DISCIPLINE and IDEAS in

APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES

WHAT COMES TO YOUR MIND
WHEN YOU HEAR THE PHRASE
“SOCIAL WORK”?
The Discipline of SOCIAL WORK
is closely associated with government welfare and social programs aimed at achieving social justice, fairness,
and attainment of social equilibrium.

“The social work profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the

empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being.

Utilizing theories of human behavior and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people
interact with their environments.

Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work.” (International
Federation of Social Workers 2013)
SOCIAL WORKERS
Aim to protect vulnerable people from abuse, neglect, or self-harm and to help enhance their well-being
and quality of life.

Social workers practicing in statutory contents such as local authorities or National Health Service (NHS)
Trusts commonly assess the need for care, support and protection of individuals or families, develop care plans,
and provide or manage the provision of care.

They are also responsible for implementing policies, which aim to safeguard vulnerable children or adults
and ensure that people have as much choice and control over services they use as possible.
SOCIAL WORKERS
Social workers work closely with other professionals, often known as interprofessional working.

Mental health social workers, for example, often work in teams alongside community mental health
nurses, occupational therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

However, inter-professional working is common for all social workers.

 FROM SOCIAL CARE to SOCIAL WORK
Social work has evolved from common-sense domestic care to professional service.
Ø A wide variety of people in the community, from friends to parents, relatives, volunteers to all people of
goodwill, participate in providing social care.
Ø This includes providing personal care, supporting individuals with daily living, and supporting people to
engage with their communities and have more direct contact with people.

There had been no qualifications or professional license required to do social care.

To move from social caregiving to social work professional practice, one has to go through special training to
join the social work profession with a protected title.
Unlike social work is a qualified, registered profession with a protected title.

Unlike social care, social work is generally more detached in dealing with its clients, However, relationship-based
social work does exist in which emphasis is put on the importance of the relationship social workers have with the
people they are working with (Hartman 2015).
 DEFINITION OF SOCIAL WORK
The policy ethics and Human Rights Committee of the British Association of Social Workers (2012)
provides the definition of social work:

“the social work profession promotes social change, problem-solving in human relationships, and the
empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being.

Utilizing theories of human behavior and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people
interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social
work.”
GOALS OF SOCIAL WORK
Dubois and Miley (2008) highlight the following goals and scope of social work, calling them tenets.

1. Empower people, individually and collectively, to utilize their own problem-solving and coping
capabilities more effectively.
2. Support a proactive position regarding social and economic policy development to prevent problems
for individuals and society from occurring.
3. Uphold the profession's integrity in all aspects of social work practice.
4. Establish linkages between people and societal resources to further social functioning and enhance
the quality of life.
5. Develop cooperative networks within the institutional resource systems to meet health and human
service needs.
GOALS OF SOCIAL WORK
Dubois and Miley (2008) highlight the following goals and scope of social work, calling them tenets.

6. Promote social justice and equality of all people about full participation in society.
7. Contribute to the development of knowledge for social work profession through research and evaluation.
8. Encourage exchange of information in those institutional systems in which both problems and resources
opportunities are produced.
9. Enhance communication through an appreciation of diversity and through ethnically sensitive, non-sexist
social work practice.
10. Employ educational strategies for the prevention and resolution of problems.
11. Embrace a world view of human issues and solutions to problems.
 SCOPE OF SOCIAL WORK
1. Child development 2. Medical Social 3. Clinical Social Work 4. Social Work
Work Administration and
Management
• Right to education The medical social The clinical social • Budget Management
workers provide worker provides a full
• Right against • Monitoring and
assistance to the range of mental health
exploitation evaluation of public
patients and their family services including
and social policy
• Right to who are coping with assessment, diagnosis
rehabilitation many problems. and treatment. • Co-ordinate
activities to achieve
• Right to speech and
the agencies goal
expression
• Staff co-ordination
 5. International Social Work
SCOPE OF SOCIAL WORK
6. Social Work in an Acute 7. Social Worker as a Other scopes of social work
Psychiatric Hospital Community Organizer are:
• Counsel and aid refugees to • Complete intake • Assist the community in • Addiction Treatment
ensure a smooth transition defining a school problem • Child abuse, adoption and
• Psycho-social
into a new environment. welfare
assessment • Provide direction and
• Facilitate international • Criminal justice
guidance to the community
• Provide patient and • Crisis intervention
adoption in order to mobilize and
family education and • Development disabilities
identified cause by case
• Provide disaster relief in support • Disaster relief
work, group work and
time of crisis • Domestic Relief
• Provide individual community organization
• Domestic violence
• Counsel families to find treatment family and
• Assist in establishing new • HIV/AIDS
better solution to their group therapy
programs to meet the • Military Social Work
problems. Remove children
• Provide discharge and needs of individuals, • Political development
from abusive situation and
after planning. groups and families. • Rural development
place it to care homes
• Industrial development
• Women welfare
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
The Policy Ethics, and Human Rights Committee of the British Association of Social Workers
(2012) has principles that apply in general to other professionals in the social work profession.

PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

• Social Workers should respect, uphold, and
1.Upholding and promoting human defend each person’s physical,
dignity and well-being. psychological, emotional, and spiritual
integrity and well-being.
• They should work toward promoting the best
interests of individuals and groups in society
and the avoidance of harm.
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
The Policy Ethics, and Human Rights Committee of the British Association of Social Workers
(2012) has principles that apply in general to other professionals in the social work profession.

PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

2. Respecting the right to self- • Social workers should respect, promote, and
determination. support people’s dignity and right to make
their own choices and decisions, irrespective
of their values and life choices, provided that
this does not threaten the rights, safety, and
legitimacy of others.
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
The Policy Ethics, and Human Rights Committee of the British Association of Social Workers
(2012) has principles that apply in general to other professionals in the social work profession.

PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

3. Promoting the right to • Social workers should promote the full

participation. involvement and participation of people
using their services in ways that enable them
to be empowered in all aspects of decisions
and actions affecting their lives.
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
The Policy Ethics, and Human Rights Committee of the British Association of Social Workers
(2012) has principles that apply in general to other professionals in the social work profession.

PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

4. Creating each person as a whole. • Social workers should be concerned with the
whole person, within the family, community,
societal, and natural environments, and
should seek to recognize all aspects of a
person’s life.
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
The Policy Ethics, and Human Rights Committee of the British Association of Social Workers
(2012) has principles that apply in general to other professionals in the social work profession.

PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

5. Identifying and developing

• Social workers should focus on the strengths
strengths
of all individuals, groups, and communities,
and thus promote their empowerment.
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO SOCIAL JUSTICE
1. Challenging Discrimination 2. Recognizing diversity
• Social workers have a responsibility to
• Social workers should recognize and respect
challenge discrimination on the basis of
the diversity of the societies in which they
characteristics such as ability, age,
practice, taking into account individual, family,
culture, gender or sex, marital status,
group, and community differences.
political opinions, skin color, racial or
other physical characteristics, sexual 3. Distributing resources
orientation, or spiritual beliefs.
• Social workers should ensure that
resources at their disposal are distributed
fairly, according to need.
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO SOCIAL JUSTICE
4. Challenging unjust policies 5. Working in Solidarity
and practices

• Social workers have a duty to bring to • Social workers, individually, collectively, and
the attention of their employers, with others have a duty to challenge social
policymakers, politicians, and the conditions that contribute to social exclusion,
general public the situations where stigmatization, or subjugation, and work
resources are inadequate or where the toward an inclusive society.
distribution of resources, policies, and
practices are oppressive, unfair,
harmful, or illegal.
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY

2. Being trustworthy
1. Upholding the values and reputation of the
profession. • Social workers should work in a way that is
• Social workers should act at all times in accordance honest, reliable, and open, clearly
with the values and principles of the profession and explaining their roles, interventions, and
ensure that their behavior does not bring the decisions and not seeking to deceive or
profession into disrepute. manipulate people who use their services,
their colleagues, or employers.
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY

4. Making considered professional judgments

3. Maintaining professional boundaries.

• Social workers should establish appropriate • Social workers should make judgments
boundaries in their relationships with service users based on balanced and considered
and colleagues, and not abuse their position for reasoning, maintaining awareness of the
personal benefit, financial gain, or sexual impact of their own values, prejudices, and
exploitation. conflicts of interest on their practice and on
other people.
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL WORK
PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY

5. Being professionally accountable

Social workers should be prepared to account for and

justify their judgments and actions to people who use
services, to employers and the general public.
 CORE VALUE OF SOCIAL WORK
The core values of social work serve to provide consistency in the fulfillment of the social welfare delivery
and in the general promotion of well-being and quality of life of all people.

1. Compassion. This can be considered as an important 3. Social Justice. It is a basis of their understanding of the
value for all humankind but in social work, it occupies a need to ensure that everyone get serviced and that everyone
special impetus to the functioning of the profession. It is get a share of what the community possesses in material
the basis for someone to go out and become a voice to the and non-material assets.
voiceless and a friend to the people who need it most.
4. Dignity and worth of the person. It is a value that
2. Service. It directs social workers to go beyond purely provides the determination and drive for social workers to
performing a service for a pay and allow them to be seek the marginalized in all forms without much regard as
generous with their time. to whether such problem in self-inflicted or socially
imposed.
CORE VALUE OF SOCIAL WORK
5. Importance of human relationships. It makes it
possible for social workers to do their job as most
human situations they seek to address require
collaborating with so many other professionals and
individuals with a stake in the issue.

6. Integrity. It is necessary in all human endeavors. In social work,

nothing can be accomplished without integrity. A social worker will
have difficulties to be accepted by the people to receive services and
by those he/she needs to collaborate with to facilitate problem
solving and empowerment of an individual or a group.

7. Competence. It is a very important value for social

work professional practice. Through special training, a
social worker becomes separated from all common
sense, culture, and religious-based care.
 ROLES OF SOCIAL WORK
AS A B RO K E R AS AN ADVOCATE
The social worker is involved in the
process of making referrals to the In this role, social workers fight
family or person to needed resources. for the rights of others and work
Social work professionals do not to obtain needed resources by
simply provide information. They also convincing others of the
follow up to be sure the needed
resources are attained. This requires
legitimate needs and rights of
knowing resources, eligibility members of the society.
requirements, fees, and the location of
the services.
 ROLES OF SOCIAL WORK
AS A C A S E MANAGER AS AN EDUCATOR

They are involved in locating services Social workers are often involved in
and assisting their clients to access teaching people about resources and
those services. Case management is how to develop particular skills such as
especially important for complex budgeting, the caring discipline of
situations and for those who are children, effective communication, the
homeless or elderly, have chronic meaning of a medical diagnosis, and
physical or mental health issues, are the prevention of violence.
disabled, victims of domestic or other
violent crimes, or are vulnerable
children.
 ROLES OF SOCIAL WORK
AS A FACILITATOR AS AN EDUCATOR

In this role, social workers are involved

Social workers are involved in many
in gathering groups of people together
levels of community organization and
for a variety of purposes including
action including economic
community development, self
development, union organization, and
advocacy, political organization, and
research and policy specialists.
policy change.
ROLES OF SOCIAL WORK
AS A MANAGER

Because of their expertise in a whole

variety of applications, are well suited
to work as managers and supervisors in
almost any setting.
They are better able to influence policy
change and/or development, and to
advocate, on a larger scale, for all
underprivileged people.
CORE FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL WORK
ENGAGEMENT
“The social worker must first engage the client in
early meeting to promote a collaborative
relationship.”

ASSESSMENT
“Data must be gathered that will guide and direct
a plan of action help the client.”
CORE FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL WORK
PLANNING
“Negotiate and formulate an action plan.”

IMPLEMENTATION
“Promote resource acquisition and enhance role
performance.”
CORE FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL WORK
MONITOR/EVALUATION
“On-going documentation through short-term
goal attainment of extent to which client is
following through.”

SUPPORTIVE COUNSELING
“Affirming, challenging, encouraging, informaing,
and exploring options.”
CORE FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL WORK

GRADUATED DISENGAGEMENT
“Seeking to replace the social worker with a
naturally occurring resource.”