Social Work: Social Functioning and Key Functions

Social Work Focus

• Social Work is focused on a person's social functioning in their life situation.
• Social functioning is based on how a person performs different roles in society
• Problems in social functioning are caused by mismatches between role demands and an individual's capabilities.
• Problems can also arise from environmental factors that hinder role performance.
• Social Work aims to enhance social functioning.
• This is achieved by helping individuals adapt to their situations or alter environments

Social Work Functions

• Preventive: Identifies and addresses potential issues between individuals and their environment.
• Remedial: Assists people in solving problems caused by disequilibrium
• Developmental: Seeks to strengthen potential in individuals, groups, and communities using individual and social resources.
• Social workers often use all three functions when dealing with clients

Casework, Group Work & Community Organization

• Casework first used in the Philippines in the 1920s by the Associated Charities and government child welfare.
• Early social work practitioners introduced casework concepts taught in the US in the established schools in the 1950's.
• The teaching of these traditional methods includes social casework, social group work and community organization, with casework often highlighted.
• Courses focused on casework, the history of social work, and the one-on-one helping method.
• Practicum focused on casework in settings like hospitals and courts.
• Agencies became known as "casework agencies" until the late 1960s.
• Review workshops were held in the late 1960's to assess social work practices and methods.
• Socio-civic organizations like YMCA and YWCA started leisure activities for character building in the 1920's.
• These agencies were the first group-serving agencies with workers recruited from them.
• Group work was viewed as unattractive due to the perception that it mainly needed recreational skills.
• Casework was seen as more appealing with an emphasis on mental health settings.

Community Organization

• Community organization in the country evolved from the "community chest" model that originates in the US
• Community Chests raise funds for affiliated agencies using united fund campaigns
• Community chests encourage efficiency, prevent fundraising competition, and foster coordination between member agencies to avoid service duplication.
• The Community Chest of Greater Manila (CCGM) formed in December 20, 1949, with 19 private agencies.
• Other community chests formed, which led to Community Chest and Council of the Philippines (CCCP) establishment (1970)
• Dunham defined community organization as "meeting broad needs and bringing about and maintaining adjustments between needs and resources in a community".
• Many changes have been made to Community Organization practices with new models introduced.

The Generalist Approach

• Social workers should have a generic helping process applicable to different clients.
• Workers can selectively use models and approaches based on the client's problem.
• Separate practices of traditional methods are irrelevant in the local context
• Often a single social worker handles needs of the individual, family, group, or community.
• This reinforces the need for social workers, not method-specific workers.
• Recent literature uses terms like "integrated method", "generic practice", "multi-method practice", "unitary approach" and "general method of social work practice."
• Generalist approach stems from that social problems involve different systems.
• Social workers need to deal with individuals, groups and communities because there is a basic foundation of values and knowledge.

Values Foundation

• The Values foundation is made up of philosophy, values, principles and professional ethics
• Social work philosophy: Every human being has worth and dignity,
• Social work value: Every human being should be able to fulfill their potential and help others do the same.
• Value commitment recognizes individual potential and social responsibility to contribute to the common good.
• Social workers use the group to help members while letting them contribute to the group's development
• Social workers are guided by basic principles based on human dignity

Key Social Work Principles

• Acceptance: Social workers show respect for groups, regardless of circumstances.
• Recognize their reality. Understand behaviors. Accept the individual and the group's actions.
• Participation. Social workers involve the group in all problem-solving steps.
• They utilize the group's strengths and resources and make sure involvement is expected from the start.
• Self-determination. Workers respect groups' rights to determine its own goals and means.
• Workers knowledge and experience in problem-solving efforts while avoiding manipulation or total agreement with group decisions.
• Intervention should be made with necessary limits set.
• Individualization. Social workers need understand the specifics of every group such as the members, concerns, attitudes, expectations, goals, level of organization, communication, affection, and environment.
• Confidentiality. Workers must observe confidentiality when members share information.
• This becomes tougher to do when there are inadequate facilities and personal culture.
• Professional helpers should use good judgement and privacy. Workers must set limits on confidential sharing.
• Worker self-awareness. This includes self-understanding and consciousness of one's responses to the group.
• Self-discipline must be enacted because some may feel they owe the worker, making it easy to manipulate the group.
• Effective helping comes from the worker's conscious use of self
• Purposeful relationship. A social worker's professional relationship with a group is planned deliberately after studying the group's situation.
• The helping / problem-solving process is a series of steps over time, that are made of unique events and activities.
• Assessment: Study, Problem Definition
• Action-Planning
• Plan Implementation (Intervention)
• Evaluation, assessment of Helping Results
• Termination of the Helping Transaction
• Each step has thrust to the worker-group relationship at its time
• Ethics. This is the science of morals and right conduct
• Professional ethics: System of ethical principles and rules in social work
• Principles guide their professional relationships with clients, co-workers, the profession, the agency, and the community
• Guided by written and formal codes of ethics. such as the Philippine Association of Social Workers and also International Federation of Social Workers
• Unwritten duties and obligations are also expected from the workers in their dealings
• Unwritten rules carry the same weight and serves as a compass

Knowledge Foundation

• Knowledge areas in social work education:
  • Knowledge of the person and environment
  • Knowledge about social problems and responses in terms of social welfare policies, programs and services
  • Knowledge about social work practice
• Curricular areas make up the knowledge foundation
• Social work students learn theories, such as bio-physical and psychological factors, and environmental forces
• Literature shows them as an interrelated whole
• Systems theory is useful for social work's concern which is social functioning
• Knowledge includes personality theory, ego psychology theory, learning theory, role theory, communication theory, culture theory, small group theory, community processes, and bureaucracy.
• A further aspect includes social problems and the SW Policies, Programs and Services that respond to unmet needs.
• When helping groups, workers must know what human needs they presents and use the social resources to solve them
• Knowledge Foundation also contains social work practices such as it's goal is for enhancement of the person-situation interaction
  • Functions:
    • Preventive
    • Remedial/Rehabilitative
    • Developmental
  • Helping process:
    • Assessment
    • Action-Planning
    • Plan Implementation
    • Evaluation
    • Termination
  • Helping tools/techniques
    • Communication
    • Interview
    • Records
    • Programs/Activities
• Practitioners need values and knowledge foundations

Historic Background Social Work with Groups

• Many associate social work with recreation/games.
• Experiences that still offer these are often done as the ends themselves or to meet agency objectives
• The practice with groups has changed through the years because of different events.

Socialization Goals (Before the Sixties)

• Social work with groups traces back to socio-civic movements during the American colonial times.
• Movements included the YMCA (1911), the YWCA (1926), and the Boy Scouts of the Philippines (1936)
• The paved the way for agencies used groups to improve a person's character using leisure and recreation.
• Leaders were originally volunteers until movements trained workers on specific programs.
• Later workers had to take formal course in group work. Socialization that has groups acquire the values and attributes where they are apart was the goal of group-serving agencies at the time.
• Service users took part in recreational activities that they enjoyed.
• By the late 1950's, group-serving agencies like the Philippine Youth Welfare Coordinating Council used groups for preventive and developmental goals.
• Social workers at Foster Parents Plan, Inc. used mother's groups to promote responsible parenthood.
• Social agencies organized groups for socialization goals.

Prevention, Treatment & Developmental Goals (Sixties)

• Agencies used the group method for prevention and therapeutic purposes during the 1960's.
• The Special Child Study Center, organizes parent groups to understand conditions.
• The writer was with a team at the Phillippine Mental Health Association consisting of therapists which conducted group therapy.
• Group work was also undertaken in the government and housing resettlement during this period.
• Field practums would lead tenants to deal with a community and their goals and form tenants association so that tenants can deal with smaller problems.
• Out-of-school youth groups dealt with problems of idleness and gangs.
• Groups of households dealt with garbage and water issues.
• This falls under what is known as developmental group work
• This is very different from the previous leisure group work.
• There was a need to provide these methods with experience which urged for further development with the social agencies.
• University of the Philippines's social work students were persuaded into it to show this format.
• Students would be placed so their agencies would have the resource.

Developmental Goals (Seventies)

• DSWS were created for the bottom 30% to improve the lives of those at the bottom.
• Efforts were meant to enhance productivity, therefore, programs were implemented to help with this.
• The "barangay approach" facilitated the efforts.
• In juvenile courts, workers provided legal offenders group experiences.
• Socialization/re-socialization became a focus.
• Martial Law had many effects on education. It provoked people to make rural communities understand many of the issues that they have.
• Social workers helped with basic needs, therefore they helped people organized and use themselves.
• Efforts in this line engaged workers in similar efforts as community group work

Present

• Most social welfare uses group service
  • Developmental
  • Socialization
  • Treatment
  • Rehabilitation
• Developmental purpose emphasizes human and community resource mobilization.
• Example: public agencies invest in livelihood programs. Agencies implement self-employment assistance, leadership training, day care, responsible parenthood, and family life education programs.

Use of Groups

• The goal is the primary use to helping people, but its not the only method
• To promote individual treatment can be reinforced by group assistance
• Communities should be organized in groups to facilate Community issues
• The more advanced, the more effective, it is in a set group.
• The right time to help is when people have similar issues

Groups for Effecting Change

• Social workers that want to help change groups for the better need to bring the group into a community for a positive light.
• It may also require the correct emotional tone
• If the group becomes the target, people can change for the better.
• The goal is to have the individual get what they want.

Medium of Change

• The group as a “medium of change” the target of influence is the individual member, and the source of that influence is the group
• Guided group processes are utilized to help members of the group with their particular problems.
• disadvantaged upbringing preventers want the norms of others. Others might need help, in all such groups it can change from the better.