A question of values in social work practice: Working with the strengths of black adolescent females

ABSTRACT

The author examines the foundational values of social work in current social work practices with inner-city black adolescent females. Case illustrations are presented to demonstrate how social work values are actualized in direct practice and research. Issues regarding the congruence of social work practices and basic ethical values and principles are discussed. Strength and empowerment perspectives in clear accordance with social work values are presented as practice models.

Professions legitimate their authority and social position in society by codifying standards of conduct. Generally, such standards profess values and beliefs in a code of ethics (Windt, Appleby, Batin, Francis, & Landesman, 1989). This legitimation of authority based on a profession's beliefs and values both prescribes and proscribes the way the professional edict should be carried out. A code of ethics also serves as the social contract by which the public trust is negotiated. Certainly, in American society, service professions (medicine, law, social work) universally profess belief in egalitarian values. Equally important is the fact that to become a member of a particular vocation, the novice, by virtue of education, training, and personal commitment to an ethical code, undergoes an identity transformation.

Advisedly, this article is not meant to be a review of the ethics literature. Rather, I clarify the ways in which social work values and principles are actualized in specific practice approaches in clinical work with black adolescent females. This work is conceptualized within the strengths and empowerment perspectives. The core assumptions also provide a framework for practice and, hence are worth noting.

Context and Assumptions

First, a core assumption in this article is that clients find clinical work helpful when their personal and collective experiences are validated. Second, clinical work occurs in a relational matrix that requires the practitioner to join the client(s) as an insider rather than as an outside observer. Finally, ethical or moral values shape social work practices, which, in turn, are indirectly communicated to clients in the clinical work. As Iglehart and Becerra (1995) persuasively argue, service delivery does not occur in a vacuum but in a culture of values, beliefs, and ideologies.

Although the reflective theorization in this article results from work with black female adolescents, my concern here is not primarily multiculturalism, culturally competent practice, or the significance of psychological theories in themselves. Other scholars have explicated both culturally competent practice and psychosocial behavior. In the case of ethnic-sensitive practice, Devore and Schlesinger's work (1996) is especially noteworthy.

Two questions undergird the present discussion: First, "Do all practice models conform equally to the basic ethical/moral values of social work? Second, "How are social work values weakened when they are not sufficiently actualized in clinical practices?"

The case illustrations presented here are drawn primarily from research and direct practice with inner-city black female teens. Adolescent cohorts comprised sexually at-risk females, ages eleven through fourteen years, and pregnant and nonpregnant females, ages seventeen through nineteen years. The three empirical research methods were (1) clinical intervention prevention in a simple experimental design, (2) an exploratory-descriptive design, and (3) focus groups. The research designs included both quantitative and qualitative methods. Direct clinical practices included individual and group services. Adolescent cohorts were seen in two different settings: a middle school and a large urban teaching hospital. Demographically, study samples and client service groups represented black inner-city, low-income adolescent females.

It is not my intent here to delineate research methods or study findings; both have been described elsewhere (Stevens, 1994,1996,1997a, 1997b). Rather, the article provides background information for these selectively cited cases. Perhaps equally meaningful, in considering context and background is my situated voice as author, researcher, and clinician - an African American female with thirty years of clinical experience prior to entering academia. African American female social work interns, under my supervision, led some of the group sessions. It is my hope that this article will contribute, in some way, to the ongoing dialogue regarding values and principles.

Morals and Values A Clarification of Terms

The primacy of humanistic beliefs in a profession's ethical code is its most respected attribute. Concisely stated, the core beliefs of social work are a belief in the worth and dignity of the individual, a belief in equal opportunity for the realization of maximum human potential, and a belief in a just society in which the allocation of goods and services are available to all persons (NASW Code of Ethics, 1996). Even within this humanistic framework, social work represents competing modes of practice that may be in conflict not only with one another, but with the profession's value premise and mission. A case in point is the current debate among social workers relative to private practice and agency-based services. The primary motivation for social workers entry into private practice is entrepreneurial self-interest (Specht & Courtney, 1994). Do underlying values of social work when privately practiced differ from those of agency-based practice? Do principles of practice differ in each domain? These are important questions that speak to the issue of social work's mission, its values, and its ethical code. Seemingly, the argument surrounding private practice underscores the ongoing tension concerning the mission of social work as that of social change and reform or of social adaptation.

Scholars have suggested that in the delivery of social work services, social workers deal with fundamental philosophical assumptions which generates the study of ethnics in social work practice (Loewenberg & Dolgoff, 1982; Reamer, 1982; Rhodes, 1986; Siporin, 1992). Additionally, clinical practices are often shaped by cultural and political ideologies that also necessitate the study of ethics. Ordinarily, the study of morals, values, and norms is the domain of philosophers and social scientists. However, increasingly professions in direct-service relationships with individuals are undertaking the study of values and ethics. Insofar as social services are created and delivered within social ecologies and dependent on immediate relationships with clients, the study of ethics and values is wellsuited for social work. Social work has been identified as a normative discipline with a moral calling (Siporin, 1992). Certainly, continued dialogue in this area is warranted. For purposes of clarity, morals and values are below.

Morals

Ordinarily we think of morals as principles of right and wrong necessary for individual and social conduct to ensure a harmonious and just social order. Commonly, personal goodness is reflected in the practice of the moral virtues (i.e., prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance). Morals, scholars suggest, give coherence and meaning to life. As Hauerwas (1974) states:

Moral behavior involves more than simply the decisions and choices men make about specific problems; it also includes the kind of men they are (their character and virtues), the kind of beliefs they hold and the way they integrate and organize their resources and energies to form a coherent life plan. (pp. 68-69) Quite tersely stated, Goldstein (1987) describes morals as "the oughts" of living.

Values

The explanation of values relevant to the present discussion is offered in the Encyclopedia of Social Work. Values are defined as "an enduring belief that a specific mode or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode or end state of existence" (Rokeach, as cited in Reamer, 1995, p. 5). From this time-honored definition, Reamer categorizes three types of values: ultimate, proximate, and instrumental. He explains that ultimate values are liberally conceived to provide universal guidelines for the group's highest goals; these values may be represented as respect for people, nondiscrimination, and equality. Proximate values are more concretely specified and relate to social policies that affect the immediacy of clients lives - the right to decent housing, the right to responsible health care, or affirmative action. Finally, instrumental values reflect just and reliable methods necessary to reach desired clinical goals, for example, the right to confidentiality, self-determination, or informed consent.

The following discussion identifies core social work values embodied in both strengths and empowerment perspectives. The subsequent section illustrates social work values and principles operationalized in clinical work with black female adolescents. Finally, I deliberate about an ethic of caring in a value-based vocation.

Learning From Clients: Strengths and Empowerment Perspectives

Empowerment and strengths perspectives provide the framework for understanding the lives of black teenage girls. Why were these perspective selected as the framework for analysis? The chief value is that they offer conceptual formulations, excluding the designation of deviancy or pathology, that address ways of understanding the meanings that clients construct to enrich and sustain their lives. As significant is the fact that both approaches view both the client and practitioner working together as co-collaborators, thereby fortifying the value that the client is the true expert witness to her own life. Finally, and perhaps most important, the strength and empowerment perspectives were selected because they represent ideas and values that have undergirded my own clinical practices throughout the years and that I have been able to fine tune through the cogent work of Saleebey (1994,1997).

I have suggested elsewhere that social workers rightly take pride in being a value-based profession but all too often adopt interpretations of social issues without clarifying their underlying values or use practice models and ideologies without being sufficiently aware of their embedded norms and values (Stevens, 1996). Notably, as a reaction to deficit explanatory models of behavior (i.e., psychodynamic theory), the issue of value-based models has been substantively addressed by scholars of the strengths and empowerment persuasions. In both approaches, select core social work values serve as foundational theoretical constructs. The instrumental value self-determination, for example, is the underlying construct in the case of the strengths perspective; whereas in the empowerment approach, the universal value of social distributive justice is the foundational construct. Plainly, the universal value of respect for human worth and dignity undergirds both perspectives.

The Strengths Perspective

The strengths perspective, in its emphasis on optimizing the individual's internal and external resources, views clinical processes (assessment, storytelling and intervention, and collaborative work) as being primarily client directed. Accordingly, in the strengths perspective, the practitioner seeks alignment with the basic good in human nature, suggesting that individuals know what is best for them. This perspective underscores the social work axiom "starting where the client is." The practitioner adopts the situated stance of insider in the collaborative work. Commonly, strengths are derived from disappointments, tragedies, and failures as well as from successes. Moreover, as the conceptual development of this perspective progresses, the inclusion of constructivist concepts (meaning, narrative, and subjugated knowledge) appear more prominently (Saleebey. 1994). Nevertheless, the perspective remains a client-centered, nonhierarchical approach, one in which strengths are consistently acknowledged, reinforced, and developed as they are revealed in the narratives clients construct about their own lives. Without question, the strengths approach represents considerable progress toward a psychosocial model of health. However, there are serious omissions in this approach: the issue of social redress and the intersubjectivity of psychosocial development and functioning. The issue of intersubjectivity or self-relatedness is conceptually significant, insofar as therapeutic work with clients is essentially relational (Stevens, 1997a).

Therapeutic work with ethnic minorities often necessitates meaning making to assist clients in discovering strengths in otherwise devalued ethnic/racial experiences (Green, Jensen, & Jones, 1996; Saleebey, 1994). For example, African American stories of political resistance reveal a people of tremendous courage and perseverance in the face of pernicious racially discriminatory practices. Although meaning making certainly occurs in work with black female teens, developmentally, a more complex process of narrative construction includes meaning synthesizes derived from three experiential domains (Stevens, 1997a). black female adolescents must make sense of experiences that may seem senseless to the practitioner. Developmentally, when black adolescent girls are engaged actively in identity exploration work, both meaning making and meaning synthesis are important cognitive operations. Moreover, practitioners, with a strengths perspective recognize resilient capacities and demonstrated strength, and help secure such strengths for continued use across diverse experiences. The following case example describes a late-aged adolescent engaged in meaning synthesis about possibilities for her future:

Sharon, a nineteen-year-old nonpregnant teen, had to make a critical decision about returning to school. Sharon moved from the residence of her family to live with her boyfriend and his family. Both families resided in public housing. Sharon's living arrangement was acceptable to her family. She supported herself with social security disability payments. Sharon had lost one of her lungs at seventeen years old from an accidental gunshot wound. According to Sharon, she had been "in the wrong place at the wrong time. Prior to the accident, she had dropped out of school in the eleventh grade. At the time, "hanging out seemed more attractive than adjusting to the routine of school Sometime after the accident she enrolled in a GED program. Sharon felt that the accident had "turned her around" and she saw her life differently. However, Sharon was in a dilemma as to whether she should remain with her boyfriend. She was not getting along well with her boyfriend's mother, who smoked marijuana almost daily.

Sharon commented:

"I had to decide to getting up and starting back to school and stop hanging around with the girls in the streets. Hanging in the streets means only trouble. Then I would be with my old friends again, but wanting to party. They were in school. I decided to get serious and stop playing around At first I thought I was too old to go back for a high school diploma. My accident made me think twice about life. I had to decide what may future was going to be."

The practitioner must be able to see strengths in Sharon's present meaning making actions and interpret these in the context of developmental tasks. Sharon's survival strengths are clearly evident. She has learned a great deal from the trauma of a violent accident, the dangers of street culture, and school failure. Moreover, she has engaged in meaning synthesis to interpret her experiences as laden with purpose and significance. At nineteen years old, she seems intent on resuming interrupted educational pursuits and proceeding with necessary developmental tasks.

The Empowerment Perspective

An empowerment perspective emphasizes that structured social inequities result from a social hierarchy of unequal power and privilege. Implicit in this approach are personal and communal strategies that effect social change through social redress. When working with females of color, in the management of their personal problems, one must be careful to assess both the personal and the political environments, and how the two intersect. Moreover, a power-enhancing intervention, in this approach, requires analysis of social inequities. Such interventions help women of color diminish or eliminate personal feelings of guilt or self-blame often experienced in inequitable situations (Guiterrez, 1990). However, we must be clear about the construction of language in the use of the empowerment concept. Scholars conclude that the practitioner empowers the client. The concept is appropriated in ways that infer that the practitioner's actions confers power (Hepworth & Larsen, 1997). Practitioners do not empower clients; clients empower themselves.

The nature of clinical work in an empowerment approach occurs on several fronts: First, the practitioner assists in maximizing social development opportunities that support and sustain the client's empowerment efforts by helping the client secure employment, schooling, and training. Second, the practitioner, through his or her working relationship with the client, identifies, clarifies, and interprets the client's personalization of social and structural inequities so that the client learns to resist social devaluation and victimization. Third, the practitioner supports both the client's existent and developing empowerment or resistance strategies in managing her life. Commonly, clients have already developed strategies to offset feelings of helplessness and powerlessness when confronted with social and structural inequities or racial/gender stereotypes and biases.

Thus, a necessary component of clinical work from the empowerment perspective is to help clients recognize existent personal strategies used to counter feelings of helplessness and powerlessness and to determine whether such strategies are, in fact, empowering or destructive. A corresponding viewpoint holds that psychosocial behavior is so complex that both destructive and empowering elements are represented in particular behaviors. For example, sassy conduct of black female adolescents which is ordinarily seen as simply loud, boisterous behavior may infer candidness, courage, and assertiveness - strengths that are needed to counteract feelings of helplessness and powerlessness in devaluing social situations. Also, sassiness, when used as a strategy to resist racial/ethnic victimization, can be seen as a fundamental expressive function for identity exploration during the adolescent period. At the same time, however, loudness and boisterousness in a school setting may be interpreted as conductdisordered behavior. Interestingly, middle school black girls' forthrightness was frequently compromised in relations with males. In male and female relations, practitioners often acknowledge and support assertiveness as exhibiting self-efficacy.

The role-playing segment below was audiotaped from a group session with eight young adolescent girls engaged in dialogue with regard to demanding respect from boys. The foci of group sessions were skill acquisition and developmental exploration. In this particular session, the girls were interested in learning how to use their assertive skills in dealings with disrespectful boys and men. A general concern in the group was that several of the girls had been involved in situations in which young neighborhood men were "hitting" on them. It is impossible in the transcript below to capture the girls' body language and, yes, their loud emotive stylistic expressions. However, both the idiomatic vernacular expressions and the male and female encounter are authentic depictions of real-life situations. This example was drawn from impromptu role-playing, not a written script:

Worker: You so fine, how you been, girl? (role of young adult male).

Girl: I'm chillin.

Worker: How old are you now?

Girl: Um, I'll be fourteen.

Worker: Dag, you look like you're eighteen, girl you got it gain on, yo. I'm serious. You know, what you doin later on.

Girl: What are you tryin to say! [In a loud voice, hand on hip].

Worker: Why you wanna get loud. I'm just trying to say, you know, you a nice lady. I wanna take you out to a movie, you know.

Girl: I'm under age and you could get arrested. So, no. Sony [turns and walks away].

Worker: No? No? Well forget you! Forget you! You ain't nothin but a ho anyhow! I don't wanna date you, which ya stank self!

Following the role-playing exercise, the practitioner cited John Singleton's movie Poetic Justice (with actors Janet Jackson and Tupac) as a parallel point of reference for the discussion. Concomitantly, the role-playing and movie (all the girls had seen the film), served as a context to stimulate talk and to help the girls tune in to their feelings of powerlessness and helplessness when in abusive and disrespectful situations. After affect was acknowledged, the girls were free to make supportive connections to one another and could, then, move on to recognize strengths exhibited in situations they themselves had encountered. The girls shared that they felt especially vulnerable ("really scared") when "dissed" by males whose sexual overtures had been rejected. The girls feelings were understandable. They were fearful of being coerced into having sex. Moreover, developmentally, they were undergoing many physical changes, including concerns about body image and "looking good." Male "dissing" (disrespect) was explicitly expressed: "nothin but a 'ho", "which ya stank self!" (you're a whore, and you have an odious and repugnant odor). Girls interpreted such responses as degrading and abusive. The practitioner, a social work intern, demonstrated remarkable ability to see the context of the girls' lives as an insider, and the girls experienced her as trustworthy and authentic.

Finally, both the strengths and empowerment perspectives seem highly complementary and offer useful ways to understand the individual within social ecologies. Seemingly, both perspectives determine specific interventions that enhance client self-determination and promote the goals of social justice and equality of opportunity. However, the strengths and empowerment practice approaches must be augmented by other knowledge domains, that is psychological theories to expand empirically-based practice. Evidently, cognitive and behavioral psychological theory has been useful in moving the profession in this direction. Relatedly, psychoanalysis is experiencing a profound paradigm shift as it incorporates postmodern constructs such as relational connection, cultural context, meaning making, social ecologies, and social categories of race, gender, and class (Altman, 1995). The psychodynamic paradigm, however, still lacks a credible empirical developmental theory. At this historical juncture, new and developing ideas from the domains of feminist and psychoanalytic conceptual frameworks promise significant contributions to the empirical knowledge base of social work.

Values and Principles in Action: Practice Suggestions

The illustrations cited above provide context for the discussion that follows. Unquestionably, social workers are well-intentioned, but service delivery takes place in an ambiguous world. As often happens in clinical work, practitioners, when confronted with complex psychosocial behaviors, may misapply or even suspend clinical theory and clinical principles, or they may use both simplistically. At such times, practitioners overlook the client's strengths, her capacities, and her abilities, all of which are uniquely characterized by race, ethnicity, and gender. Moreover, in such situations, the practitioner is likely to be quite vulnerable to the prevailing moralistic stereotypes about a given client group. Further, the practitioner may be biased by the profession's long-standing deficit assessment of families as hopeless, resistant, problematic, and hard to reach.

Even now, one wonders if such negativity persists in new modes of expression, such as families in "perpetual crises." In effect, when people are labelled in negative terms, they are devalued by the very language whose purpose is to give definition to their lives. Practitioners' overreliance on deficit categorizations of psychosocial functioning has not served the best interests of clients. Arguably, confidence in the use of a deficit model can obstruct the practitioner's view of clients' self-presentations of strength, purpose, and authority. Clearly, the practitioner and client encounter occurs in that transitional space where both are engaged in carrying out the common practices that give meaning to life.

Respecting Client Self-Worth and Dignity

Implicit in the universal value of respect for people are the instrumental values of acceptance and nonjudgmental attitude -- values that are operationalized in the first meeting with clients. First, we need to reformulate traditional exploration questions in an effort to know and be known by those whom we serve and collaborate, and to know ourselves as practitioner, servants, and collaborators. Generally, even these questions are not always directly asked of the client but represent the mapping cognition in which the practitioner is continually engaged. For instance, one must ask oneself, "Who is this special girl?" "What are her strengths?" "How does she use her strengths to get what she wants?"

"What meaning does this special girl attribute to her behaviors and to the behavior of others?" Such questions comprise the mapping cognition that assists the practitioner in developing the necessary values of acceptance and nonjudgmental attitude required for therapeutic work. In sustaining these instrumental values, I am more likely to join a girl as insider and in meaning making using queries that elicit storytelling. Consider the role-play illustration (and the group discussion that ensued) as storytelling. The worker intern was not repelled by the girls idiomatic expressions but rather was accepting, participating as an authentic character in the role-play. She discovered the "real" circumstances that the girls encountered in their dealings with males. Moreover, an excellent therapeutic opportunity materialized for group members to support one another in uncovering and acknowledging existent strengths.

Second, storytelling helps the adolescent girl to feel comfortable with the practitioner, if she is respected and accepted. Saleebey (1997) categorized numerous questions aimed to elicit client strengths: survival questions, support questions, exception questions, and possibility questions. I would add decision-making questions to this list. For example, "Have you ever been in situations in which you had to decide what was the right thing to do?" "What was it like to have to make that decision(s)?" "How did you come to make the decision(s) that you made?" "Did you feel you accepted responsibility for your actions?" I have found such questions especially helpful in engaging adolescent girls. Recall the first case example. It was elicited from decision making and possibility queries (Where do you think you're headed? What do you think it will take for you to get what you want?). Obviously, questions are not posed methodically but are used to encourage the client to share context, not specific answers.

Finally, when I am truly accepting and nonjudgmental, I am less interested in designating a girl's behavior as deviant or problematic. If the therapeutic work is to be accomplished, I am concerned that girls respect me as a person and practitioner. Simply put, I am curious about and interested in the "realness" of a girl's personal life and her social world. Also, I am humbled by the client's willingness to permit me to enter into a very special and perhaps different (i.e., therapeutic) relational experience. I am aware that certainly the start of our work together will be influenced by the girl's perception of and response to me as a practitioner. The therapeutic work is influenced by the client's trust of the practitioner; the level of interest shown by the practitioner, the understanding demonstrated by the practitioner, and the level of acceptance of the practitioner - all of which are actualized by the instrumental values of acceptance and nonjudgmental attitude.

Supporting Client Self Determination

The instrumental value selfdetermination may be more easily operationalized than most other values in therapeutic work. The freedom to choose and the right to make decisions are profoundly cherished rights. Nevertheless, selfdetermination is grievously restrained when opportunities for social mobility are blocked. A considerable portion of developmental therapeutic work with inner-city adolescent girls must be founded on the enhancement of agential functioning. Agential functioning refers to actions exercising strength, power, and command in daily life. However, agential functioning alone is not enough to manipulate environmental effects to maximize access to opportunities. To maximize access, social structures must exist where access is possible.

Black adolescent girls are more likely to engage in self-determining actions when they experience self-mastery within social environments. Accordingly, most inner-city low-income black adolescent girls seem to naturally develop an assertive vocal relational style to lessen their feelings of powerlessness and helplessness in confronted socially devaluing situations. Clinical intervention with troubled adolescent girls is basically identity-exploration work whereby meanings are co-constructed relative to decision-making and future-oriented social goals. Here too, exploration queries advance the relational process. As the collaborative work progresses, a girl's responsibility for meaning-making synthesis and corresponding social behavior becomes personally owned and thus a focus of the relational work.

To clarify this value more clearly, consider the group-session curricula referred to in the case illustrations: The skill-based exercises designed to enhance self-determining behaviors in decision making and choice clarification (choice clarification is choosing from a range of options and is different from value clarification). Certainly, sassy behavior can be considered healthy. However, decisions must be made regarding the appropriateness of highly vocalized assertive behavior, that is when to turn the volume up (in refusing sexually seductive men) and when to turn the volume down (in the school classroom).

The primary aim of the relational therapeutic work with black adolescent girls is to support existent strengths for capacity enhancement viz 'a viz the creation of personal meaning. In particular, such support enhances agential functioning as girls develop complex and differentiated coping styles. Significant meaning construction and meaning synthesis occurs in the acquisition of decision-making skills. Relational work with innercity black girls is especially challenging because of their heightened sensitivity to gender/racial devaluation and the threat of ethnic group disconnection that occurs normally, for black girls, during adolescence. The goal is that the adolescent girl will view the relational process work as a transitional space where authentic meaning synthesis occurs and genuine relational connection is experienced.

Enhancing Life Outcomes: Social Justice and Equal Opportunity

At the direct service level, the actualization of the value of social justice is conceivably the most difficult. Certainly, the value rests on the soundest of ethical principles - equity and distributive justice. As previously noted, self-determining behaviors cannot become fully actualized if opportunity pathways are blocked. Advocacy, community development, social support enhancement, resource access, and empowerment strategies are useful ways to right grievously unjust societal conditions. Regarding theoretical paradigms, I have elaborated elsewhere on this point with regard to black teen pregnancy (Stevens, 1996), arguing that an explanatory model that emphasized opportunity structures and distributive justice was the most rationally useful paradigm for understanding adolescent pregnancy as a social problem.

Clearly, adolescent service programs are needed to deliver social services in a systematic way guided by specified goals with formulated outcomes. For instance, the view of adolescent pregnancy as a social problem of blocked opportunities suggests specific approaches and particular goals for clinical program development. A core program goal and mission is to provide access to educational, social, and economic pathways for youth. Concretely, this suggests assisting girls in achieving school success. The real challenge of the program, however, is to relational processes to help participants realize program goals. Relational process refers to the means of developing and sustaining relational connections with adults, peers, family, and so forth. The middle school intervention and prevention curricula noted earlier was targeted for girls thought to be sexually at-risk as indicated by poor academic performance and defiant behaviors. The program was designed to accomplish specific goals including the development of: prosocial behaviors, relational connection, and self-care. One of the program components is to provide urban sanctuaries (i.e., social supports to offset the dangers of street life through participation in community programs) and community mentors to augment individual and group clinical services.

Conclusion

Core social work values, selfdetermination, and social justice are the foundational constructs of the strengths and empowerment conceptual frameworks. Both approaches support the idea that clients are not necessarily victimized by adverse experiences, but are real survivors who exercise authority and mastery in their daily life. In particular, strengths and empowerment approaches intersect in clinical work to support the developmental trajectory of inner-city black adolescent females. Essentially, the practitioner, when applying these perspectives, joins with the client as insider and collaborator to support existent strengths and actualize personal authority in daily life.

Finally, let us not romanticize either social work's early pioneering spirit or its present mission. A more enlightened view of the profession is that it is part of an economic and political system that determines what the relevant problems are, the proper ways to address them, and thus their underlying values (Iglehart & Becerra, 1995). Social work's universal and proximate values are always negotiated in the public arena and, consequently, subject to political and economic ideologies. All things considered, the impulse to care for others is a social virtue that benefits the common good. However, this same impulse often evokes a caring ethic replete with ideological biases such that a social problem becomes maligned in the public discourse. Thus, moral judgments that define both the nature of individuals and their social needs are implicit in public policies. In the meantime, genuine issues become obscured and the intended common good negotiated in a social arena of confusion and ambiguity. A case in point is the problem of nonmarital fertility, especially among females of color, whereby nonmarital parenthood becomes caricatured by the social categories of race, gender, and class. Our best intentions are to serve clients well. Making every effort to accept clients as they are - the legitimate storytellers of their personal narratives - and being open to the meanings clients assign to their own behaviors exercises social work's most cherished instrumental values -- acceptance and a nonjudgmental attitude.

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Joyce West Stevens is assistant professor, School of Social Work, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.

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