SOCIAL WORK

Social Work



Social Work

1. Discuss your current thoughts on the social work profession having almost completed Introduction to Social Work course

The social work profession addresses a variety of issues from child abuse ? homelessness ? teenage pregnancy ? poverty ? the elderly ? as well as the mental and physically challenged. (Barker 2009) The chief purpose of the field of social work according to Anne Minahan is to:

help develop new resource systems to meet the needs of the people;

establish initial linkages between people and resource systems themselves to make them accessible to each other;

facilitate and improve interaction between people within resources systems to promote the effective and humane operation of these systems and to make them responsive to people's needs; (Grinnell 2008)

facilitate ongoing interactions between resources systems to enable them to work together effectively and;

help people develop and effectively utilize their own internal problem solving and coping resource

According to Brueggemann (2002) there have been many assumptions made in today's society about people ? from which they are basically unable to solve their own problems and are in need of help. Brueggemann questions if people are generally healthy but live in an unhealthy society ? (Greene 2008) or are people basically unhealthy in a healthy society. It is essential ? that the social worker develops skills based on the needs of the client while applying each level within the system in order to achieve a complete understanding of the client's issues. Therefore ? social work must focus on the client's strengths rather than the problems. By empowering the client with the ability to solve their own problems and working in conjunction with the client and with the client's consent or in some cases on behalf of the client's acting within the four broad interceptive roles as broker ? (Fischer 2007) enabler ...