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What is Social Work

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Title: What is Social Work


1

Introduction to the ProfessionWeek Three What
is social work?
SWP 11 ITP Coordinator Dr Trish McNamara
2
Housekeeping
  • 1.First Assignment due Wednesday March 28th
  • 2. Course notes access
  • Username swsp
  • Password socialwork
  • (p.20 Student Survival Guide)
  • These are Confidential not to be passed on to
    others outside the Course.
  • 3. Library session Wednesday March 28th. Meet
    your Tutor at the Library as directed. After the
    session you should try to practice the skills
    taught eg. Exploring databases etc .

3
What is Social Work?
  • Not simple or straightforward
  • The answer will always be ambiguous and debated
    its boundaries will always be in negotiation.
    Payne, 1996 p185
  • Ways of describing
  • Different perspectives from Payne 1995, 2006
    (see Reading Pack)
  • What influences
  • Characteristics
  • Brainstorm Your views of social work since
    commencing the course? Has anything changed?
  • What does the man in the street think about
    social work?

4
What does social work involve?
  • Professional Activity
  • knowledge
  • skills
  • values

5
What knowledge does a social worker need?
6
Knowledge
  • Theories of what social work is
  • Theories of how to do social work
  • Theories of the client world

7
What skills does a social worker need?
8
Skills
  • Assessment
  • Intervention
  • Report writing
  • Liaison and networking
  • Teamwork
  • Group leadership
  • Community work
  • Advocacy and social action
  • See BSW Fieldwork subjects course outlines

9
What values should a social worker hold?
10
Social Works mission
  • Acceptance
  • Non-judgmental
  • Confidentiality
  • Social justice
  • Empowerment
  • Equality
  • Access
  • Anti-discrimination
  • Individual personal development
  • Social improvement
  • See also International Federation of Social
    Workers (IFSW) Mission Statement www.ifsw.org

11
Practical ways of describing Social Work
  • Look at job ads for the following
  • With whom or what do social workers work?
  • Organisational base and broader context
  • Fields of Practice
  • Type of Knowledge and Skills

12
Hidden Dimensions Ideas
  • Purpose, essence, roles for society
  • Social control
  • Band-aid
  • Dependency creating
  • Altruistic concern for disadvantaged
  • Potentially appropriate/ inappropriate
  • aspects of these roles?

13
More ideas
  • Perspectives
  • Social order
  • Sustaining social order and providing services
  • Personal empowerment
  • Helping people attain or regain personal
    fulfilment
  • Transformation
  • Stimulating change to promote freedom from
    oppression

14
Social Order - Individual Reformist
  • Sustaining social order and providing services
  • provide efficient social services to meet the
    needs of members of the public, sorting out their
    practical and emotional problems, getting other
    services to respond better to their needs and
    perhaps raising problems which affect a lot of
    people to improve the administration and
    provision of services Payne 1998, p125
  • Individuals and their social environment
  • Individual adjustment, inadequate social
    provisions
  • Understand, seek goodness of fit, services
  • Accept existing social order
  • Other positions seen as unrealistic

15
Personal Empowerment Reflexive-therapeutic
  • Helping people attain or regain personal
    fulfilment and power over their lives
  • helping individuals (and perhaps groups and
    communities) to achieve personal growth , self
    actualisation and personal power over their
    environment, that is to, identify and fulfil
    satisfactorily their human wishes and needs
    (Payne, 1995)
  • Enhance personal and social functioning thus
    improve the quality of life for everyone
  • Interpersonal helping relationships, mutual
    interaction, downplay services
  • Ignore the generality of the social for the
    humanity of the personal

16
Change Socialist-collectivist
  • Stimulating change to promote freedom from
    oppression
  • rather than helping people to adjust to
    society to deal with their problems we should
    change fundamental structures in society which
    are the origins of most peoples problems
  • Social change at both the individual and societal
    level
  • Causes of social problems identified within
    social and econ structures of society
  • Social action, individual empowerment
  • Doesnt accept current social order
  • ? Difference social/political action and SW

17
One definition..
  • Social work is a profession committed to the
    pursuit of social justice, to the enhancement of
    the quality of life and the development of the
    full potential of each individual, group and
    community in society.

18
One definition (continued).
  • Social workers pursue these goals by working to
    address the barriers, inequalities and injustices
    that exist in society, and by active involvement
    in situations of personal distress and crisis.
    This is done by working with individuals towards
    the realisation of their intellectual, physical
    and emotional potentials and by working with
    individuals groups and communities in the pursuit
    of equitable access to social, economic and
    political resources.
  • Social workers also pursue their goals through
    involvement in research, policy development,
    consultancy and management.
  • Australian Association of Social Workers (1997)
  • www. aasw.org.au

19
Influences on the nature of Social Work
  • Not determined in isolation
  • Social environment controls, constrains and
    directs
  • Role in relation to other social institutions
  • Vary across countries and cultures
  • Eg western, individual, self direction
  • Eastern, interdependence, directive
  • Defined and redefined by interaction with others
  • Interests of powerful groups

20
Political-social-ideological context
  • Policy and legal context (community development
    or advocacy out of favour in 80s 90s,
    rediscovery of community) Why?
  • Human rights legislation shape provision, eg
    disability
  • Welfare regime, approach to welfare
  • Role in general welfare
  • Connection with service provision
  • Distinguishing role from other professions (
    nursing, occupational therapy, psychology etc)

21
Characteristics of social workers
  • Non judgemental, protect and assist all citizens
    (rights and citizenship)
  • Benefits and services are a right, need effective
    planning
  • Collective provision of society not just an
    individual
  • User participation
  • Not external expert
  • Choice, values, respected, own solutions
  • Stakeholders in services.
  • Social model of explanation
  • Social origins of problems, not individual
  • Social influence on and impact of problems
  • Focus on family and community involvement
  • Integration of individuals with family and
    community

22
Social works claim
  • social improvement can be achieved by
    interpersonal influence and action, that social
    change can be harnessed to individual personal
    development and that carrying out these two
    activities together should be a profession.
  • Payne,2006

23
Dimensions to Social Work
  • Diversity
  • Genericism and Specialisation
  • Context of Welfare State
  • Secular
  • Integration knowledge, values and skills
  • Normative (Ife, 1997)

24
Understanding the person in social context
25
(No Transcript)
26
Person in social context
  • Microsystem
  • Mesosystem
  • Exosystem
  • Macrosystem
  • Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979)The Ecology of Human
    Development

27
Microsystem
  • The individual within her/his immediate social
    systems (the nuclear family, the school, the
    workplace, the neighbourhood ) important to
    consider the strength and nature of the
    connections

28
Mesosystem
  • Nature of the connections between family, school,
    workplace, neighbourhood and community ( church,
    recreational groups etc) microsystems

29
Exosystem
  • Systems in which the individual does not play a
    direct role but which impact on the individual
    e.g. fathers workplace ( retrenchment?), local
    government and non-government institutions,
    health, mental health and welfare services

30
Macrosystem
  • Overarching cultural, sub-cultural and
    institutional systems that impact on lower order
    systems e.g. dominant beliefs re unemployed
    people or children with behavioural problems

31
The Webbers
  • Clive -Father
  • Amanda - Mother
  • Joanna- 9years
  • Andrew -5yrs

(BBC training tape)
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