EXERCICES OF RESILIENCE

My name is Manuela Alber and I am a Swiss Social Worker. I am associated with Nanban for 3 years now. Bro. James asked me whether I could make a Workshop about Social Work and Resilience.

See also the theme on resilience.

"I started the workshop with the question about everybody’s personal definition of social work:
What is social work? Should Social Work be done by heart or by head? What does it mean to be a social worker? Are we Supermen and Superwomen always ready to help and to rescue people in need? Is it our duty to be there for others or is it allowed thinking of us as well? Is it a dedication or is it a normal job?

To get to know that there is not only one way to explain social work and that there is neither right nor wrong, we started to build up groups and discussing some issues about social work. With every issue we changed our discussing partner.

It was a good experience to hear about different opinions concerning social work. Everybody was facing difficult situations at his job and everybody had things he liked or disliked. This exercise made us aware of sitting in the same boat.

Sitting in a boat actually is a good picture to imagine how a social worker should be equipped to do his job. First of all it’s me with my personal resources sitting in the boat. The boat carries me through the ocean like my attitude carries me through the daily work. Daily I’m steering my boat to new harbors like the social worker daily looks for new goals with his clients. But HOW will the steerman move his boat to the harbor or HOW will the social worker get to his goal he has set with the client?

This became a very interesting discussion. Is it the understanding of others, compassion, intelligence, education, never judging, tolerance, patience, social education, unconditional acceptance or skill training bringing me closer to the goal? Or do these qualities belong to my personal resources and my professional attitude?
The main tool of a navigator to get to the harbor is the motor or the rudders.

But what does this mean for the social worker? Like the steerman chooses different rudders for each harbor, the social worker can choose different tools to reach his goals. So what are the tools of Nanban Social workers? Story telling, clay work, gentle touch, smiling, rules, counseling, showing pictures, active, attentive listening, technique of questioning, rituals, children conferences, ...

After clarifying the tools it became clear to everybody that it is important to know about the tools and about how to use them. The next step was to look for examples out of daily work, setting goals and talk about possible tools to reach the goal.

But it’s not only the know-how and the tools that helps us to do a good job. Imagine several social workers sitting in a rowing boat and getting tired. Do you think they will reach the goal? Do you think their tools will help to fill up their batteries? We found out that the answer is NO. We have to know how to fill up the batteries and that everybody is responsible for the loading of its batteries. As these are rather personal questions we were doing a self-reflection about this topic.

As you might know, the concept of Resilience is one of the main issues Nanban is based on. But knowing the theory of Resilience is one thing. Knowing how to help the children building up an inner strength is another thing. The bridge between the Theory and the Praxis is the tool. Our main goal for the next 3 days was to experience what Resilience is and to enable us to pass on this experience to the children.

I was showing loads of exercises and games to experience different social competence’s mainly belonging to the concept of Resilience, such as: courage, confidence , self confidence, flexibility, responsibility, creativity, respect, self efficacy, self esteem, access/interaction, finding solutions, taking backstrokes

Then we made some exercises. One of them was for instance to be, on the rooftop , lining up and facing each other. It looked like a "road". I was standing on one side and promising the others that I will catch every person running through the "road" with closed eyes. At the beginning they were not so sure about whether I could keep my promise or not. But after the second or third time they all became more and more confident in me and ran faster. This does not mean that they now were building up confidence for all their life, but they were confident for the moment and got to know how it feels like to be confident or how it feels like to be scared.

After several exercises, it was time to have a close look to our definitions of social work again. After asking the staff whether they still stick to their definition or wanting the definition changed, they mainly answered, that they stick to their definition but wanted to add that they now are aware of the importance of tools and the way they can use them. Only by knowing what resilience means they can be a good role model to the children.

So it was a workshop giving us lots to think of. I don’t think that I taught them new things, but I helped them to discover their hidden resources and encouraged all of them to become creative, self-confident social workers being aware of their tools. I wanted to show them a way from the theory of Resilience to the practical side of Resilience by experience qualities of Resilience.

We decided that Nanban staff at the girl center, boy shelter and the children club should play these exercises and games by having a workshop on their own. How this worked out you may be reading in the next newsletter."

See also the theme on resilience.

Words of lustrabotas ...

Created on 15 march 2007