Women of color

Introduction

Studies have shown that women of color are more likely to work than their white counterparts subjecting them to more considerable challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Most working women are torn between working and caring for their children as both are equally important (Weaver & Swank, 2020). To ensure maximum protection of the children, African American mothers are forced to reduce the working hours while others opt to resign from their jobs to take care of their families. Since African American women work to provide for their families, their job resignation becomes a tough decision as it touches their survival and family well-being. Consequently, doing this takes a toll on their physical and mental well-being, considering they have to ensure their children are okay and, at the same time, tend to their work duties.

Relevance to Social Work

Social work plays an important role in helping women of color experiencing distress and anxiety in caring for children and working at the same, especially during a period of the Covid 19 pandemic. It helps African Americans to cope with the emotional and mental issues they experience in the process. It helps to see infinite solutions to their problems (De la Fuente, Chang, Cardeñoso, & Chang, 2019).  Social work interventions like counseling help working women deal with childcare issues.  It helps working women to find the right work-life balance, allowing them to take care of the children and complete their work-related tasks at the same time.  Social work helps to work to load off the challenges wearing them out and gives them a new perspective of seeing how things will work. Moreover, it helps in developing family support programs for working women, which can help them to better support their children and work.

Models of practice that can be applied to address the problem.

Various models of practice can be applied to address the problems that working women do experience about childcare.  One of the models is the problem-solving model, which was developed by Helen Harris Perlman (Zatloukal, Žákovský, & Bezdíčková,2019). The model concentrates on identifying specific problems and creating an action plan to solve them and implement the solution.  With this model, a social worker can help working women identify their problems, develop an action plan and implement the solution.  Together with the social worker, a working woman can identify the problem-solving strategy’s effectiveness and adjust it if necessary.  The model helps both the social worker and a client to address one problem at a time.

Another model that can be utilized to help working women facing challenges in childcare is narrative therapy.  Suddeath, Kerwin, & Dugger (2017) outlines that model involves removing an individual from their problems and helping them view that they can overcome those problems and change their life story. It allows a client to perceive that they are separate from the problem they are encountering, and they can solve them from an outside perspective. By utilizing this model, a social worker helps clients to create a new narrative with different positive actions.  Another model that can be applied to address this problem is cognitive solution-focused therapy. It involves identifying a problem and creating a solution based on the client’s inner strengths (Lynch, Newlands, & Forrester, 2019). It allows clients to utilize their strengths to overcome their weaknesses.  For instance, working women can come up with an approach of balancing work and life, which will help them care for their children and work at the same time.

Therefore, this model helps individual clients focus on the challenges they are encountering and how they can resolve them. It focuses on changing the clients’ actions to achieve more favorable outcomes. For instance, a social worker can utilize this model to help working women create an effective work-life balance approach.

Conclusion

Most African Americans are torn between working and caring for their children as both are equally important; they experience distress and anxiety while handling both roles.  Social work helps to work to load off the challenges wearing them out and gives them a new perspective of seeing how things will work. Moreover, it helps in developing family support programs for working women, which can help them to better support their children and work. Models like the problem-solving model, solution-based model, and narrative are useful models that counselors can utilize problems encountered by working women.  They can be utilized to help working women overcome anxiety and distress caused by lack of childcare during the Covid 19 pandemic.

References

Zatloukal, L., Žákovský, D., & Bezdíčková, E. (2019). Utilizing metaphors in solution-focused             therapy. Contemporary Family Therapy, 41(1), 24-36.

Suddeath, E. G., Kerwin, A. K., & Dugger, S. M. (2017). Narrative family therapy: Practical techniques for more effective work with couples and families. Journal of Mental Health   Counseling, 39(2), 116-131.

Lynch, A., Newlands, F., & Forrester, D. (2019). What does empathy sound like in social work communication? A mixed‐methods study of empathy in child protection social work practice. Child & Family Social Work, 24(1), 139-147.

De la Fuente, A., Chang, E. C., Cardeñoso, O., & Chang, O. D. (2019). Examining coping strategies used by Spanish female social work students: evidence for the importance of social problem-solving abilities. Social Work Education, 38(3), 314-329.

Weaver, J.L., & Swank, J.M. (2020). Parents’ Lived Experiences with the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Family Journal, 10664800720969194.