THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL WORK

The Context of Social Work

The Context of Social Work

Introduction

Social work in the probation service, considers some of the problems that beset the probation officer as social worker: the confusion between treatment and punishment, the inability of social workers to prevent their clients committing further offences. He says, however, these problems only remain problems because of the type of relationship that the probation service has with the courts at present (Clark, 2001).

Researchers argue for the dissociation of the probation service from the court's sentences so that once the assumption of penal responsibility is taken away from the probation officer he could be able to function better as a social worker, perhaps operating his own voluntary referral system for defendants in court. Such 'social work provisions and counselling for offenders as a deprived group would be offered irrespective of their effect on the crime rate (Gray, 2003).

In effect, they each conclude that social work has a discrete, identifiable existence outside the agency's function, and in some instances have gone on to argue that this being the case, the practice of social work should remove itself to have an independent life outside that agency and its particular function. (Barker, 1987)Researchers believe he can recognize social work in the probation service outside of the traditional function of that agency. This being so, he proceeds to recommend that social work with offenders be placed elsewhere in the system (Green, 2001). In a different context, but using similar arguments, many have attempted to practice social casework in a fee-paying agency, independent of both the local authority and the client's work place, free of bureaucratic restrictions and staffed by professionally qualified social caseworkers (Barker, 1987).

Principal And Values Of Social Work

Believing that many of the statutory obligations of local authority departments may be at odds with social work principles and that there are many needs not being met by established agencies, the authors went on to set up their own independent agency, devising their own mandate, and providing more scope to practise their casework skills without the constraints normally experienced in social work agencies. Again, the practice of social work is seen to be frustrated in most existing settings (Egan, 2000).

Having made this observation, Farmer and her colleagues then identify social casework, rescue it, and place it in a benign environment (the independent fee-paying agency) in order for it to flourish as of old. Of course, such ideas are not new. Agencies and their organizations have often been felt to constrain practice. But the answer being developed here does not lie in separating social work from agency function. (Barker, 1987)In fact, what is being suggested is that this is conceptually impossible (Clark, 2001). As well as failing to see that social work is linked to society through statute and community mandate, articles in the mould of Researchers and Farmer do not always distinguish the function of an agency from the organization of that agency (Howe, ...