes. It also helps that after reading through the transcripts over and over I have quite a good idea about the specific themes and similarities between the various FGDs. I have yet to decide however how to break down the report - do I put the service users and non-service users together, or go by questions, or by general themes (particularly as there were some things that both service and non-service users both suggested and were in agreement about).

One thing I have to be careful about is that I actually analyse the findings and not merely deliver a summary of them. I am still a little unclear however as to how much I am supposed to include in this report, as I want to make sure that it does not overstep into the recommendations that I will be making in the subsequent report.

As I started to pick out the themes and headings and put specific questions together in groups, I began to realise that attempting to tructure the report based on questions would be near impossible, as many of the questions we finally posed to them were not a part of the interview questions prepared, and not all the questions were asked to all the groups (as some questions surfaced only during the later part of the series of FGDs). I had to find a way to group the similar questions together, and find appropriate headings or titles for each of these groups. However this still needs a lot of fine tuning, and I am glad that I get the chance to do this now during my placement as it affords me the time to be able to rewrite and redo the analysis (should I need to).

Day 19

Finally managed to finish the summary for the FGD of non-service users, as there as so much information to group together for easy reading. Even now I am not sure I managed to include the full richness and depth of the information gathered in the summary - however I think it will have to do as it is afterall just a summary, and for my own reference to make analysis of the data easier.

Now the summary is done I will be able to start on the analysis tomorrow, so I am finally moving on along the schedule. However I am still not entirely sure how to do the analysis - whether I report the findings and make inferences/comment about them, to comment on the implications this might have on the wider population, or just do a simple report. I might have to look at how other reviews and researchers did their analysis to figure out how to go about it. In all likelihood I will have to do a few drafts before being able to submit the final copy. hopefully I will be able to submit the first draft by Wednesday or Thursday.

Miss Peace came for the mid-placement visit today, it was nice seeing her again as typically in school I do not get to meet tutors who are not currently tutoring me (due to busy schedules all around). The visit gave me a lot to think about, particularly how to apply theories into my practise here, and in my reflections. In direct practise, while at times I would have to sit and think about what theories are applicable, it is more straight forward as these theories have to do with the client and the reasons for the client's presenting problems (in assessment), as well as how to best intervene to help the client. However, in an indirect setting, being able to apply theories is more challenging as I am no longer dealing with the client directly, but am instead looking at the client population as a whole within the context of the country's entire population. In fact, the concept of "client" is changed as well, as NCSS not only serves the interests of the public, but also the various VWOs, and as such they can be considered as "clients" as well (perhaps mandatory clients?). However, Miss Peace suggested that I consider theories in relation to the tension between micro and macro practice agencies and practitioners, which is something I have always been aware of but had never actually sat down to think about in terms of theories (it was all about "common sense").

The problem is, however, that as students we do not really learn about such theories in school to deal with power play or the tension between the micro and macro settings and such. We understand that there is this tension, and we know how it comes about, but we do not closely sit down to examine the theories that explain all this tension. I wonder if this is something that the school could consider incorporating into our syllabus, as it might be useful in helping us learn to "deal" with each other when we finally do go into different fields of practise and find ourselves at loggerheads with each other. If we could really understand the theoretical framework and basis of the tension, then we could (as practitioners and supervisors) be able to take a step back, understand the other's point of view, and from there learn to work together in a way that will benefit both sides without having unpleasantries happen.

However, if I were to sit down and think about it, I can easily come up with reasons for this tension and mistrust between micro and macro practitioners. Firstly, there is a perceived lack of transparency on both sides (#1); micro because they want to protect their own interests and their territory, and macro simply because there is often so much red tape (or because they need to keep certain things confidential initially as it will affect the service sector). With this lack of transparency, mistrust develops on both sides, as we are not sure of each others' objectives (#2). Sometimes these objectives are hidden subconsciously, whereas other times they are hidden with an agenda. When we cannot tell what each others' objectives are, we would be loathe to reveal information that the other party asks for, as we do not know if they will use this information against us.

On the micro side, there is often also a feeling of power play (#3) by the macro agencies, as they are typically the ones that hold the key to funding and resources. Thus, micro practise agencies might feel "threatened" or "bullied" or think that the macro agencies are being bullies, when in fact they could simply be doing their job to ensure that services being provided to clients are effective and efficient.

At the end of the day, a lot of it boils down to perceptions and perspectives, which unfortunately are not as easy to change as we like to think they are. It would take a lot of work, openness, being willing to share information, and essentially taking that leap of faith to trust that you are working towards a common goal (to help the service users) for us to begin to change such perceptions and perspectives.

Day 18

I started on the FGD summary for non-service users today, and realised that there is a lot to do. Especially as the RSVP group went "off tangent" during the discussion, that means that it might be more difficult to summarise the discussion and "split" it up into themes (i.e. generating themes might be more difficult). However there were a lot of good opinions and ideas generated during the discussion, so I do welcome the challenge, and am excited at what I can do with the ideas generated for the analysis later.


I also had another supervision session today, and it was a very interesting session! Being able to discuss the ideas and reflections I have had over the past few days/weeks allows me to really be able to bounce ideas off another's perspectives and opinions, and helps me to get a better, more well-rounded view of the current situation. It allows me to appreciate what is being done and get a better sense of what needs to be done, as well as what can be done.

During the entire duration of this counselling programme review for the elderly, we have heard two very salient points - that the elderly do not know what counselling is (and thus do not know about the benefits of counselling and are also not aware of counselling services in the community), and that the elderly are worried that going for counselling will upset their children. Thus it seems that what we really need to do is target public education, instead of merely targeting counselling programmes to make them "more effective". Even if your counselling programme is the most effective in the world, if people do not go for it (because they are not aware) then that makes it redundant.

It is important to consider however, who we should focus the public education on. We all believe that the elderly might need to be "educated" on the perks and availability of counselling. However, if they are still worried about what their children will think, then this will not be effective enough. Thus, we need to educate the children instead of the elderly (or in conjunction with the elderly).

As most of their children are working adults, they don't understand that their parents need psycho-socio-emotional support. A lot of them think that providing for their financial and physical needs is enough and sufficient. However, they fail to realise that providing these basic necessities is insufficient - just like the rest of us, the elderly also need a social support network, and friends to interact with. Being so busy with work to provide for them, their children often forget this and are not able to provide for these needs sufficiently. At this point, someone else has to step in to help meet the needs of the elderly - and the children need to realise this and understand that asking for help does not mean they are not providing for their parents. It merely means that there are resources in the community they can tap on to ensure that their parents are provided for in every aspect of their lives. If we helped them to understand that counselling can attend to needs that they cannot attend to and that that is quite normal and does not mean they are unfilial, then perhaps the would be more willing to allow their parents to come out for counselling, and perhaps even encourage them to do so.


We discussed communication with the elderly as well, and how there tends to be such a huge gap between the elderly and the new generation, not merely due to technology, but also due to a lack of communication (due to langauge barriers). However, my supervisor pointed out that often we use this language barrier as an excuse not to communicate, and how this often is used to hide ageism. There are many other ways to communicate, such as through touch, hand signs, or even just being there to help out around the house. Instead, we say that we don't speak their language and then don't even try to communicate with the elderly. It is this distinct lack of effort that makes it quite clear that langauge isn't so much the barrier as our mindsets are.

The problem then, is how do we overcome this ageism? The Koreans had an exhibition of sorts where the kids had weights and restraints tied to various parts of their bodies so they could feel what it was like to be old physically - this was to help them understand why the elderly are the way they are and move as such. While this might help to some extent in Singapore, I think what needs to happen is that we need to actually educate the kids from young that the elderly are not "defunct" in society, but that you can learn a lot from them by listening and communicating with them. Even something as simple as asking to hear about stories from their youth would be a good way to connect with them.

Possibly another way to correct this mindset is to begin with the parents, by communicating to them that the way they treat their elderly parents is very likely to be the way their children treat them when they grow old (monkey see monkey do, after all). So if they make the effort to talk to their elderly parents, treat them with love, and raise their children from young with an attitude of love towards the elderly, then it would be more likely for the children to grow up with a healtheir attitude towards the old.

With the changing demographic of elderly and with the baby boomers moving on to old age, however, things may be different in the future. We would have more educated elderly, and English speakers would be more prevalent. This means that we would then have a much wider spectrum of service users, which will have a lot of implications for the way we practise in the eldercare sector. This would mean modifying current programmes and services, and possibly having to intiate new ones to cater to a higher-order thinking elderly population. While we can hope that this will mean more active agers, less socially isolated elderly, and stronger ties with the younger generation (due to a reduction in language barriers), we cannot assume this will be so. We need to continue observing social trends in the upcoming decades, and constantly re-evaluate and review the programmes currently available. However, doing so on a large scale will take time (and an immense budget) - so perhaps one way to do this would be to also encourage the agencies to do regular programme reviews to ensure that they are meeting the needs of their service users, and to see where the perceived service gaps are - and this information can be passed on to the ministry and NCSS for consideration of new programmes and policies.

We then discussed the professionalism of social work, in terms of advocating for ourselves as professionals. As social workers, we focus so often on advocating for our clients and vulnerable populations, that we forget to advocate for ourselves. In fact, there is a distinct adversion to advocating for ourselves as professionals - which is not good! We need to value our skills enough to fight for our rights to be recognised as professionals and to be paid accordingly - if we do not value ourselves enough, then how will society value us? If we do not fight for it and believe in it ourselves, then society will not see the need to change their current stand and mindset (that we are just "more expensive" volunteers, and that anybody can do our job). We need to start fighting for ourselves, and understand that gaining a better reputation as professionals can help our clients as well, in that we might be able to get better help for them (in terms of collaboration) and be able to push for more funding and resources, as respect for our profession grows. This can lead to better programmes and services for clients.

The problem, however, is that so often to be seen as professionals, our work must be "quantifiable" - we have to prove that what we do is "worth something", and has solid proof of its effectiveness (and often efficiency). However, we are so afraid to claim credit for client change partly because it is difficult to say for sure (100%) that the change is due to our intervention, and also because of our strong stance of empowerment (wanting the client to know that they brought the change about and that they can do it again by themselves). Thus it is very hard to claim that there is value here in what we do, although we know that there is, and very often clients also do affirm that there is a lot of value in the work we do. However, because we consistently refuse to claim credit, it makes it hard for us in our bid towards professionalism. I wonder, then, if we might need to ask our clients to help us in our bid to advocate for ourselves - by getting them to speak out about how we helped them to be able to help themselves - as this would not undermine our efforts to empower our clients, and could in an odd way help to empower them as they realise that they can help us too.

One thing about working in indirect practise that I greatly appreciated was that it helped me not to merely look at one aspect of the client, but to have a more macro view and to look at the client population as a whole. Very often in direct work, because we are dealing with our client's specific individual problems (as these are where we need to fix our interventions), it becomes easy to forget to look at the wider picture. Even if we do look at the client population (after seeing several cases with the same presenting problem or the same demographics facing similar issues), we tend to look at only one aspect of their issues and not as a whole. Either that, or we neglect to see how this population fits into the wider service demographic of clients, and we tend to not notice service gaps OR only to see the service gaps and not other service options open to them. By working in such a macro setting, I begin to see that even within one client population, there are so many differences and permutations in terms of issues and services needed, as well as how (when you look at it within the context of the entire demographic of Singapore) this will be different in the future, when more people begin to fall under our service jurisdiction (in this case, the baby boomers becoming senior citizens). Then you begin to be able to see possible trends that might arise, and are able to start planning services and programmes that could become necessary in the future.

Day 17

I completed the first summary of the FGD service user groups today, to help me collate the information and identify trends/themes in the responses of the various participants across the FGDs for easier analysis later. I have to decide though how to structure the analysis as I would have to separate the non-service users and service user FGDs, yet there are several questions that overlap, which I might then instead decide to analyse together (as that would make the most sense, as opposed to repeating myself by analysing them separately then putting them together).

I am quite excited because it feels like I am getting into the meat of the work now, not just the cursory transcribing (though that was not easy either). However being able to sit down and start the analysis feels like I am finally starting on the review - beginning the process of looking at what information and findings the FGDs brought about, which will affect what we look at in terms of the reviw of the counselling programme. In fact, in putting together the summary, it makes me realise that so often we set out with an idea of what to review when doing research in the field, or of the hypothesis or project we have in mind, and how by the end of just the FGDs or interviews themselves we realise that what we really should be reviewing is something else entirely. This is quite similar to what we have seen here in the process of doing the FGDs - that while we were looking at evaluating the effectiveness of the counselling programmes, that what really needs to be done (more than instituting a set model or more centres) is actually increasing public awareness of both what these services are and where they are available.

It makes me wonder whether before we really start out on any research efforts, whether we should do a pre-research "feel" of the field, like a needs assessment to ensure that what we are researching is actually relative to the needs of the client populations and addresses the real service gaps in the industry. If not we will find that our research is two-steps ahead of the field, and not in a good way of pre-empting needs of future potential client populations.

I also attended my second seminar in school today with Mr Benny Bong, where we discussed the concept of spirituality in our work with our clients. It was interesting that when we started with a simple word-association "game" that there were so many different concepts that people linked to the idea of spirituality. However it took quite a while to get as many different words as possible on the board, which we realised was because we were hesitant to offer up our own ideas of spirituality and religion. When trying to figure out why there was this hesitation, one thing that was brought up was the fact that we have been "trained" since young to tread lightly when discussing and talking about this concept of religion and spirituality.

We live in a multiracial, multireligious society, where we practise freedom of worship and recognition - yet because we are so cautious about not creating any animosity or sense of favouritism, an atmosphere of tension is created in our trying to be "fair" to all the religions. Thus we don't talk about such sensitive topics in the open, and when we do it's all extremely politically correct - often to the point where we might be afraid of sharing our own beliefs with others (or disclosing them even). We seem to live side by side yet draw a clear boundary between the areas of religion from each other. It is quite ironic that in order to keep the peace, we create a tension that can cause difficulties in doing everyday jobs, particularly in sectors such as ours (and in other sectors like teaching) where despite it being necessary to talk about spirituality with clients, we often cannot broach the subject first (or at all) because of the secular nature of VWOs, and the worry that we might be seen as trying to impose our religious views on others - a big no-no in any service sector.

The discussion led to how we seem to lead a very dichotomised life here, where we separate the religious and sacred from the secular (whether or not that is feasible within our religions). We take up different roles according to the situation, and which "roles" we take up will dictate how freely we talk about our religious and spiritual beliefs. If one thinks about it however, it is quite incongruous with the concept of the self though - we are supposed to be whole, integrated individuals, where every aspect of our lives makes up who we are and shapes our character and values and belief systems. Yet one of the biggest influences of this - our spirituality, whatever that entails - is left out in certain social contexts, in order to be appropriate and politically correct. The question is whether this dichotomy is actually necessary, or if it is something at we impose on ourselves (and as an extension tend to impose on others we interact with daily).

Then there is the concept of how our secular laws constrain our ability to express our spirituality. Because Singapore is situated in the place it is - centred amongst Muslim countries - and because of the make up of our society, we have strict laws in place to ensure that religious harmony is maintained. That entails not bad-mouthing any religion on a public domain or setting(including the Internet), not discussing or actively promoting religion in schools (except schools with a religious background), and so on (I am not sure if it's illegal to evangelise to a Muslim in Singapore, and I cannot seem to find information about that). While this is all well and good if we were all attempting to bad-mouth and put down each other's religions and spiritual views (as this would cause great unrest, like the riots we had back in the 50s and 60s), it also leads to us being constrained in expressing our spirituality. At times, merely talking about our religion can get us into trouble if done in the wrong context, even if it is just within a discussion about the differences between the religions or answering a question objectively when asked. Mr Bong shared how a counsellor once got into trouble for answering a student's question about her own religion, even though the student followed the same religious beliefs as herself. This I find so strange, as it was not as if she was spreading her religion or trying to convert students to her religion. She was merely following up on a question the student initiated, which helped the student discover more about her own spirituality - an important component in one's adolescent years as you try to develop your own identity.

While I understand wanting to protect people (especially impressionable young minds) from being coerced into a belief system, I also know that children will be curious - and the more you avoid telling them something (or withhold information from them), the more curious they are going to be regarding the matter. This will lead to them finding their own ways and means of obtaining the information - typically from the internet - which might lead to information that is inaccurate and very possiby harmful. Wouldn't it be better to educate them in an environment that the government can control and regulate than to have them "run wild" and not be able to regulate what goes in? There are many extremist websites for the many different religions on the internet that I have encountered that go completely against what I know to be the truth about these religions (having friends who practise the religions). I have even encountered some from my own faith that are so harsh and disrespectful to others within and without my faith that shocks me because it is such a misrepresentation of what the faith is about. What worries me further is that people who read the website will assume that everyone who is from the faith follows the same beliefs, which is not true, and it is worrying that I might not be able to correct that notion if I encounter them when with a client precisely because of the laws and regulations in place regarding such matters. Should then it come to light which faith I am from and if I cannot assuage the client's negative perceptions, that could get in the way of the helping relationship.

One of the tasks given during the seminar was to think of a time when we had ignored or had not addressed a client's spirituality issues, so I shared about an experience where I sat in for a session my supervisor was conducting with a client. During this session the client was convinced that her daughter's behaviour was brought on by a spirit her boyfriend/friend was using to control her, as the way she behaved outside (bubbly, outgoing) was very different from how she was behaving at home and otherwise. She also alleged that the spirit was responsible for her daughter not remembering the events that led to her getting pregnant as well. However, my supervisor suggested that it could also be due to her not wanting to share with the mother, and also due to her going through adolescence (where teens tend to have conflict with their parents). It seemed as if she thought it was a bit of a joke that the client felt it had something to do with spirits.

Mr Benny pointed out that sometimes, because our frame of mind does not understand or cannot accept what the client is saying, we block them out and ignore what they say that has to do with this concept we are not comfortable with. We essentially reject this, and it could be a conscious or subconscious rejection of the idea. The issue, then, is whether it is respectful to give no regard to the client's worldview, or to ignore such a huge portion that makes up that worldview - their spirituality. How effective would our work be if we ignored the client's worldview and simply imposed our own because our worldview cannot comprehend theirs?

In such cases, I feel that we need to respect the worldview of our clients and try to put ourselves in their shoes, such that even if we cannot understand or accept their worldview, we can understand why they adhere to it, and from here help them to work through their issues. Merely ignoring such a huge aspect of their worldview will lead to an incomplete assessment and intervention on our part as practitioners, and will also possibly leave the client hanging and possibly confused, if our intervention and suggestion does not fit into their worldview (or clashes with it). Ultimately we must be able to come down to our client's level, and ensure that the interventions we make will not help and not harm the client.

One way to do this is to ensure that we ourselves are comfortable with the topic of spirituality, which would in all likelihood entail us being comfortable with our own spirituality in the first place. Only when we ourselves are comfortable and confident in our spirituality will we be able to attempt to look at spirituality from our client's point of view, without fear of being influenced or derailed from our own belief systems. Thus for us to be able to discuss such an important aspect of being with our clients, we must first be able to talk about it "with" ourselves and our friends first.

Day 16

Finally managed to submit my transcripts of all the FGD sessions today after formatting the transcripts and figuring out the seating arrangments. I realised that there were some areas which I forgot to clean up properly (an oversight in the midst of my excitement at completing everything) and so I cleaned those up as well. Being able to submit my transcripts today was quite a happy thing for me as it means that I can move on to the other forms of work I have to do.

Upon attempting to continue my research work today for the literature review, I realised that I had trouble accessing the articles from my NUS account. While I could access the journals, I could not access the articles themselves within the journals. This was extremely frustrating as that meant I could not download the relevant articles, and no amount of my attempting to "reboot" the e-journal system could rectify the problem.

This reminded me of the many times I have had seniors from social work, who had already graduated and were working in the field, ask us to help them access these journals for their research work. While I would never begrudge helping them, I did wonder why they had to ask us for help - shouldn't their agencies and organisations have access to these journals as well? Until we realise that it's extremely expensive to subscribe to these journals and databases, which is why individual agencies tend not to have access to them, and why (strangely enough) the university has a greater variety of journals to access than the various hospitals do.

This to me is quite absurd as we so often are reminded of the need for evidence based practise (EBP), yet to do so would require regular research and forays into what new developments are happening in the field, which would require access to these journals - which we do not have. The question then is why we do not have a central union or society that is willing to purchase subscriptions to these journals and databases, which agencies and social workers can then pay a small fee to tap on. Even the university library membership does not allow access to E-journals and articles, even if you get the "premium" membership - which I find ridiculous, as you are paying no small sum yet you do not get access to what is crucial to every field of research (not merely social work).

While the SASW is doing its best to help professionalise the sector (through things such as accreditation, etc.) I feel that it has the capacity to do a lot more to help the sector, and setting up such a programme would not require as much manpower or logistics (I think) as other things such as accreditation, yet would greatly help to bring the profession to the next level. Makingsuch research resources avaliable to the greater social work community would help to greater professionalise the sector by supporting the drive towards EBP, allowing us to stay abreast of new developments in the field to better serve our clients, and also putting to rest any worries other professions (such as psychologists and psychiatrists) have that we are simply going by "gut feel" without using "proper, sound, evidenced" techniques.

Day 15

I finally finished transcribing all the FGDs! And in time for the deadline of end May as well! The only thing left to do is to format them and make sure that I have finished translating all the words that I had trouble with, that the structure is the same for all the FGDs, and that the unedited portions of raw data are cleaned up.

During this process of transcribing I have come to think about my mother and father growing older. My mum turns 54 this year, while my dad turns 51 - and this is around the same age as some of the participants in the FGDS. Two of my uncles are 60 and over, which technically could classify them as being senior citizens already. Yet I don't think of any of them as being elderly or being senior citizens - they are all so active and don't look their age. In addition to that I suppose the image of them that I always keep in mind is of the way they were when I was growing up, which would be them in their late 30s and early to mid 40s. So when I look at them, I know they are older, but it doesn't quite register somehow. I guess it's a lot more difficult for us to accept that our parents are growing older and will be classified as "elderly" soon, because we never envision our parents growing old. It's almost as if we expect to grow up, and expect them to remain at the same "immortal" age forever, just older than us.

This will have implactions for how we care for our parents in the future, as well as the expectations we place on ourselves in reference to them. For example, I can't imagine having to send my mother to the hospital for regular checkups in the future, the way she does (and sometimes the rest of us) do with my grandmother. That to me still feels like the extremely distant (if ever) future, yet I have to be realistic and understand that that day will come eventually.


In this case, I would have to say that it is always about a mindset change, of us having to be able to be aware of our mindset now in relation to where our mindset will "have to be" or how it will have to evolve, and it would be better if we anticipated and prepared for it. In this way, we can walk ourselves through it (the changing of mindset) instead of getting a shock one day when we realise that our parents have grown old and that the tables have now turned - we are the caregivers, instead of being the ones cared for.



I think that this would be perhaps the most drastic (and often times painful) mindset change, because it requires such a huge role reversal that we are often not prepared for in society. We expect to become parents one day, we expect to become grandparents, but we do not expect to become the caregivers for our parents (though it remains in our subconscious thought that we will one day). It not only involves us taking on an additional role, but involves us changing where we place our parents in terms of how we organise our lives, and also requires that we give up a part of our "identity" (being the child who can always ask one's parents for help). One day, should our parents ever become so frail that we have to look after them like children or newborns even, that would be the most painful, because we would remember the way they used to be when we were young, being completely incongruous with the way they are now.

I certainly do not relish the day when I have to admit to myself that my parents are old, and that I must take on the role of caregiver. I am not sure if I am ready to start looking after my parents at all, and if I ever will be. Fortunately, both my parents are ridiculously healthy, going to the gym frequently and watching their diets consciously, and I am especially thankful that they are both mentally sound. I just hope that when the day comes when I have to help look after them that I will be prepared and know what to do.

Day 14

The day started quite horribly as I lost my phone on the bus ride to work, and could not trace it - which meant I had to get a replacement phone during the lunch break today. So this did keep me mildly distracted during the morning as I tried to sort it out. However getting it replaced allowed me to go back to concentrating on work, and I was able to finish transcribing the fourth FGD, and have started on the 6th FGD (since the 5th was not recorded).

Trying to transcribe this FGD was a little bit more difficult as there were parts spoken in Hokkien which I did not entirely understand (though I could make out bits and pieces here and there). It was quite interesting hearing the elderly switch between Chinese and Hokkien, as if they were aware that Chinese was more "convenient" for the group, but Hokkien was the main "comfort" language, the one they were most at home with and would slip back to now and then.

It made me think about how different the generations have become in such a short span of years, just because of the policies instituted with regards to the "official" language of Singapore and the education system, with English becoming the medium of communication. While dialect is the most comfortable for my grandmother's generation (and mandarin is passable but not their preferred language necessarily), my mother's generation is most comfortable with English or Chinese in general, while dialect is still used quite frequently, and the majority of my generation is most comfortable with English (although Chinese is still used quite a fair bit) and dialect has almost completely disappeared from our vocabularies. This is of course to do with my specific ethnic group (Chinese) and doesn't speak for the other ethnic groups (such as the Malays and Indians, where for example the Malays do use their mother tongue to quite a large extent still).

What intrigues me is how in a short span of about 40-50 years we have completely changed our mode of communication, and how this seems to be more prevalent amongst the Chinese than the other ethnic groups. This has of course had wider repurcussions, in terms of creating quite a large language and communication barrier between the generations, particularly between mine and my grandparents' generation. Amongst my friends as it is I'm one of the "better" ones in that I can understand and speak Cantonese (although I still need to expand my vocabulary), and I am very comfortable speaking in Mandarin. Most of my friends cannot understand or speak any dialect (except for the vulgarities), and they are not fluent in Mandarin either.

The problem then is that, as it is, the generations already have gaps due to the different environments in which we grew up. With society and technology advancing as rapidly as it is, this gap (in terms of understanding) will simply continue to grow. Having an additional barrier to communication and "connectedness" due to langauge differences makes it even harder to connect to our grandparents generation. Personally this is one of the reasons why working directly with the elderly would be more difficult for me, and I suspect that this might be the case for my peers as well (thus deterring us from going into the eldercare sector).

For my fellow social work students (in my cohort), we have been wanting a proper "dialect school" to be set up to help us learn how to speak the more common dialects in Singapore, so that we will be able to communicate more easily with the elderly. This obviously has yet to be set up, but it is an area that could be looked into. For all the government's talk of wanting to keep family ties in place, one of the greatest keys is communication (as the FGD participants have all pointed out), and so something needs to be done to educate the younger generation (who can still absorb and learn more) so that they can communicate with the elderly, to strengthen these family bonds. The issue is whether the younger generation sees the need for this and can be bothered to learn. Particularly since dialects seem to be "dying out" or at least becoming a rare breed, whether this is even necessary (though I would say it is even if only to preserve our heritage) might be brought up. Ultimately it's whether there is a need from the ground up, which can fit into (and fill) the gap that has sprung up between the generations, which society (and the govenrment) thinks there is a need to address.

Day 13

I am almost done transcribing the fourth FGD, which means that after this I only have one more to transcribe and I am essentially done (barring needing to look through the transcripts again for formatting and checking the two that I need to just check the notes for). It's quite exciting knowing that I am almost done with one of the tasks for this placement, and on time as well (given how this needs to be done by end May). There is a sense of accomplishment and excitement as I begin to move on to the next phase of tasks - and as the entire review begins to take shape (as I do the analysis and literature review). I will however need to figure out how the review should be structured, as the literature review does still revolve around the effectiveness of counselling for elderly (and the population in general) whereas the themes in the FGD revolve around client awareness and the need for public education about what counselling entails as well as how it can help people. Constructing the implications from both these areas of the review will be interesting as both are so different and call for different actions to be put in place - which might mean choosing one over the other, should budget be an issue.

I attended the SDD talk, and that was interesting as I got to hear about the statistics to do with the elderly - both current and projected statistics. The statistics are quite enlightening in terms of how the ageing population is going to affect us in the future, both as a nation and within the social service sector itself. I suspect that the degree of impact is a lot less than what the government has projected currently, just because in the past the government has stated that enough was being done to help elder/target the ageing population - something anyone in the social service sector would have serious doubts about. Particularly after hearing about the sheer numbers we are going to have to deal with, we might have difficulty coping with problems like dementia and depression in the future. This might not so much be due to an increase in prevalence of the disease (as in it's affecting a greater majority of people - which would then need us to examine why it was becoming more prevalent) but just the sheer number of people having it increasing, because of the baby boomers ageing.

Again this makes me think about the future generation of elders - those from my mother's generation, and what type of services and programmes they would need. With a rising number getting divorced and having fewer children to support them, apart from their possible need for financial support, there will be greater need for their socio-emotional needs to be met. This could be done through counselling, through more activities being organised by the CCs and RCs and SACs, and by roping in religious organisations to help "keep them occupied". Whether the future generation of seniors would actually use these programmes however remains to be seen, particularly as they would be more educated and thus the current programmes might not be suited to their needs/wants in terms of how to occupy their time.

This provision of more programmes to meet the demand by the growing number of seniors would also mean a need for more manpower to help run these programmes - and as it is there are insufficient people going into the older adults sector, with most preferring to work with youth and children. Somehow I feel that this is due to our stereotype about what working with the elderly entails - amongst which includes the necessity to know dialects and mandarin. While this will still be important in the future, I suspect that the future generation of elderly will be more well-versed in English, given how most of them were educated in English schools. As such there is a need for us to revise our idea of what work in the older adults sector entails, to keep up with the times and attract new blood to the sector. If we package it in such a way as to show budding social workers (and people from related disciplines) that the work would be challenging and would require a lot of creativity (as they think of new, interesting, and relevant programmes), this could help to somehow draw more people in. Suffice to say we need to make the sector look dynamic and interesting, comparable to working with youth.

Gerontology was another topic that was featured during the talk, and I studied social gerontology in school. It was quite interesting learning social gerontology, particularly learning about the typical stereotypes regarding the elderly/older adults. A lot of these stereotypes have to do with the primary and secondary characteristics of aging, with the stereotypes arising mainly from the secondary characteristics being mistaken for primary characteristics. For example, a lot of people believe that dementia is a "normal" aging process, or that majority of the population gets it. While dementia is linked to genetics, it is not as prevalent as everyone thinks. However it still is a serious problem, and in sheer numbers alone it is going to increase a lot in the next few years. Thus there is a need to educate people on how to detect early warning signs of dementia so they can get the proper medical care and slow down the process, yet also emphasise that it is not a normal aging process. We also need to educate the younger generation to a) learn how to look for early warning signs of dementia in their parents, b) learn how to care for their parents who have dementia (or make preparations for their care), and c) how to prepare for it themselves - in terms of learning how to stave off dementia.

The issue here is that there is a fine line to tread between causing mass hysterics (i.e. everyone thinking they will get dementia) and breeding ignorance (i.e. not knowing the signs of dementia and living in denial about it). This is especially more difficult if the younger generation is not interested in learning about the illness, or sees no need to (because they think that it is so far away from affecting them, either directly or indirectly). We need to somehow breed curiosity and concern in the younger ones to want to learn about this process, how it could affect their parents (and thus indirectly them), how it could affect them directly, and try to get them out of an apathetic state (or the sense of invulnerability that youth seems to bring) and into a "knowing" and caring state.

Day 12

I am finally done transcribing the 3rd FGD, which is the longest one yet. Despite it being conducted in English, it still was not the easiest thing to transcribe - again because of the voices being muffled. However it was easier to figure out what they were saying than the previous FGD recordings. Suddenly I'm quite thankful that the FGD with the Lion Befrienders was done in English and without a recording device, because it means that I merely have to neaten up the notes and don't have to do anymore transcribing, though it meant being slightly more stressed during the FGD itself.

After transcribing about half of the FGDs, I'm beginning to get quite excited about doing the analysis, because I am beginning to see so many common themes and issues popping up amongst the various groups. However I would probably have to do some revision about doing FGD analysis (i.e. qualitative analysis) as I have not done this before.

I have to say that I am enjoying this field placement more than what my friends had thought (as they did warn me prior that, this being indirect work with a lot of research, I might get bored due to the lack of human contact). When doing direct work I hardly had sufficient time to sit and truly reflect about the theoretical and macro perspectives about the work I was doing or seeing being done. Instead, I was more focused on reflecting about my microskills, about how the clients were doing and the various cases I was seeing. Being able to take a step back and use different skills and look at things from a different perspective is refreshing.

Doing this placement is making me consider how it would be beneficial for all social work students to do at least one micro and one macro field placement each, so that they get a better feel of the field. Or, for honors social work students to do an additional field placement or internship in a macro setting (so that would total two micro setting placements and one macro setting placement). This way they get to experience two very different direct practise methods/settings and environments, and get to experience indirect work as well. While it was unfortunate that I have to redo my placement, in many senses I am very thankful that I do get to experience three different practise settings, as that gives me a much better understanding of how all the different aspects/arms of the social services work and how they interact and influence each other. The logistics of doing a third placement however would possibly not be welcomed by the school or the students, particularly as it does eat at the school holidays. It would be an interesting thing to suggest to the school however - particularly in relation to modules such as policy planning and research.

Day 11

Trying to complete the transcribing today was extremely frustrating because the participants on the recording were so muffled, I had to keep replaying the same segment for 20 minutes to suss out what the speakers are all saying. This is both due to the quality of the recording itself (it being very echoy and participants not being equidistant from the recorder) and also my earphones - which are not of very good quality. Oddly enough this is making me appreciate my older pair of earphones which had a very clear sound. Although this is not actually related to social work at all.

The good thing is that I am almost done transcribing the first FGD. And slowly I am beginning to appreciate how difficult it is to be a transcriber. The most difficult thing to do is to decipher what the different "layers" of people are saying, because so often there are multiple people speaking at once. Then you need to figure out who is merely chit chatting, who is adding important information to the dialogue, and who is actually answering the question. While it would be much easier for me if we made them take turns or signal before they spoke during the discussion, that would obviously be problematic and create too much cumbersome structure to the FGD, which would affect how much information and opinions are generated during the discussion itself. In fact I feel that the more interactive the group is amongst themselves (without the facilitator intruding) the better, because then they are more likely to bounce ideas off each other, build on those ideas, and there's a greater sense of which opinions are shared amongst the group and which are personal (and possibility minority) opinions.

One thing that I have taken note of though is how my supervisor conducts the FGD. Being able to review the tapes allows me to pay closer attention to the soft skills used (as opposed to during the discussion itself when I am scrambling to take down notes). I realised that it's almost like a "mass counselling" session, in the sense that each participant is attended to individually and allowed to carry on for a bit before being pulled back to the main line of discussion. This happens even if the discussion goes seemingly off-tangent for a while, so that the dicussion still flows but the structure still does remain (but it's more flexible). I also realised that by doing this, we managed to discover quite a few things that we would not have if we had stayed entirely strictly to the few questions given. By following the participants on their train of thought, we managed to discover new points that we initially did not plan on picking up (for example the idea of the lack of awareness and publicity with regards to counselling), and it actually helped us to realise that the focus of the review needed to be tweaked (or at least put on the back-burner while other issues needed to be dealt with first).

This illustrates very clearly to me the gap that often exists between the perceived needs of clients (as dictated by the "experts" in the industry) and the real/felt needs of the service users/clients themselves. So often we assume that because we can see how certain services/programmes are useful/efficacious in dealing with certain issues/problems, that the existence of these issues/problems dictates that we must introduce these programmes/services immediately. However, so often we do this without doing a needs assessment, or having a dialogue with the service users to find out what they feel is the issue that must be dealt with or addressed first. For example, this review was intended to ascertain the effectiveness of counselling and whether service users would use such services - yet what we found out is that they weren't aware of such a service, and that they did not even understand what "counselling" is about. In such a case, the effectiveness of counselling can then be considered irrelevant, or at least not of immediate concern, because the service itself is not even understood. If something is not understood, clients cannot possibly discern how such a service could benefit them, and would thus not utilise the service.

Tying in with my previous post where I discussed thinking about the client as a customer instead, we need to understand what the clients want and what they understand as being what they want before we can provide services that they will utilise and find useful. To tie this in with our position as knowing what could benefit clients without clients realising it at all, what we can do is find out what the clients want (e.g. emotional relief, financial aid, problem resolution), then match it up with specific services/programmes which we know would fit the bill and help them resolve their issues, and explain to the clients how these services will help. We cannot continue to merely prescribe programmes and services and expect clients to be positively affected by them, as people tend to be more resistant towards things they do not understand. We need to begin to think of clients as thinking and opinionated individuals, and "demystify" what the services provided are.

Day 10 - part 2

Today we conducted the final two FGDs for the counselling review. I was quite excited because the FGDs were held at a Senior Activity Centre, which I had never been inside or actually encountered before. I'm not sure if the place "met" my preconceptions of what an SAC is supposed to look like, but it did seem quite empty, and for some reason I was looking for a karaoke set hmmm...

I got the chance to do the FGD today, which was quite exciting because I had never conducted a discussion group with clients or service users previously. It was different this time because while I had conducted groupwork with youths previously, it is entirely different when you conduct a group with adults whom you are actually asking a favour from (as opposed to conducting a programme with). I was quite conscious about needing to go down to their educational level and not to sound as "ang moh" as I usually do, and while typically being local is not an issue, for some reason when it comes to work I tend to be more "official" sounding, for lack of a better word. This time I felt that my sounding more polished worked against me to some extent because it would mean that no matter how well I could connect with the participants in terms of content, they would not not reach that level of comfort of being able to share as freely with me as I would have liked. Since this was my first FGD I don't expect to be able to so quickly fit in with the participants; however it is something I need to take note of and work on in future work.

What made me a bit more cautious about the FGD was that it needed Malay translation because most of the participants were more comfortable with speaking in Malay. I have never worked with a translator before, and often it is a bit difficult to know whether I should ask for a translation or wait for the translator (in this case the manager of the SAC) to translate. I was also unsure if the participants were quiet because they could not understand what I was saying or if they were thinking or shy to answer. I was also unsure if I should ask them individually, something I observed my supervisor doing frequently - I wanted to, but was hesitant of sounding repetitive. The few times I tried to ask them individually (by directing the quesitons at the quieter ones), they tended not to answer, or the more prominent ones would end up speaking up instead. I think I could have made better use of the translator, by asking him to translate and to prompt each of them to give an answer - this way I could have elicited individual replies from all the participants instead.

I also need to learn to simplify questions I realise. I tried to but I was not always successful - something I realised during the session itself. I need to be quicker at being able to assess the level of understanding of the participants, to pick out the words that they would have trouble with, and find ways and means to be able to rephrase the terms into phrases they would understand and relate to. However it was quite heartening to be able to elicit responses from the participants, though it would have been good if I could have generated enough rapport with them and within the group itself for the participants to start discussing amongst themselves.

I attended the disability network in the afternoon, which was quite interesting. Having someone who straddles both the service provider and service user worlds brings a lot of interesting things to the table, in terms of being able to provide better insight into the service gaps and service possibilities for working with the disabled. I often wonder what it's like, when you have people with disabilities working in the social services - do they feel a greater sense of motivation, and do they feel a greater need to advocate for clients? Do they empathise more with clients because they experience similar problems and challenges, or do they somehow become more disdainful of the clients precisely because they had the same (or similar) challenge in life, yet they (service provider) managed to overcome these challenges and become successful? And as a client, would I feel better understood and more comfortable with a therapist or service provider who had either the same or a similar disability as me? How would this affect how I react to therapy/treatment/service provision? This would actually be a very interesting area of research to look into, and could have potential implications in the field of social work with the disabled.

The speaker also talked about a new way of thinking of the client as a customer, and how when you think of customers you think of profit, you think of businesses - in which case you would do anything to make the customer happy. In light of that, the phrase "the customer is always right" comes to mind. In contrast, when we think of the term "client", that tends to bring to mind the idea that we as service providers are the experts, and that we should tell the client what they should do. While we are taught that the client is the expert of their own lives, we inevitably will tend to think of how their lives fit together and will impose our own ideas of what is better for them. However, if we think of the client as a customer, then we will strive to meet every one of their needs (instead of the bare minimum), and see how else we can serve them aside from just what they come to us for (e.g. they may approach us for financial aid, but could benefit from family counselling and youth programmes for the children). In this way we stop taking our position for granted, and return to what the profession is actually about - serving people, in a manner that addresses their lives holistically, using our expertise not to exploit but to find additional areas to help them.

Day 10 - part 1

Due to the length of this entry, I have split up the reflection into two parts - Saturday first, then Monday later.

The session with the Lion Befrienders on Saturday was interesting - to hear about counselling from their point of view, not merely as non-service users, but also as service providers to the elderly. While theirs is not a counselling service that they provide, but according to the previous FGD where the participants highlighted the importance of their befrienders/volunteers (who would help them not feel so isolated), having the volunteers was a good follow-up to the initial counselling services. In light of this, it was quite interesting hearing some of the views that the befrienders themselves had with regards to the counselling services in the community.

What I suppose was most surprising to me (though it should not be by this point) is that the befrienders themselves were not entirely sure about what counselling was really al labout. they had a rough idea, knew that it was benefitial for the elderly, for youth, and those who were depressed (and perhaps for those with dementia as well), but they did not really know much about counselling for the general public. What was more surprising was that they would urge their elderly befriendees to go for counselling, and would encourage friends who were facing troubles to go for counselling, but they themselves would not go for counselling.

This seems to be a recurring theme amongst participants, even the ones who participated in the last two FGDs this morning - that they would encourage friends to go, but they themselves would not. I then am always curious to pose the question - why the difference? If you believe so strongly that the counselling would benefit your friends, why do you feel that you yourself would not go for counselling? Do you think that it would be less benefitial for you somehow? Why such contradicting stands? Of course to ask these questions, while they would make the participants pause to think, are quite jarring and can be seen as being very rude - which is not a good thing. I wonder if this has to do with the Asian mentality or if it is just something inherent in most people in general.

Another thing about the FGD on Saturday was the concept of counselling and counsellors to the layman. I was quite surprised that the befrienders were unhappy about the counsellors being so adamant about protecting the confidentiality of their clients' information. While I understand that they want to help their elderly and that some cursory information about them would be greatly appreciated, it is very difficult for counsellors to be able to divulge sufficient information to pacify the befrienders, yet to keep sensitive information private to protect the client. It was actually quite bewildering to me that the befrienders were unaware of our code of ethics and suggested that these be bent, or that the ministry/NCSS actually institute a policy for these ethics to be "bent" (or to be rewritten). I suppose it was particularly shocking for me that one of the volunteers, who is a counsellor volunteer himself, was one of those who suggested this. It made me wonder if there was a possibility that clients' confidential information was being revealed to others outside the counselling room already according to the "best judgment" of counsellors, and how this might greatly compromise the confidential nature of the helping relationship with the client, and also nullifies the idea of client self-determination (in terms of determining who he reveals this confidential information to). If doctors are allowed to keep patient information confidential (even from family members), why is that same professional ethic not viewed as stringently for our profession? Then of course it makes me reflect on the age-old tussle of the paradox between sanctity of life, client self-determination, and confidentiality, for example when it comes to the client wanting to harm themselves or somebody else.

The sheer length of that last paragraph and how many run-on thoughts are present in it just reminds me sometimes that it is good to sit down and reflect, to get my thoughts in order. I suppose this links back again to the idea of professionalism and "professionalising" social work. The mere presence of (and adherence to) a code of ethics can be considered evidence of us being professionals. Yet not only do people not always respect us as professionals, but ask us to compromise on our ethics/skills and essentially ask us to act unprofessionally.

It might be useful then to make it clear to people working with us in multi-disciplinary teams, and then to the greater public, that social workers do have a strict code of ethics which we have to adhere to. We need to emphasise that this is NOT to protect our status as professionals, but is to protect the client and the helping relationship in which we operate and empower the client. This protective factor helps to create that "bubble universe" that makes the client feel safe enough to open up about their problems and begin to work on them with the social worker/therapist.

This idea of ethics also made me think about our practise of social work in both the local and international communities. So often we emphasise the necessity to link our work to the local multi-cultural Asian context (especially since I have been doing a lot of research both in school and here in NCSS) and that of course is important. However, we forget that we also practise social work within the wider international community - which means our standards have to be up to that of our overseas counterparts, and we have to remember that as much as we represent Singapore to that community, we also represent our international counterparts within Singapore. We cannot simply align ourselves to either context in our practise - we need to be mindful of both. So we cannot simply say that we can bend our ethics to "fit the local context" if it is "in the way", because there would be severe international repercussions, particularly when our counterparts also work in Asian contexts without having to compromise these values.

I guess one thing I did not expect would surface that much in my field placement this time was ethics (apart from ethics to do with research), so the fact that one simple FGD has managed to make me think so in-depth (and circular) about ethics was surprising to me as well.