Social Work Profession

social work is one of the fastest growing careers in the United States. The profession is
expected to grow by 19% between 2012 and 2022. More than 650,000 people currently hold
social work degrees.

Who is a social worker?

 Social workers are highly trained and experienced professionals. Only those
who have earned social work degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral
levels—and completed a minimum number of hours in supervised fieldwork—
are professional social workers.

What do social workers do?

 Social workers help individuals, families, and groups restore or enhance their
capacity for social functioning, and work to create societal conditions that
support communities in need.

 The practice of social work requires knowledge of human development and

behavior, of social, economic and cultural institutions, and of the interaction of
all these factors.

 Social workers help people of all backgrounds address their own needs
through psychosocial services and advocacy.

 Social workers help people overcome some of life’s most difficult challenges:
poverty, discrimination, abuse, addiction, physical illness, divorce, loss,
unemployment, educational problems, disability, and mental illness. They help
prevent crises and counsel individuals, families, and communities to cope
more effectively with the stresses of everyday life.

Who employs social workers?

 Professional social workers are found in every facet of community life—in

schools, hospitals, mental health clinics, senior centers, elected office, private
practices, prisons, military, corporations, and in numerous public and private
agencies that serve individuals and families in need. Many also serve as
social and community service directors.

 According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

(SAMHSA), professional social workers are the nation’s largest group of
mental health services providers. There are more clinically trained social
workers—over 200,000—than psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric
nurses combined. Federal law and the National Institutes of Health recognize
social work as one of five core mental health professions.

History
As we already have studied about the history of scial work practice like
how with passage of time it got evolved from ancient to medieval and to
medieval to modern and how it changes from charity to profession I will not
deal in detail as we have already studied.

n the three decades that followed the 1960s there were a great many changes in
the way that social work practice was described, conducted, and taught. This
reflected an adaptation to changes in the context of practice, as well as the
efforts of social workers to move beyond the older agreement.

Micro practice has taken advantage of models and approaches from the social
sciences and from other helping groups. While some practitioners still use
psychodynamic approaches, social workers also use behavioral and
phenomenological approaches. Theories such as task-centered treatment,
cognitive behavioral approaches, reality therapy, and so forth provide options for
the social work micro practitioner. New approaches that look at social networks
and other sets of relationships are also used and will continue to become more
important as our knowledge of social networks evolves.Turner (1996) and Payne
(2005) describ.e a vast variety of clinical approaches that move beyond the single
theory approach of the profession prior to 1960.

Macro practice has matured since the 1960s and will continue to develop as time
goes forth. Community practice has developed new approaches that encompass
a wide variety of strategies and techniques. Political organizing, locality
development, and social planning have matured and developed. Administration
(frequently referred to as Social Administration) once had an unclear place in
social work practice, but is now clearly established as a method of social work
practice. This began with a series of reports and projects in the 1970s and
evolved into eventual recognition of the approach. Recognition of policy practice
as a practice field is also established in most of the profession. This brings in
policy analysis and policy change (advocacy, lobbying, and so forth) together in a
single social work role. These are developments that would have been
unthinkable in the past but, in many ways, the profession still lags behind other
fields in the training of practitioners for macro practice.

Going beyond the macro–micro divisions, the growth of generalist practice theory
is noteworthy. Generalist social work means using an essentially constant set of
approaches at multiple levels. Generalist practice has developed a robust set of
theories and approaches to inform this perspective.

Ecological systems theory and the Life Model, the Strengths Perspective and
Empowerment practice, as well as Feminist Social Work Practice Theory, provide
explanations at multiple levels that can encompass several types of techniques.
These are, in many ways, recognition of the limitations of earlier approaches.

Evidence-based practice (O'Hare, 2005) is a likely paradigm shift in social work,

judging from the impact of evidence-based approaches on medicine, public
health, and nursing. The use of research findings to guide practice is an attractive
theory and one that promises further improvement in the quality of practice.
Also important are the developments in technology-based practice, including e-
therapy, telemedicine, electronic advocacy, and other techniques that use high
technology. These have grown in importance as the technology evolves, the
online environment become more important and experience and research push
the development of practice toward further refinement.\

What Is Next?
The world is now in midst of a new economic and social transition, one that
began in the 1970s and continues today. This transition will create an information
economy that will be as different from our industrial economy as it was from the
agricultural society that preceded it. It is already changing the nature of society in
many profound ways and changing the environment of practice. Friedman (2005)
identifies major changes in the political economy of the near future, including
global competition, outsourcing, more technology, and so forth. This will have
major impacts on policies, agencies, and clients. Also important will be the
destruction of the physical environment and the rise of globalization as drivers of
social policy decision-making. The profession will have to adapt, much in the way
that social workers in the 1800s adapted.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration.

Interdisciplinary team collaboration between nurses and social workers in

assuring effective practice with family care givers of older adults including
interdisciplinary team collaboration. “Proponents of the infusion of family
caregiver competencies in foundation and advanced curricular must then
provide faculty with user-friendly and readily adaptable teaching materials
—readings, case studies, in-class exercises—that will facilitate their
teaching the necessary knowledge and skills along with using assignments
and other measures of competence attainment. Lewis suggests
interdisciplinary caregiving curricular for nurses and social workers and
including caregivers in training (p. 133). Certification or licensure in key
elements of family care, such as assessment and care coordination, would
ensure that nurses and social workers have an appropriate foundation of
knowledge. In addition, national competency standards for care managers
should include family caregiving.

Political Participation of Social Work

The challenge is to convince social work educators how integral they are to
fostering student’s interest in politics and inspiring them about the need to
create social change through the legislative or political process.

Social entrepreneurship is the recognition of a social problem and the uses of

entrepreneurial principles to organize create and manage a social venture to achieve a desired
social change. While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and
return, a social entrepreneur also measures positive returns to society. Thus, the main aim of
social entrepreneurship is to further broaden social, cultural, and environmental goals making
a profit.. Social entrepreneurship practiced with a world view or international context is
called international social entrepreneurship.

A well-known modern social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of

Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a
Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The work of Yunus and Grameen echoes a theme among modern
day social entrepreneurs

The Grameen Bank  is a Nobel Peace Prize-winningmicrofinance organization

and community development bank founded inBangladesh. It makes small loans (known
as microcredit or "grameencredit")[5]to the impoverished without requiring collateral. The
name Grameen is derived from the word gram which means "rural" or "village" in
the Bengali Language.[6]
a credit delivery system to provide banking services to the rural poor. 

social entrepreneurs in India is as under:

Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) started by Ela Bhatt in 1972 provides

financial, health,

insurance, legal, childcare, vocational and educational services to poor self-employed

women, who

comprise its members.

Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE) run by S Rajagopalan and Svati Bhogle \

Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR if often referred to a corporation’s

initiatives to estimate and take responsibility of its effects on the environment and the society.
It is also considered as movement aimed at encouraging the corporate world about their
influence on their business or company on the rest of the society, including their stakeholders
and the environment

CSR is not just about a charity service or a donation given by a company for publicity and
branding. The actual scenario of how it functions is very different than how it appears to a
common individual. The initiatives taken up by companies should represent their constant
commitment towards the social, economic and environmental development of the
community. Several companies have effectively taken initiatives towards the cause of CSR in
emerging countries like India. In India, the companies have begun to realize the importance
of CSR and have incorporated it as a part of their business activity. Corporations are
becoming increasingly aware of their role towards the society. Thus corporations are now
setting up their own corporate responsibility departments to devise policies, strategies for
their CSR activities and allotting separate budgets for the purpose.

And many issues like terrorism , kashmiri issue, ENVIRONMENT pollution

SOCIAL LEGISLATION

FEMINISM

TERRORISM

KASHMIRI SEPERATIST

VOCATIONAL TRAINING

BILL IMPLIMENTATIONS

POPULATION

UNEMPLOYMENT

HIGHER EDUCATION

LGBT RIGHTS\

GREEN SOCIAL WORK

ECO JUSTICE SOCIAL WORK

These all are the challenges before the social worker as these areas are those we really need
to foccuss on .

So first we have to go through the root cause of these problems ,why these problems are
coming with the changing time then we can deal with them. For example kashmiri issue first
we have to research why they want to get separate from inida ,what exactly they want and y
they are asking for those things,

What gov hav done for them, thn y they are the gov…so these is a kind of a process we have
to through.