Essential Knowledge for Social Work Studies

Cinday Waszak Geary Photography

I often run into students who feel overwhelmed during their first semester studying social work; they ask, "How am I supposed to memorize all of this information?" Actually, you should not try to memorize a whole lot of information. A student will be much better off if he or she focuses on understanding a few key points about social work. What are those key points? They are:

• Social Work history
• Social Work problem solving stages
• The arenas for social work practice
• And the social work code of ethics

That's it. But some students will say, "That's still too much." Let's try to break each of these areas down:

Social Work History

The reason we study social work history is so that we can understand the importance of the three systemic levels of social work practice: the micro system, the mezzo system, and the macro system. Social workers think in terms of social systems, but these systems occur on different levels of the organization of society. The details of social work history should help you to understand how these three systemic levels emerged, and how they are interdependent in good social work practice. When you study the history of social work, focus on what that history tells you about the emergence of social work practice and intervention on the micro, mezzo, and macro level and you will be fine.

Social Work Problem-Solving Stages

Well, what about social work problem solving? What your professors want you know about social work problem solving is that it is a continuous process of engagement, assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, and termination. This process is pretty much the same, whether you are working with a micro system, a mezzo system, or a macro system. First you have to engage the client or constituency -- you have to listen to them. More than listening, you have to actually hear them -- which is not always the same thing as merely listening. You want to try to get a sense of who your clients are and the social environment they are part of, and is part of them.

Assessment and Planning

Once you have engaged the client, and gotten a sense of their social context, you are in a better position to assess the situation and plan an intervention. You want the client to be actively involved in assessment and planning because this empowers them and it enables them to become invested in the intervention that will follow. There will be dissonance, and you and the client will work at cross-purposes, if you assess the client's situation one way, but the client assesses the situation differently and you don't work together to resolve these differences.

Evaluation and Termination

Part of the planning stage of this process includes establishing agreement on how the intervention will be implemented and evaluated for its effectiveness, and at what point your engagement will be terminated. You and the client will have to think about how you will measure the effectiveness of the problem-solving approach that you both are implementing. You have to agree on a point of termination because you want to be able to establish closure -- you don't want the end of the intervention to come abruptly, which can trigger feelings of abandonment and betrayal.

A living and dynamic process

Above all, it is important to understand that this process is, well, a process. It does not have to advance in a linear fashion. There will be plenty of times when you have to double back, re-engage the client, re-assess the situation (especially as it is constantly changing), and re-plan the intervention. This doubling-back process occurs as situations develop that are unexpected -- sometimes unexpectedly good, other times they may be unexpectedly bad -- but you should always be prepared to adjust your assessment and your plans because life is full of contingencies.

Arenas of Social Work Intervention

As we have already noted, social work simultaneously takes place on multiple levels, but intervention is primarily with individuals, families, groups, communities, and/or organizational systems. The individual, family, and group levels of social work practice are fairly familiar to most people entering social work practice, because these levels mirror psychological intervention and counseling.

Individuals and Families

Social workers, who provide service for individuals, will quickly learn that the emotional and psychological dimensions of individuals are inseparable from their experiences in relation to their family -- regardless of whether their family ties are strong or weak. A client will be as much impacted by the survival mechanisms they had to develop, to compensate for a lack of kinship support, as they are if they have strong kinship ties that are effective in transmitting family values, behavior, and perspectives onto their children.

Group work 

Group work is often important because individuals may have experiences that they do not, or cannot share with other family members. Sometimes they will find more support with people outside of the family, who have had similar challenges and experiences. Problem-solving with groups can counter the effects of feeling alone in the world and enable group members to learn from, and support, each other.

Communities and Organizational Systems

When most people think of social work, they think of the medical and psychological models that are used in the profession. The part of the field that tends to be under-emphasized, and under-appreciated, grew out of the tradition of sociology. This aspect of social work engages communities and organizations -- it emerged from early practices of surveying social conditions concerning public health, housing conditions, poverty and associated problem, and race and ethnic relations. Social work on the community and organizational level has also involved consolidating or coordinating service delivery make sure the multiple dimensions of human needs are being met, within a community. Social work on the community and organizational level also focuses on advocacy and public policy.

Social Work Ethics

Social work ethics provide the intellectual software for the profession. The study of ethics is a branch of philosophy; it does not simply consist of mandates for the social worker to memorize and follow, but presents the worker with dilemmas which have to be wrestled with. For example, social workers have an ethical responsibility to promote the self-actualization of the individual; but we also have an ethical responsibility to protect sub-cultures from being steamrolled forced to resemble the dominant culture. What happens, then, when a subculture may be perceived as suppressing the self-actualization of individuals within it because this is a part of their traditional values?

The line between being a stalwart defender of individual rights and being a cultural imperialist is not very clear. Social work ethics present us with dilemmas to be considered, rather than directives to be memorized and implemented uncritically. Social work is a values-driven profession, and social work values are expressions of a set of cultural and historical assumptions. Social work does not stand outside of history and outside of culture; it reflects historical conditions and cultural expression. Social workers must always be self-reflective and must be able to critique the cultural stance of the social work profession itself. They must also be prepared to recognize, and grapple with, the ethical paradoxes that methods of intervention will present to them more frequently than we like to admit.

The Essentials to Social Work Studies

These are the essentials to studying social work. If you are able to discuss how intervention in micro, mezzo, and macro systems emerged out of the history of social work practice; if you can distinguish between the stages of engagement, assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, and termination; if you can contrast and compare arenas of intervention, such as the individual, families, groups, communities, and organizational systems; and if you analyze, synthesize, interpret and evaluate social work ethics and decision-making frameworks -- with appreciation for the ethical dilemmas they present -- then you find that you will not be burdened with having to memorize a whole lot of information that seems "academic" and impractical.

C. Matthew Hawkins

How Do Others See Us? The Image of Social Workers

Image credit: University of Tennessee at Martin

During our last class session an international student raised the question, "What does the general public think about social workers?" This is an important question, not only because it forces us to stand back and consider how we are perceived by American society, also because it prods us to consider some of the tensions between the values social work espouses (collectivism, interdependence, and process-orientation) and some of the essentials of American mythology and ideology (individualism, independence, and task-orientation).

We would like to believe, of course, that society values us and that our clients and constituents think the world of us. The fact of the matter is that many of our clients come to us involuntarily, due to a court order or as part of the requirement to get services from a public or private agency. These clients will see social workers as being agents of a bureaucracy or institution that they might, at best, feel ambivalent about. If a person sees a social worker involuntarily, the worker will have a harder time establishing themselves as a trusted resource, who can help the client to negotiate a complicated system.

Even when the client's encounter with the social worker is voluntary, they may resent the "middle class" social worker, who doesn't live in the neighborhood and is not from the community, but is being paid to work with, or deliver services to, people less income and fewer social resources. Then, of course, there are those who criticize social work when it is funded by government programs, because these people believe in a limited government. They would see the social worker as being part of an over-expanded social welfare state.

It is important for social workers to understand that all of the resistance they are getting from clients, and not all of the opposition that they get from the general public, is generated out of ignorance or mean-spiritedness. If social workers are to continue to be effective in working with clients and influencing public policy it is important for us to understand the legitimate concerns and criticism that -- or the misperceptions and misunderstanding -- that others have of social workers.

One way to get a handle on how social workers are perceived is to think about how we are depicted in mass  media. When was the last time you read a reference to a social worker in a novel, or saw a social worker depicted as a character on television or in a movie? What was the character like? What was the social work character "type"? How do you think the audience responded to this character?

What was the gender of the social worker? What was the social worker's age? What was the race or ethnicity of the social worker? What was the social work character's personality like? What motivated the social worker? How did other characters in the story respond to him or her?

Let's talk about this.

See also: Social Workers in an age of alienation

C. Matthew Hawkins

What Brings You to Social Work?

Image credit: college online.com

During the first class session for the generalist practice skills course (and we will do the same in the Social Welfare course) we considered the essential question for those who are entering or continuing a career in social work: "What is it that brings me into the social work profession to begin with?"

I think this is an important question because it helps us to think about what we are contributing to the social work profession. Really, the question is twofold: What were your prior experiences, before entering the profession?" and "What do you hope to do with the professional skills you are in the process of developing?"

Previous experiences may be of an emotional or psychological nature, such as depression, alcoholism, spousal abuse, etc. They may also include experiences of a more communal or social nature, such as poverty, discrimination, dislocation (immigration, refugee status, homelessness following a natural disaster, etc.), or alienation from one's community and social environment.

It is clear that there is not really a line that divides emotional and psychological experiences from social and community experiences. Being dislocated, as a result of flooding, is certainly a personal disaster, but it is also likely shared by a community of neighbors who have also been displaced by the flooding. Discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or socio-economic class is certainly personally painful, but it is also the result of social ideas about these categories -- in fact, the categories themselves are socially constructed.

One of the themes we will explore during the semester is the dynamic interaction between personal problems (and strengths) and the social environment. This is one of the essential characteristics of the way that social workers think. Our objective, as instructors, should be to teach you how to think within the profession. What tools of analysis and methods of assessment, intervention, and evaluation do social workers use?

Your first assignment is to think about what brings you into the profession. Of course, you should avoid any specific references that would violate the confidentiality of others or that would disclose personal information that you would prefer to keep confidential. You should draw on those parts of your experiences that you feel comfortable sharing with the public.

I also want to point out that not all experiences have to be negative -- some people will come to the social work profession because of positive experiences they have had with social workers. One often thinks about social work in terms of how the profession empowers clients, but the other side of the experience is how the profession empowers the social worker. One of the students asked the rest of the class, "Are you mostly becoming a social worker to empower other people or are you becoming a social worker to empower yourself?" Actually this is a good question; what is the individual social worker getting out of the deal and should they feel guilty about it?

I actually have more to say about that here, but first you should think about your own answers to this question.

So, this is our first question, to inaugurate the course: What is it that brings you to the social work profession? What experiences have you had that make you want to become a social worker? What vision do you have for the future that will involve skills you hope to develop in social social work classes?

C. Matthew Hawkins