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.
I agree that we need to address at a young age. However, I can't help wonder how, being uniquely singapore, the exposure to both Asian and Western culture has affected us. I also wonder how different is the Asian and Western belief about ageing. I guess one school of thought we also hear is how western education has changed the youth thinking about issues. But is it really the fault of Western education or is it the fault of interpretation? One eg. is the idea of independence. In the West, the parents encourage early independence and also govern thei old age independence fiercely. However, does that translate to not asking, not caring about the elderly? Could the Westerners have different ways to show their filial piety which we may not know? I am also thinking that most of our interpretation of Western culture comes from the mass media, which we all know it may not be the best representation. Sarah, you being born in a mix culture family, may have some experiences to share? ;)
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