Social Work Reflection: Team Planning for Youth Depression Support

This essay provides a critical reflection on the role of a social worker in designing and facilitating a group to address youth depression. It analyzes personal strengths and weaknesses, team dynamics, and communication methods used within the group. The reflection emphasizes the importance of teamwork, planning, and facilitation skills in providing effective support to young people experiencing depression. It also acknowledges the need for continuous improvement in areas such as computer literacy and decision-making to enhance the quality of care delivered by social work teams. The essay concludes that personal reflection is a valuable tool for social workers to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to improve their practice in supporting vulnerable populations.

Critical reflection

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Working as a part of team......................................................................................................3
Planning a group.....................................................................................................................4
Facilitating a group.................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Reflection is an integral part of personal and professional development and allows me to
turn my experiences into learning opportunities to advance my future practice. Remembering my
role in designing and facilitating a group addressing a social issue; our group chose depression in
youth has given me some the opportunity to appreciate the practical skills required to become a
Social Worker. This essay will reflect upon the role I played as well as critically analyse the team
performance. This essay will reflect on my personal strengths, weaknesses and also the team
dynamics, group work theory’s, communication methods used as well as possible improvements
for any future group session task (Soklaridis and et. al., 2017).
MAIN BODY
Working as a part of team
As a social worker I have to work as a team where it is essential to deliver proper care
and support to the young people with depression. I have observed that there are large number of
youth who are getting depressed due to various personal reason. In this, as a social worker I need
to delivery better care and support to such type of people for improving their life. It is not
possible to deliver better care to youth with depression lonely. In this, there is need for a group or
a team who can work together effectively to delivery better support and help to those people. As
a team I have identified various strength which includes good interpersonal skill, communication
skills, organisational skills and time management skill. These are some of the skill which are
highly effective and allow me to perform it well for better output.
I am better in communicating with others which allows me to use this skill to get
interconnect with the people with depression. Working in team allow me to show my skill when
it is needed and help to use those strength for the better result. Through using my communication
skill, I get able to effectively share my views to youth with depression (Feraco and et. al., 2020).
This allow me to make them understand about my views and help them to get better and live
quality of life. Through using interpersonal skill, I can communicate and interact with youth with
better impact that can help me out make them comfortable to getting connect with them.
Working with team I have observed that there is need for a team leader who can lead the team
and make this team more effective. This allow to work effectively with better result. Working in
a team allow everyone to use their strength and skill while delivering their services as a social

worker and help youth with depression. Team provides me the strength to get help in various
area where I am not able to use my skill or lacking my skill. There are also other members in the
team who have their own strength and skill and can help me through using their better skills and
strength.
Working as a part of team I have analysed that when I am not available due to any
personal reason or busy in delivering service to another person. Then my team member can
manage this situation by themselves. Sometimes, there is confusing while delivering of services
during and lead to conflict within team members. In conflict situation, there is need to show the
problem-solving skill and leadership skill that can be helpful to solve the conflict within team
and allow to work together for better response and better result. There are also other members in
the team who also like to use their strength and skill for serving. In this, many team member are
also possessing similar type of skill that I possess (Farrell and et. al., 2018). So, they like to also
use their strength to support and help youth with depression. So, it can be observed that there is
some difficulty for the further improvement in providing care to the youth with depression.
There is need to make team strong which can work together in difficult time and help each other
in serving youth with depression. As a social worker team there is need to work as a team which
can be effective and allow to get better result.
Planning a group
To work effectively there is need to take help from the group or team. In this, it is
necessary to get focus on the effective outcome by sharing information with each and by using
each other skill and strength serve youth with depression for their better help and support. In this,
there is need to plan for group which can be consist of group of social worker who are illegible
to work effectively to deliver their services as a social worker without personal interest. In this, I
need to make a group of social worker with different skill and strength. This can help me to
make effective group that will lead by me for better delivery of services to larger population of
youth who are with depression (Shogren and et. al., 2017). In this, with the help of group, I will
be able to communicate and delivery better support and help to them for improving their quality
of life. There is need to plan for group and in this process, it is essential to involve number of
people who are good in delivering social services without any personal benefits with their own
interest. I have some strength which can be effective while planning for group. In this,
interpersonal skill and communication skills are highly effective to communicate with different

people to influence them to participate in my group for better involvement and use their strength
and skill to support youth with depression.
To form the group I have also taken help form my participant who have already selected
for the group. I have made some promotion about making social worker group which was
different to make better and effective group for social work. This was done to attract large
number of option and talent who are interested in serving people by using their skills and interest
(Jagtenberg and et. al., 2020). It worked well and I get number of people who are interest in the
social work along with possessing various strength and skills. In this, I have used the group
dynamic process which describes the way through which people can interact with each other.
This can be positive and can help to provide better outcomes by supporting and helping people
with depression. I personally observed that it can be effective and can help to evaluate different
way by using skills and strength for sharing information and strength with other group members
for positive outcomes.
Facilitating a group
After planning for group I have facilitated some group session in which I have shared
some critical information about the social issues that is related with youth with depression. I have
also share some social issue information that is highly required to address and as a social worker
group, it is essential to focus on that issues. I have also shared some plan and asked for views
which helped me to get better idea to deal with the youth who are suffering from depression. In
this, I have asked my group to get knowledge about the behaviour and attitude of youth who are
facing depression in their life. Through analysing and getting information about the attitude and
behaviour can help to delivery better service by supporting and helping them. In this, group
member possessed with different skills and as a leader of the group I have also used my skills
and strength that allow to help and support youth with depression effectively for improving the
quality of life. I have shared the effective and necessary information about to deal with depressed
youth. This was effective and allow to understand their situation effectively to deal for better
outcomes (Shiota and et. al., 2018).
I have facilitated the information by using my strength and weaknesses where strength
has helped me to effectively focus on the delivery of social work by supporting and helping
people. Through using time management and organisational skill I have made strong group with
each member and help my group to perform well at the right time. I have also feel weaknesses in

computer literacy along with digital literacy while using their advantages in supporting and
helping people. In this, I have facilitated group session, communication style which allowed me
to work collaboratively in making decision. In this, I have divided task within every group
member to perform their role effectively to complete task in better manner. I have also seen
things with different perspective in which we have made a campaign in local area for supporting
youth with depression to attain quality of life (Papa and et. al., 2018). This is different and also
allow to reach number of needed youth at a time with higher effect. This campaign also allow to
easy access to youth who need help and support in depression.
As a group leader I have some strength like effective communicator, time management to
perform various activity at right time and by decision-making skill also help to support youth
with depression more precisely. There is need to improve the decision-making skill which can
more effectively help in taking decision for better outcomes. There is need to accept the
weaknesses and work on it to improve those skill like computer literacy and digital literacy
which can be effective and help to achieve better outcomes. To improve this, I am taking course
outside of my study and trying to improve it quickly. I have taken consideration of my
weaknesses and allow to get better and effective improvement through focusing on learning for
better using of strength for supporting and helping youth with depression (Bromage and et. al.,
2019).
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it can be conclude that there personal reflection is effective to
identify own learning and evaluating own-self about strength and weaknesses. As a social worker
there is need to delivery quality of support and help to improve youth life who are suffering from
depression. This reflection includes working as a part of team along with planning a group which
includes strength and weaknesses. It also include group dynamics which forces to operate in
groups. This reflection also includes group facilitating that includes what worked good and done
different. This also includes the strength and area of improvement while facilitating group for
social work. Through this, it can be easy to delivery better quality of care and support to the
youth with depression for their better and quality of life.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bromage and et. al., 2019. Facilitating community connections among people with mental
illnesses: Perspectives from grassroots community leaders. Journal of community
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Farrell and et. al., 2018. Individual versus interprofessional team performance in formulating
care transition plans: A randomised study of trainees from five professional
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Feraco and et. al., 2020. Parent perceptions of team-delivered care for children with advanced
cancer: a report from the PediQUEST study. Journal of Pain and Symptom
Management, 60(4), pp.811-817.
Jagtenberg and et. al., 2020. Improving fairness in ambulance planning by time
sharing. European Journal of Operational Research, 280(3), pp.1095-1107.
Papa and et. al., 2018. Social media as tool for facilitating knowledge creation and innovation in
small and medium enterprises. Baltic Journal of Management.
Shiota and et. al., 2018, September. Analysis of facilitators’ behaviors in multi-party
conversations for constructing a digital facilitator system. In International Conference
on Collaboration Technologies (pp. 145-158). Springer, Cham.
Shogren and et. al., 2017. The support needs of children with intellectual disability and autism:
Implications for supports planning and subgroup classification. Journal of Autism and
Developmental Disorders, 47(3), pp.865-877.
Soklaridis and et. al., 2017. Where is the client/patient voice in interprofessional healthcare team
assessments? Findings from a one-day forum. Journal of interprofessional care, 31(1),
pp.122-124.