The University of Hong Kong Department of Social Work & Social Administration Overseas Fieldwork Placement Student s Summary Report Student: Wong Sze Chai Cherry Program of Study: MSWFT Placement Agency: S.U.C.C.E.S.S. (Vancouver) Youth Employment Connect (YEC)
1. Introduction of the Placement Agency and Setting S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is a non-partisan and non-profit charitable organization founded in 1973 and incorporated in 1974. It is currently one of the largest NGOs in British Columbia and has over 20 locations around the world. Originally it was founded to support new immigrants from China to overcome language and cultural barriers in Canada, but over the years, as there have been a wider range of different immigrants migrating into Canada, S.U.C.C.E.S.S has emerged to become a multicultural service agency that serves various races and ages in Canada. Their mission is to build bridges, harvest diversity and foster integration between nations through services and advocacy. S.U.C.C.E.ES aims to help immigrants and refugees to settle in well in Canada and promote their well-being, so they can achieve their full potential and contribute in their communities. All these mission work aim at their vision of creating a world of multicultural harmony. Under S.U.C.C.E.S.S., there are a wide range of services, from family and community services to settlement services, housing services, senior care services and employment services. I was assigned to a youth employment service program called the Youth Employment Connect (YEC). The YEC program aims to provide youths, aged 15-29, with quality skills and ability to become more equipped for the labour market. Our youth clients come from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities, from high school graduates to new immigrants. Yet, they are all going through the challenge of job search. Therefore, YEC aims to help youths to know themselves better and develop a career goal to overcome employment barriers. Since it is a government-funded program, the whole YEC program is free of charge for the participants.
As for the content of the YEC program, it includes 4-week group-based training and 10-week follow-up job search support. Through the 4 weeks of group training, there would be self-assessments, where participants would understand more about their personality and discover their own potential to plan their career goal. There would also be practical training on job search skills, such as interview techniques and resume writing. In addition, there are also field trips as well as short-term certificate courses (e.g. Food Safe, Basic Security Training, First Aid Training etc.) for students to complete within the 4 weeks of training. 2. Brief Account of the Work Assignments I was privileged to be able to follow through the whole YEC program from their information sessions, to group session training and follow-up. In the beginning, I took up more of an observer role in the information sessions. I saw how the staff in the program introduced and promoted the program to interested youths. This process helped me to become more familiar with the program structure. Later on, I was involved in doing in-take interviews with the clients and had panel meetings with the other staff for participant selection. In the end we selected 14 participants to join the group training. During the 4-week group training, I led three sessions on my own and helped out as a facilitator in the other training sessions. Throughout the training, I have adopted the person-centered approach, to start where the participant is. This approach was mainly shown through the communication with our participants. For example, some participants were relatively shy to speak up in the group; I respected their pace and showed empathetic understanding. I approached them personally to create a comfortable environment for them to share about their feelings. For the three sessions that I had led, I presented about The Positive Psychology of Gratitude, Canadian Labour Market Information and Relaxation through Mandala. When I was planning for my sessions, I aimed at finding topics and activities that my clients would be interested in and took into consideration
of the group development. For example, in the beginning on the second day of the group training, I delivered my session on positive psychology. This was because despite the employment barriers that the participants were facing, I hope that the participants could start off the training with a positive attitude. Through the weeks of training, I observed that many participants were interested in art and were passionate to develop an artistic career. Therefore, I integrated the element of art into one of my sessions and taught them the relaxation technique through colouring or drawing their own Mandala. A session evaluation form as given to the participants at the end to see how they felt about the session, and the results showed that majority of the participants enjoyed the activity and felt relaxed afterwards. Since I followed the group for a total of 4 weeks, I was able to bond with the members and see their growth and improvements as time went by. Group leading techniques were also applied during the sessions, such as summarizing and linking members responses to facilitate group discussion. Other than facilitating in the group trainings, I was assigned to produce a promotional video for the program. I met up with clients from past and present groups and did a video-shooting interview with them. I was very grateful that past participants of the YEC program were willing to come back to share their successful stories with me. From the interview, I could feel their genuine gratefulness to the help from this program. This made me feel honor to be able to participate in a program like YEC, where it made an impact on these youths and changed their lives. I also did a community research project on Alzheimer Disease situation in British Columbia. For this research project, I visited the British Columbia Alzheimer Society to interview their manager, as well as volunteering to help out in their support groups. I had the chance to talk to the elderly with Alzheimer and their caregiver, which enhanced my understanding towards their stress and challenges from living with this disease.
3. Reflections on Professional and Personal Growth Although this overseas placement setting was different from the typical social work settings in Hong Kong, I believe I learned a lot more than just skills from my workplace. This overseas placement in Canada was totally an eye-opening experience. Firstly, as a student working in a multi-cultural organization, I appraised their mission by working well with colleagues from different countries and also respected the cultural diversity in the groups with clients from different backgrounds. I learned to become more aware of the cultural differences among people. Secondly, the western working environment that encourages people to share opinions and suggestions actually helped me to build my self-confidence and to become more vocal. By working closely with the YEC team, I enhanced my knowledge towards the process of running a program in an organization. I took the initiative to ask questions and talk to each member of the team to expand my understanding on their roles in the program. I have developed a good relationship with the team
over time and would identify myself as a member. It was my pleasure to work with such a close bonded team and we would even go enjoy leisure activities together after work, such as to go hiking together. Last but not least, other than completing the work duties in the organization, I also had the opportunity to visit other social services and centers in Vancouver, such as elderly homes, long-term care homes, hospice centre, detox centre and community walk with street nurses in Downtown Eastside Vancouver. All these visits broadened my exposure towards the social issues in Canada and how it was being tackled by the social services accordingly. At first Vancouver may seem to be an ideal country to live in, city life surrounded by amazing fresh air, grasslands and mountains. Nonetheless, problems with street sleepers and drug addiction still exist and it is still affecting certain amount of the population there. This made me realise the importance of social work, as there are always other stories behind a thriving city.