Working with Marginalized Communities

Reflection Paper: Working With Marginalized Communities

Student Name Here

Walden University

 

 

Reflection Paper: Working With Marginalized Communities

Provide a brief introduction to your paper here. The title serves as your introductory heading, so avoid a heading titled “Introduction.” Here, you will briefly identify the topic of your reflection, which is ways in which sociocultural factors might influence the career development of your future clients or students, and how you might address these factors as their counselor. Start first by writing a sentence or two introducing the reader to the topic of the reflection. For example, briefly highlight the types of sociocultural factors that influence career development, and the counselor’s role as an advocate in mitigating these factors. Then, follow up with a statement describing the specific purpose of this particular assignment. In other words, describe how your clients or students might be challenged by various sociocultural factors, the culturally sensitive ways you might apply career theories with these clients, and the ways you might advocate on their behalf. When describing your purpose, be sure to review the directions for the assignment (located in the classroom) to ensure you are attending to each element of the reflection. Remember, you need a minimum of three sentences to make a paragraph. At the end of your introduction, include a sentence outlining which topics will be discussed and in which order.

Advocacy Statement

This section of your paper should consist of one to two paragraphs. In these paragraphs, you should develop an advocacy statement that addresses the importance of diversity and advocacy as it relates to career counseling. When creating your advocacy statement, be sure to address the key components of advocacy, including a discussion of how you might advocate for clients and students across the micro, meso, and macro levels of society. Much like a theoretical orientation statement, your goal is to describe your commitment to social change and advocacy for all clients and students in a fair and safe manner. This statement should be written as if speaking directly to a client or student.

Culturally Sensitive Career Counseling

The paragraphs in this section should be a discussion of the setting you hope to work in as a counselor, the types of career needs that are characteristic of the population in this setting, any sociocultural factors that might influence career development and counseling in this population, and culturally sensitive considerations you might make while working with this population. For example, students at a high school in a rural community might experience specific career development and counseling needs related to geographic isolation, limited resources, reduced accessibility to higher education, and limited exposure to various occupations, which are factors unique to rural communities (Ball, 2009). Culturally sensitive career counseling on the school counselor’s part might include a focus on balancing personal goals with family obligations and values during career planning as well as numerous career exploration activities to expose students to different occupations. In clinical mental health settings, examples of culturally sensitive strategies for working with racial and ethnic minorities might include being intentional about exploring ways in which barriers, such racism and classism, influence career decision-making and how the intersection between race and gender influence role expectations and perceived career options.

Beyond specific interventions, when thinking about culturally sensitive career counseling, be sure to also consider the other aspects of multicultural counseling such as awareness of one’s own values and beliefs, knowledge of the client’s worldview, and cross-cultural communication. For example, your race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or religious background may differ from your clients or students. If so, how might these differences affect the counseling process, and how might you address them? The Multicultural and Advocacy Dimensions (MAD) model reference in the Ratts (2011) in this week’s learning resources provides a useful framework for identifying these considerations.

Advocacy Strategies

Be sure to consult the Ratts (2011) and (2017), articles assigned in Week 5, when developing this section of your paper. In this section of the paper, state the specific advocacy needs of the population you have selected. Then, identify specific advocacy strategies to further address the sociocultural factors you identified for your future clients in the section above. Remember, advocacy is focused specifically on addressing barriers clients experience in the community due to some aspect of a marginalized identity. According to Ratts (2017), individuals with marginalized identities in the United States include people of color; women and transgender or gender non-conforming individuals; the LGBTQ population; individuals in poverty; youth and elders; individuals with physical or mental disabilities; and individuals from religious minorities. Please do not use identities outside of those listed above for the purpose of this paper. When developing specific advocacy strategies, think about how you might intervene on each level of influence discussed in Ratts (2017) (i.e., intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community, and public policy).

Continuing with the examples from above, advocacy strategies the school counselor in the rural high school might consider include developing school-community partnerships to increase access to various career information or employment opportunities on the institutional level, or hosting career fairs at which families are invited in order to increase support for students on the interpersonal level. In the clinical mental health setting, advocacy strategies might include participating in lobbies to create laws that encourage more equitable hiring practices on the public policy level or exploring the psychological effects of racism on the intrapersonal level.

Conclusion

Your conclusion section should recap the major points you have made in your paper. However, perhaps more importantly, you should interpret what you have written and what the bigger picture is. Remember, your paper should be at least 2 pages, not counting your title page and reference page. Be sure to include references throughout your paper as necessary. Working with Marginalized Communities

 

 

 

Always include references on a separate page. APA is very specific about punctuation and how elements of the reference are presented. Every citation should have a reference and vice versa. Use the APA manual to verify your format. Below you will find many examples for you to follow. A formal paper for Walden will require you to use all relevant resources provided in the classroom and one or more scholarly resources from peer-reviewed journals in the Walden library.

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References

(Please note that the following references are intended as examples only.)

Anderson, E. (2007). The best career activities ever. The Journal of Ultimate Career Counseling, 19, 4319–4392. Retrieved from http://www.ultimatecareer.org

John, G., & Locke, D. (1973). Career development at any age. Thousand Oaks, CA: Fairy Tale Publishing.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2007). How to cite a video: The city is always Baltimore [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2010). Name of program [Video webcast]. Retrieved from http://www.courseurl.com

Smith, G., & Johnson, N. (2008). Career counseling: Why we need it and can’t live without it. Career Counseling for Everyone, 25(7), 14–31. doi:10.8220/CTCE.52.1.23-91