Practice Research On Life Model-based Casework Helping Disabled Elders In A Relocated Community To Cope With Stress

Elderly persons with disabilities living in centralized resettlement communities for poverty alleviation and relocation in ex situ may face multiple life stress.If this psychological stress is difficult to release for a long time,it will seriously affect their physical and mental health.In view of this,during my internship at Z Social Work Service Center,I took advantage of the opportunity to participate in the home care project for the disabled in L County—the Sunshine Home Program,and selected a sample from the W community(a centralized resettlement community for poverty alleviation and relocation in the west).Three elderly disabled persons facing multiple stressors such as disability,old age and migration are the service object and research objects.This practical research aims to explore how a meaningful coping-centered case-based social work approach under the leadership of life model can effectively help service object cope with multiple life stressors.In the previous research,this study used participatory observation and semi-structured interview to collect data.Through the analysis of the interaction between the service object and the community environment and its stress response mechanism,we understand the effect of multiple sources of life stress on them,identify their ways of coping with multiple life stress,and clarify their resources that can be used to cope with multiple life stress.On this basis,based on the daily life scene of the service object,this study applies the case work method centered on meaning response under the guidance of life model to help the service object cope with the multiple stresses caused by the mismatch of personal resources and environmental resources in daily life.This mismatch is manifested in lower personal resources(less motivation to change,less confidence in coping with stress,more negative emotions,etc.)and higher environmental resources(social work stations,day care centers,new citizen management centers,etc.).In view of this,in the case work intervention,one is to mobilize the subjective initiative of the service object to deal with multiple life stress,encourage them to resort to specific actions and participate in local life;second,through the link resources to provide support for coping with multiple life stress,and to help maintain the motivation of coping,adjust the coping style,learning the meaning of coping,including the stress in the social,cultural,historical perspective,and then the stress for a more constructive meaning construction;third,guide them to strengthen the grasp of meaning response in the practice of linking subject and environment.This learning and growth-oriented service mode effectively reduces the psychological stress of service object.This study is an innovative exploration of the holistic meaning coping framework in the field of social work practice for the elderly with disabilities.It is a coherent attempt based on the concept of ’ people in the context ’ of social work,which is expected to deepen the connotation of stress coping in life mode.This meaning coping framework dominated by life model believes that the meaning coping model proposed by Lazarus and Folkman is limited to the perspective of cognitive theory,and does not pay enough attention to the interaction between individuals and the environment,the significance of cultural environment to individuals,and the meaning dimension of individual life.From the overall perspective of ’ human being in situation ’,the concerto of narrative theory and ecological perspective and life course perspective in life mode can save Lazarus and Folkman ’ s meaning coping mode from focusing on psychological dimension.On the one hand,the holistic meaning coping framework needs to be integrated into the ecological perspective(physical environment,social environment and cultural environment)and the perspective of life course(personal time,historical time and social time)in the life mode to examine the interaction and resource matching between the service object and the environment,and examine how the service object constructs the meaning of life in the context of history,society and culture,so as to grasp the interactive relationship between the grand social narrative and the individual life narrative,and reveal the experience significance and value basis of the service object to deal with the stress.On the other hand,in the empirical context of service object ’ coping with stress,narrative theory can guide them to reconstruct stress coping stories based on Lazarus and Folkman ’ s meaning coping strategies(such as interest discovery,interest reminding,and injecting positive significance into ordinary events),which is conducive to the stimulation of subjective initiative,the shaping of positive self-identity,the lighting of life hope,and the opening of life meaning realm.This study shows that the holistic meaning coping framework under the guidance of life model fits the logic and situation of service object ’ s stress coping.