Kelly Burg

3-7-16
Wednesday
Reflection 3
Human Behavior and the Social Environment has always caught my interest when
reading articles. After reading the article, Can HBSE Classes Discuss Socially Sensitive Topics
without Being Labeled Politically Incorrect? It began to get me thinking about what I have
learned in my social work classes over the past two years. The main concept that comes to mind
that I have learned is always remembering the person and environment when working with a
client. As a social worker, you need to understand the person and their background from where
they came from to help better understand what he or she may be going through. The person and
environment can be effected because of economical systems, personal believes and values of a
person, or the way they were raised.
For example, my internship is at Spaulding for Children which is an Adoption and Foster
Care Agency. I have an African American male who is ten years old. He doesnt feel comfortable
with being placed a Caucasian family. He feels this way because he has had friends at school ask
him why his parents are white. It can be difficult for a child to feel comfortable being raised by a
white family if they have only been exposed to an African American family.
The article, Does HBSE Teach Students to Do Anything? Helps me also relate and
reflect on my past two years in social work school. The main thing that I could relate to is doing
the bio-psycho-social. Doing bio-psycho-socials has been my favorite part of the whole program.
When our professors would assign to do one, I would get excited and immediately think about

who I am going to do it on. I believe that doing a bio-psycho-social helps you have major
interaction with your client. As a social worker, you learn different things about their entire life.
After the bio-psycho-social is completed, it is easier to for a social worker to understand the
person and environment of the client. While completing most recent bio-psycho-social, I learned
that my client had a history of cancer. This shows why she has missed so many visits with her
children due to her doctor appointments.
The article Should HBSE Favor Social Environment Theories over Theories of
Individual Behavior, helped me understand that race, culture, ethnicity sexual orientation,
religion, and physical/mental disabilities dont need to be looked at in depth when talking about
HBSE. How the human functions in society plays a more important role. Interning at Spaulding
for Children has really had me look at a birth parents childhood. If a social worker can
understand the childhood of a birth parent, it can help them understand why he or she parents the
ay that they do. HBSE is an important topic that social workers need to understand.