Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Social Work
Social Work
Goal on Caring
Heart of social work and focuses on the well-being or welfare and comfort of the individual and
community. Involves enhancement of quality of life in prisons, upgrading and dehumanizing
services in nursing homes an juvenile facilities and constant advancement of care given to
population in need.
Goal on Curing
Refers to the aspect of treating people with problem in social functioning.
Goal on Changing
Active participation of the social workers in social reforms.
As a primary discipline:
Child welfare is concerned in the well-being of children and youth through provisions of
programs and services for their physical, social, psychological, spiritual and cultural
development.
Adoption. Legal process whereby a child who is deprived of a birth family is provided with
substitute new ties and permanent parental care: relative adoption, domestic adoption and
inter-country adoption.
Legal guardianship. A process undertaken to provide substitute parental care through the
appointment of legal guardian for the child’s property until s/he reaches the age of majority.
Foster care. A substitute temporary parental car provided to a child by a licensed foster
family under the supervision of a social worker. It aims to reunify the child with his/her birth
family or prepare the child for adoption.
Residential care. Provides temporary 24-hour residential group care to children whose
needs cannot be adequately met by their biological parents and other alternative family
care arrangement.
Family services is concerned with the improvement and strengthening of the family in meeting
its own needs.
Family counseling. This could be either family casework, family group work or family
therapy
Family life education. Intervention to strengthen the family through educational activities
that seek to prevent family breakdown.
Family planning. Assist families plan the number, spacing, and timing of the births of
children to fit with their needs
Income maintenance
Public assistance. Provision of financial aid to the people in need. Services include cash
grants food stamps and supplemental security income.
Social insurances. Social provisions that are funded by employers and employees through
contribution to a specific program.
Other income maintenance that can be use by the people in need for food and shelter.
As an equal partner
Elderlies. Social workers assist people between sixty and above. It includes assistance in
relation to economic dependency, health and medical problems, emotional needs and problems
and social problems like family and community relationship or personal care.
Support in their own homes by linking with community programs that bring health care,
meals and etc.
Support in long-term care facilities programs like nursing homes.
Community services
Community organization activities
Community planning. Involvement of social workers with the physical, economic and health
planners in the long-range planning communities.
Community development. Participation of social worker in providing aid to the people in
the community in enhancing conditions.
Youth and group services. Recreational and educational facilities and scouting and
settlement houses.
Mental health and retardation. Helping in institutionalizing victims through treatment
hospital.
As a secondary discipline:
Correctional facilities. Social worker serves as a link to the people inside the prison to the
outside world.
Corrections. The administration of penalty in such a way that the offender is corrected
within the acceptable limits.
Probation. A process of treatment prescribed by the court for persons convicted of offenses
against the law, during which the individual on probation lives int eh community and
regulates their own life under the condition imposed by the court and is subjected to the
supervision pf the court officer.
Parole. The release of the prisoner under supervision before the expiration of their
sentence.
Industry. Act as a support to both managers and employees that has social problems.
Medical and Health care. Attend to social and psychological factors that are contributing to the
medical condition of the patients. They also link patients with community resources.
Schools. Facilitate provision of direct educational and social services by acting as a pupil
advocate focusing on the urgent needs of students.
Provide leadership in the coordination of interdisciplinary skills among students’ services
personnel such as guidance counselors, clinic staff, attendant officers and school
psychologists.
Organize a parent and community groups to channel concerns about students and the
school to improve school and community relations.
Core Values
Serves as a guiding principle that shape behavior and action of social works with their clients and other
stakeholders. This has to be instilled amongst social workers.
Right to self-fulfillment. Each person has a right to self-fulfillment which is derived from their
inherent capacity and thrust toward the goal.
Responsibility to common good. Responsibility as a member of the society to seek ways of
fulfillment that contribute to the common good.
Responsibility to society. Responsibility to facilitate self-fulfillment of the individual and the
right enrichment
Right to satisfy basic needs
Social organizations required to facilitate individual’s efforts at the self-realizations
Self-realization and contribution to society.
Resource Broker. Direct provision of material aid and other resources that will be helpful in reducing
situational deficiencies.
Social Broker. Involves the process of negotiating the service jungle for clients. The social worker links
the client to the needed services and ensures quick delivery of these services.
Mediator. The social worker act as an intermediary/conciliator between persons or in groups and the
social worker engages their efforts to resolve disputes between the client and the other parties. Social
worker facilitates in meeting halfway or finding a common ground to make to make all possibilities to
resolve such dispute.
Advocate (Policy/Program). The role involves taking a partisan interest in the client and their cause and
aims to influence another party in the interest if the client through arguing, bargaining, negotiating, and
manipulating the environment on the behalf of the client. This also involves the worker in the efforts to
change policies and programs.
Enabler. Social worker engages in activities in order to help clients cope with the current situation and
eventually find strengths and resources within themselves to solve problems they encountered.
Counselor/ Therapist. This role intends to restore, maintain, or enhance the client’s capacity to adapt
to their current reality.
Mobilizer of Community Elite. Involves the worker in various activities with the goal of informing and
interpreting to elite the different programs and services including the needs and problems that the
client is facing to gain their support, commitment, and involvement in different endeavors.
Documenter/ social critique. Documenting the need for sufficient policies and programs based on their
knowledge and actual experiences about the inadequacies in the existing policies and programs
including what needs to be done.
Areas of Specialization
Child, Family and School Social Worker
Community Social Worker
Hospice and Palliative Care Social Worker
Medical and Health Social Worker
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Worker
Military and Veterans Social Work
Psychiatric Social Worker
Special Groups
Drug Dependents
Are persons, who are as a result of periodic and continuous use of drugs (sedatives, stimulants
and hallucinogens) have developed a physical and/or psychological need for dependence on
these drugs to the extent that their denial produces adverse effects themselves
Socially Disadvantage Woman
Women who are victims of gender-based violence (domestic violence/ wife-beating, marital
rape, incest, rape and sexual harassment), prostituted women, victims of armed conflicts and
militarization, and solo parents. Mostly focus on protection, prevention, treatment and
rehabilitation.
Patients of Psychiatric Institutions
Patients released from psychiatric institutions who need assistance in their post-
institutionalization adjustment in the community.
Older Persons
People between sixty and above. SW provide social services that includes assistance in relation
to economic dependency, health and medical problems, emotional needs and problems, social
problems such as family and community relationships, personal care, recreational needs and
living arrangements.
Persons with Disability
People suffering from restrictions of different disabilities as a result of mental and physical or
sensory impairment to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal
for human being.
Mode of Adaptation
Fight
Physical of verbal projection of angry feelings on others specially when encountering
difficult circumstances, frustration, disappointment, or even anxiety.
Flight
This is manifested when the person physically moves away from the problem like resorting to
drugs, alcohol or substance that will make one forget the current stressful situation.
Pairing
It entails the entry into a relationship with another person who is perceived to be stronger,
stable, or who has the capacity to provide help over their problem.