SOCIAL WORK SERVICES,

PROCESSES AND METHODS

What is Social Work?

* It is an academic discipline that promotes social change and development,
social cohesion and empowerment and liberation of people.

*It engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhances
wellbeing

SOCIAL WORK SERVICES

Prepared by: Shajara Carcueva

A variety of factors, including medical, academic, financial, emotional, family and

social issues, can affect a student’s performance and adjustment. The social worker’s
role is to help students identify those factors that are obstacles to their success.

TYPES OF SOCIAL WORK

1. Child, Family and School Social Workers help children, families and the
elderly work toward resolving their problems. They help place children in
foster care and assist parents looking to adopt.
2. Medical and Public Health Social Workers help the seriously ill and those with
chronic health problems to find adequate care, access public resources like
Medicare and Medicaid, and find services like nutrition classes and nursing
care.
3. Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers help people with a wide
variety of mental health and substance abuse problems. Therapy is one
common way for social workers to help clients address those problems.
 4. Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers help people with a wide
variety of mental health and substance abuse problems. Therapy is one
common way for social workers to help clients address those problems.
5. Administration and Management Social work administrators are proactive
leaders in public and private agencies that provide services to clients. Many
elements of this area of social work practice are common to administration in
other organizations
6. Developmental Disabilities Social workers also help parents of children with
developmental disabilities understand their legal rights. They help parents
learn to be advocates and find special services that enable their children to be
as independent as possible.
7. Justice and Corrections Social workers who work in justice and corrections
can be found in courts, rape crisis centres, police departments, and
correctional facilities.
8. Politics There is a natural progression in the careers of many social workers
from activism to leadership. Increasingly social workers are holding elective
offices from school boards to city and county governments, from state
legislatures all the way to the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
Social workers also play leadership roles in local, state and federal agencies.

Core Values of Social Work

• Service - Addressing social ills and helping others is a primary goal of all social
workers. Service is the value from which all other social work values stem.

• Social Justice - Social workers advocate on behalf of the oppressed, the

voiceless, and others who are unable to advocate for themselves. They often
focus on issues such as poverty, homelessness, discrimination, harassment, and
other forms of injustice.

• Dignity and Worth of the Person- Every person is different, with different
cultural and social values. Social workers are mindful of those differences,
 treating each person with dignity and respect and promoting their clients’
capacity and opportunity to address their own needs and improve their personal
situations.

• Importance of Human Relationships - Social workers recognize that facilitating

human relationships can be a useful vehicle for creating change, and they excel
at engaging potential partners who can create, maintain, and enhance the well-
being of families, neighbourhoods, and whole communities.

• Integrity - In order to facilitate these relationships and improve others’ lives,

social workers must exhibit trustworthiness at all times.

• Competence - Professional social workers often hold undergraduate or Master’s

degree in Social Work, but a fair amount of their knowledge comes from gaining
on-the-job experience.

Understanding the Role of a Social Worker

Being a social worker is often a challenging, yet rewarding career. Social

workers are responsible for helping individuals, families, and groups of people to
cope with problems they’re facing to improve their patients’ lives. One aspect of
this is teaching skills and developing mechanisms for patients to rely on to better
their lives and experiences.

SOCIAL WORK PROCESSES

Prepared by: Bea Java

The social work process comprises a sequence of actions or tasks that draw on
all of the components of practice discussed so far.
 It follows a clear linear route and is more often a fluid, circular cycle
whereby workers move from assessment through to implementation and
evaluation and back to assessment again.

Despite this fluidity, some parts of the process, such as assessment, have
clearly defined procedures guided by local or national policy. Some tasks may be
fairly short and discrete, but many are longer term and more complex, such as
assessments. You will also find that tasks often overlap and are revisited over a
period of involvement with a service user. The tasks or stages of the social work
process are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

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The Social Work Process
Prepared by: Jamaica Luchavez, Jeanny Ve Sedon and Bea Fuentes

1. Assessment- The evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of

someone or something. It is widely agreed to be of great importance, but that is
where agreement ends and contestation over what it is begins.

2. Deciding on Outcomes- In designing your learning event, think

carefully about the purpose and expectations, and how these fit the needs of
learners and relates to their individual roles and objectives, and those of the
groups and organizations they may be a part of. It is a good idea to define the
intended ‘learning outcomes’ clearly in advance, and with others.

3. Planning- Planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to

achieve a desired goal. It is the first and foremost activity to achieve desired
results. It involves the creation and maintenance of a plan, such as psychological
aspects that require conceptual skills.

4. Intervention- A situation in which someone becomes involved in a particular

issue, problem and etc. in order to influence what happens.

5. Evaluation- The process of judging something's quality, importance or

value, or a report that includes the information. It involves collecting and
analyzing information about a program's activities, characteristics, and outcomes.

The process of judging something's quality, importance or value, or a

report that includes the information. It involves collecting and analyzing
information about a program's activities, characteristics, and outcomes.

Practitioners need to be aware (and inform service users) of why they are
engaged in particular tasks and to be able to justify their methods of working.
Interventions should be meaningful and fit within an overall plan or strategy.

Awareness of the different stages of the social work process can assist
social workers to prepare for, carry out and evaluate their interventions in order
to both be accountable for, and reflect upon, their actions.
SOCIAL WORK METHOD
Prepared By: Maria Badayos, Rachel Alferez,
Judy Templa

What do you think METHOD means?

- A procedure to accomplish something
- A particular way of doing something
- Way, technique, or process

2 Methods in Social Work

 PRIMARY METHOD
 SECONDARY METHOD

PRIMARY METHODS
1. SOCIAL CASE WORK- is the method of employed by social workers to help
individuals find solutions to the problems of social adjustment that are difficult to
navigate. MARY ELLEN RICHMOND is the founding mother of social case work

“ Social case work consist of process which develop personality through

adjustments consciously effected, individual by individual, between man and
their social environment”

5 components of Social Work

→ Person
→ Problem
→ Place
→ Process

2. SOCIAL GROUP WORK - It is a method of social work that helps a person to

enhance their social functioning through purposeful group experiences and to
cope more effectively with their personal, group or community problems
3. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION- Viewed from a humanitarian approach is
meant to solve the problems of the community is as old as society itself. But
 viewed as one of the methods of social work profession it is of very recent
origin.
According to Murray G. Ross
Community Organization is a process by which community identifies its needs
and objectives, orders or ranks these needs or objective. Community Organization
covers a series of activities at the community level aimed at bringing about
desired improvement in the social well being of individuals groups, and
neighborhood

SECONDARY METHODS
Prepared By: Lloyd Tangaro, Kiara Wellington and
Mae Radores

4. SOCIAL ACTION- Social Action has been used to signify a wide range of
primarily voluntary initiative to bring out change in the social system,
processes and even structure. Social Workers more often than not have
divergent opinion about the scope and relevance of social action
5. SOCIAL WELFARE ADMINISTRATION- This is a process by which we apply
professionmal competence to achieve certain goals. It is also called a process
of transforming social policy into social action. It involves the administration of
government and Non government agencies

Herleigh Tracker (1971) interprets social welfare administration as a

“process of working with people in ways that release and relate their energes so
that they use available resources to accomplish the purpose of providing needed
commonly services and programmes”

6. SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH- It is the application of research methods to

the production of knowledge that social workers need to solve problems they
confront in the practice of Social Work. In short, it helps Social Workers to find
ways and mean of enhancing social functioning at the individual, group, and
social levels.