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American Heritage Dictionary:
social work |
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
social service |
For more information on social service, visit Britannica.com.
Gale Encyclopedia of Public Health:
Social Work |
In the public health arena, social workers are a valuable resource for the development of treatment plans for patients, for locating supportive resources, and in facilitating referrals. Under the auspices of government and non-government public health organizations and institutions, social workers often provide behavioral and social assessments along with mental health assessment, treatment, and short-term or ongoing case management. Social workers may also work in the community as planners or community organizers capable of engaging groups of people, neighborhoods, or entire communities to address social problems such as drug abuse or teen pregnancy. Social work is a distinct profession, requiring college training, and a masters degree is often a necessity. Many states license social workers, and in those states only those holding such licenses may legally provide social work services The possibilities of employment vary widely and include federal, state, and local government agencies; hospitals; and public health and not-for-profit organizations.
(SEE ALSO: Assessment of Health Status; Community Health; Mental Health; Social Determinants; Social Health)
— ROBERT P. LABBE
Gale Encyclopedia of US History:
Social Work |
The profession of social work emerged in the early twentieth century as charitable organizations began employing trained workers rather than relying on volunteers. Pioneers developed two competing approaches for addressing social problems. Mary Richmond, author of Social Diagnosis (1917), is celebrated as a leader of the charity organization movement, while the social settlement movement was epitomized by the work of Jane Addams at Hull-House in Chicago. The profession considers its founding date to be 1898, the year the first social work course was established at the New York School of Philanthropy (now the Columbia University School of Social Work). In 1915, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, Abraham Flexner, an educator and expert on professional standards, pronounced that social workers were not professionals, rather they served as mediators between clients and other professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Early social workers took that as a challenge and mobilized workers to produce professional literature, organizations, and a code of ethics.
As June Hopps and Pauline Collins (1995) have noted, the profession of social work responds to wider historical changes, shifting its focus from environmental reform to individual change, as the nation's social climate fluctuates. For example, social workers aimed to radically change institutions and rejected the traditional establishment during the Progressive Era of the 1900s, the depression of the 1930s, and the social unrest of the 1960s. However, in more conservative times, such as the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s, the profession attended to direct service and individual change.
While white Protestant women composed the majority of early social workers, Catholic, Jewish, and African American men and women often formed their own agencies. Segregation laws barred African Americans from white schools of social work, leading African Americans to create Atlanta University School of Social Work. Pioneers like Lawrence Oxley drew from nineteenth-century philosophies of mutual aid and race pride, and the journal Southern Workman provided a forum of discussion for African American social reformers of the early twentieth century.
In the 1920s, social workers debated whether the profession would include caseworkers across a broad range of fields or limit membership to a professional elite with high educational standards. The latter position won, and social workers were required to complete masters-level training. Depression-era social workers demanded a federal response to widespread unemployment and poverty. A new political activism was ignited within the profession and the social workers Harry Hopkins and Jane Hoey served in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, influencing new emergency relief and social security programs.
In 1952, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) emerged to accredit graduate schools, and by the 1970s, baccalaureate programs were accredited to prepare entry-level professionals. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) was established in 1955, adopting a code of ethics, and merging seven previously scattered organizations for psychiatric, medical, and group workers. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, organizations such as the National Association of Black Social Workers (1968), Latino Social Workers Organization (1992), and North American Association of Christians in Social Work (1954) evolved to address concerns of various groups.
Entry-level social workers are trained as generalists and are expected to provide service to a broad range of clients, maintain a wide scope of knowledge, and practice a great diversity of skills. Advanced practitioners with graduate-level training may specialize in areas such as clinical, medical, or school social work, as well as planning and development, aging, mental health, or corrections. In the late 1960s and 1970s, states began establishing licensing requirements to legally regulate practice. While all states require some form of licensure, current trends are moving toward "declassification": downgrading requirements for social work in order to employ persons with neither a license nor a degree to do case management and other functions traditionally reserved for social workers.
Bibliography
Carlton-LaNey, Iris. "African American Social Work Pioneers' Response to Need." Social Work 44, no. 4 (July 1999): 311– 321.
Hopps, June, and Pauline Collins. "Social Work Profession Overview." In Encyclopedia of Social Work. 19th ed. Edited by Richard Edwards and June Hopps. Washington, D.C.: NASW Press, 1995.
Popple, Phillip, and Leslie Leighninger. Social Work, Social Welfare, and American Society. 5th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
social work |
Modern Social Work
Modern social work employs three methods of assistance: case work, group work, and community organization. Case work is the method by which individual persons and families are assisted. The person in need of case work may be physically, mentally, or socially handicapped. Among those regarded as socially handicapped are: the unemployed, the homeless, members of broken families, alcoholics, drug addicts, and neglected or problem children. To determine the cause of maladjustment, the social worker must understand individual psychology as well as the sociology of the community. Physicians, psychiatrists, and other specialists may be required to help diagnose the difficulty.
Social group work is exemplified by the social settlement, the supervised playground and gymnasium, and the classroom, where handicrafts may be learned. The community may be called upon to provide the buildings and grounds for such activities; often the services of volunteers and of public groups are utilized; in recent years people living in poverty areas have been employed to work in and direct poverty projects in their own communities.
Through community organization the welfare work of single agencies as well as of whole communities is directed, cooperation between public and private agencies is secured, and funds are raised and administered. The funds required by private agencies are often pooled in a community chest, from which each agency receives a share. Community welfare councils are organized to map programs of rehabilitation, to eliminate duplication of services, and to discover and meet overlooked needs.
The Development of Social Work
Social work emerged as a profession out of the early efforts of churches and philanthropic groups to relieve the effects of poverty, to bring the comforts of religion to the poor, to promote temperance and encourage thrift, to care for children, the sick, and the aged, and to correct the delinquent. Orphanages and homes for the elderly were typical results of these activities. The word charity best describes the early activities, which were aimed at the piecemeal alleviation of particular maladjustments. In such charitable work the principal criterion in determining aid to families was worthiness, while the emphasis in later social work was on restoring individuals to normal life both for their own sake and for the sake of the community.
The first attempts to solve the problem of poverty in a modern scientific way was made by P. G. F. Le Play, who in the 1850s made a detailed study of the budgets of hundreds of French workers' families. Forty years later Charles Booth investigated wages and prices, working conditions, housing and health, standards of living, and leisure activities among the poor of London and revealed the extreme poverty of a third of the population. Booth's social survey became a method for determining the extent of social maladjustment, and through surveys in other cities in Europe and the United States a vast number of facts were accumulated, and methods were developed that provided the basis for modern social work.
In 1874 the National Conference of Charities and Correction (now called the National Conference on Social Welfare) was organized in the United States. Public relief and private philanthropic effort remained largely matters of local and state concern until after 1930, when the federal government entered the field of social work on a large scale to cope with the effects of the Great Depression. Resources were made available, the number of social workers was greatly increased, and it became necessary to coordinate public and private activities. Social work has been steadily professionalized, and special graduate schools as well as departments in universities have been established to train social workers. By 1999 there were 377 accredited undergraduate schools of social work in the United States.
Bibliography
See I. A. Spergel, Community Problem Solving (1969); R. E. Smith and D. Zietz, American Social Welfare Institutions (1970); W. C. Richan and A. R. Mendelsohn, Social Work (1973).
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Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Social work |
| Occupation | |
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| Activity sectors | Pursuit of social welfare and social change |
Social work is a professional and academic discipline that seeks to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of an individual, group, or community by intervening through research, policy, community organizing, direct practice, and teaching on behalf of those afflicted with poverty or any real or perceived social injustices and violations of their human rights. Research is often focused on areas such as human development, social policy, public administration, program evaluation and international and community development. Social workers are organized into local, national, continental and international professional bodies. Social work, an interdisciplinary field, includes theories from economics, education, sociology, medicine, philosophy, politics, psychology.
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The concept of charity goes back to ancient times, and the practice of providing for the poor has roots in many major ancient civilizations and world religions.
Social work has its roots in the social and economic upheaval wrought by the Industrial Revolution, in particular the struggle of society to deal with poverty and its resultant problems. Because dealing with poverty was the main focus of early social work, it is intricately linked with the idea of charity work, but it must now be understood in much broader terms. For instance it is not uncommon for modern social workers to find themselves dealing with the consequences arising from many other 'social problems' such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination based on age or on physical or mental ability. Modern social workers can be found helping to deal with the consequences of these and many other social maladies in all areas of the human services and in many other fields besides.
Whereas social work started on a more scientific footing aimed at controlling and reforming individuals (at one stage supporting the notion that poverty was a disease), it has in more recent times adopted a more critical and holistic approach to understanding and intervening in social problems. This has led, for example, to the reconceptualisation of poverty as more a problem of the haves versus the have-nots rather than its former status as a disease, illness, or moral defect in need of treatment. This also points to another historical development in the evolution of social work: once a profession engaged more in social control, it has become one more directed at social empowerment. That is not to say that modern social workers do not engage in social control (consider for example statutory child protection workers), and many if not most social workers would likely agree that this is an ongoing tension and debate.
The International Federation of Social Workers states, of social work today, that
"social work bases its methodology on a systematic body of evidence-based knowledge derived from research and practice evaluation, including local and indigenous knowledge specific to its context. It recognizes the complexity of interactions between human beings and their environment, and the capacity of people both to be affected by and to alter the multiple influences upon them including bio-psychosocial factors. The social work profession draws on theories of human development, social theory and social systems to analyse complex situations and to facilitate individual, organizational, social and cultural changes."[1]
Professional social workers are generally considered those who hold a degree. Often these practitioners must also obtain a license or be professionally registered.
The education of social workers begins with a Bachelor's degree (BA, BSc, BSSW, BSW, etc.) or diploma in Social Work. Some countries offer Postgraduate degrees in Social Work like Master's (such as MSW, MA, MSc, MRes, MPhil etc.) or PhD (doctoral studies). More and more graduates of social work continue to post-doctoral studies. It has been argued that social work education is supposed to be a lifelong process.
In a number of countries and jurisdictions, registration or licensure of people working as social workers is required and there are mandated qualifications.[2] In other places, a professional association sets academic and black requirements for admission to membership. The success of these professional bodies' efforts is demonstrated in the fact that these same requirements are recognized by employers as necessary for employment.[3]
There are a number of associations for social workers, which exist to provide ethical guidance and other forms of support for their members and social work in general. These associations/organizations are distinguished in international, continental or semi-continental, national and regional. The main international ones are the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). In the United States the main one is the National Association of Social Workers.
In the United Kingdom by far the largest number of social workers are employed by local authorities and many of these are represented by the public sector union UNISON. Smaller numbers are members of Unite the union and the GMB (trade union). The British Union of Social Work Employees (BUSWE) has been a section of the Community (trade union) since 2008. In 2011 the British Association of Social Workers launched a trade union arm for the second time (it first tried this in 1976) called the Social Workers' Union but this body is not recognised by the TUC or by any employers.
The main tasks of professional social workers can include a number of services such as case management (linking service users with agencies and programs that will meet their psychosocial needs - mainly common in US and UK), counseling & psychotherapy, human services management, social welfare policy analysis, policy and practice development, community organizing, international, social and community development, advocacy, teaching (in schools of social work), and social and political research.
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 | American Heritage Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Gale Encyclopedia of Public Health. Encyclopedia of Public Health. Copyright © 2002 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Gale Encyclopedia of US History. Encyclopedia of American History Copyright © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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