Social Work as a Profession

The purposes of social work are the following: to enhance the problem-solving and coping capacities of people; to link people with systems that provide them with resources, services and opportunities; to promote the effective and humane operation of these systems; and to contribute to the development and improvement of social policy (Kirst-Ashman and Hull, 1993, p. 7). Social work helps people in need by using all available ethical means possible.

In my examination of social work as a profession and the settings in which social work is practiced, I visited several organizations: Inland Regional Center, San Bernardino's Community Hospital's Adult Day Health Care Center and Daybreak Alzheimer's Care Center, Guadalupe Home Foster Family Agency, and the Southern Regional Office of the State Department of Mental Health's Conditional Release program (CONREP).

In each of these agencies, the role of the social worker, while unique to each location, entailed very similar social work practice activities. Social workers in these settings are employed to implement some form of intervention and/or treatment program for the poor, disadvantaged, disenfranchised and disabled

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orker must evaluate interventions. Workers must also recognize when goals are attained and termination achieved. A number of forces have influenced our profession and the delivery of services. Historically, both the mental hygiene movement in the 1920s and psychoanalytic psychology in the 1930s tended to shift attention to the individual. Next, social work became split between an "inner" and an "outer" focus, losing the family focus. Limitations in the knowledge and theory base that supported social casework practice made the integration of a family focus difficult with the new psychological emphasis. The 1950s saw a return to an interest in the family as the unit of attention. In 1954, Frances Scherz defined family-centered casework as the improvement of the social functioning of the family unit, achieved by direct or indirect treatment of the individual family members, so planned, balanced and controlled that benefits accrue to the total group (Hartman and Laird, 1983, pp. 11-22). However, the question of how to assess the social, physical and emotional needs of the family still remained. Much literature was generated on this matter concerning the development of a theory of family diagnosis. Efforts to assess the
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Approximate Word count = 2350
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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