SETTING, SERVICES and PROCESS in SOCIAL WORK

Social work is performed and exercised in different settings, inlcuding but not limited to
governments departments, such as mental health hospitals, social welfare units,
institutions for the age, disabled, youth and correctional, private institutions such as
family and marriage, offenders outside of the prison, early childhood development, and
social work in cooperate and educational institutions. (SACSSP, 2016).
Social work is practiced either in primacry or secondary settings

*Primary Settings- are those agencies whos program and service are direct purview of
social work. Examples of which are: Christian Children Fund, Save the children,
Hospicio de san Jose, Department of social welfare and development, among the others.
*Secondary Settings- are agencies, institutions, or organizations whose primary function
is not to provide a social welfare services but to employ social workers to support
/strengthen /complement their own services. Examples of which are: hospitals, family
courts, nutrition centers, schools, cooperations, etc.

Government
Basically, social workers are involved in research, technology development, policy
analysis and development, planning, standards development, capacity building, program
management including crisis intervention and disaster relief operation and management,
social marketing and special projects such as Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program
(known as 4ps), Kapitbisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Community Integrated Delivery of
Social Servives (KALAHI-CIDSS), sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) National
Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) etc. They engage either
at the national, provincial, and local level. Some are employed at the barangay level and
others are teaching in government schools and state universities.
 
Private Sector
Social workers are found in private practice and are offering various kinds of services
such as but not limited to the following: advocacy, counselling, mediation, policy and
program development, organizational development, research, capacity building activities,
corporate social responsibility, consultancy services, and employee assistance program.

Civil Society
Social workdwrs are often employed by different child-caring and child-placing social
welfare agencies offering services related to adoption, foster care, residential care,
independent living, reintegration/reuntification services, after care services, etc. Others
are involved in managing cases of children in conflict with the law, children in need of
social protection, children affected with HIV, children in armed conflict, abused or
exploited children, children with special needs, trafficked children, among others.
Schools 
Some schools are also hiring social workers to aid the students in their adjustments in
school as well as guide them in their scholastic performance. Social workers conduct
assessment, case conference, referral and home visitation to deal with students with
concerns and problems like truancy, bullying, low self-esteem, aggresive behavior,
discrimination, and family conflicts which may affect their performance at school as well
as their relationship with teachers and classmates.

Community
Specifically, social workers are also employed in different community service centers
(either rub by local coucils, church and the people’s organizations.) They ate involved in
counseling services to individuals or families. Others are engaged in community
development work assisting groups or communities to identify their needs and find means
to respond them. Some localities in the country employ social workers at the barangay
level and some organizations deploy social workers to their adopted communities to
focus on community organizing and provision of the organizations programs and
services.

Social Work Process

Like any other helping professions, social work follows a helping process when working
with specific clients. Historically, Helen Harris Perlman is known to be the originator of
the problem-solving framework in the social work profession. Perlman (1957) as cited by
mendoza (2002) presented a series of problem-solving operations summarized as follows:

a. Study- the facts which constitute and bear upon the problem must be ascertained and
grasped; 

b. Diagnostic- the facts must be thought about i.e. turned over, probed into, and
organized in the mind, examined in their relationships to one another, and searched for
their significance; and 

c. Treatment- some choice or decision must be made as an and result

of the consideration of the particular facts with the intention of resolving the problem.

Nonetheless, there have been numerous authors in social work literature who follow a
framework for the problem-solving process such as Fflorence Hollis (for casework
process), Robert Vinter (for groupwork process), and Arthur Dunham (for community
organization process). Compton and Galaway (1994) stressed that a social worker must
follow this following sequential steps: recognition or definition of the problem, data
collection, assessment of the situation, goal setting and action planning, intervention or
carrying out of the action, and evaluation and termination.
Mendoza (2002) later on summarized this into five basic steps namely: assessment,
planning, intervention on plan implementation, evaluation, and
termination. Significantly, this helping process involves the beginning phase, the middle
phase, and the ending phase.

Beginning Middle Ending

Assessment Intervention or plan inplementation Evaluation
Planning Termination

Assessment
 Max Siporin as cited by Johnson (1986) and Mendoza (2002) defines assessment as a
process and a product of understanding on which action is based. This involves the
collection of necessary information, analysis and interpretation to reach an understanding
of the client, the problem, and  the social context in which it exists. The social worker’s
tasks include information-gathering and problem definition based on what the client and
the worker agreed upon. This will evantually lead to the worker’s writing of an
assessment statement.

In gathering data, various sources are available from which relevant information can be
obtained to have an accurate definition of the client’s problem. These are the following:

A. Primary source – The client (whether an individual, group, or a community) is the

primary source of data. Data are gathered through intake procedures.

B. Secondary source- the significant others with whom the client has

personal relationships. These include the parents, sibling, relatives, and friends in case the
client is an individual. In case of communities, this may be staff or consultants who are
previously or currently involved in the said community.

C. Existing data- these can be records or reports from

other professionals (e.g. physicians, teachers, psychologists, etc.) or documents from
other agencies such as census data, researches, evaluation reports, among others.

D. Worker's observation- the use of observation is very

helpful in gathering, supplementing, and validating information about the client. The
worker has the opportunity to observe the client through the latter's interaction
and relationship with others. In case  of communities, observation through seeing
and experiencing the physical condition, economic activities, community
interaction, resources, culture, and traditions are very essential in identifying  the
problem.

The initial contact between the client and the worker comes in three different ways:
A. Walk-in – the client (an individual, a group, or a community )initiates the contact and
seek the assistance of the agency social worker about a particular concern or problem
with the agency social worker about a particular concern or problem with the belief that
the worker is in  the position to provide help.

B. Referral – the client is referred to the  worker or a social welfare agency by an

interested or concerned party or entity (i.e. a relative, neighbor, teacher,  church,
barangay council, or another social welfare agency) with the hope that the client can avail
of any services from the worker  and/or the agency in addressing the client's problem or
concern.

C. Outreach- the agency, through its social worker/s, reaches out to the prospective
clients to offer help and eventually arrives at an agreement of engaging into a helping
relationship  after intake.

Planning
Planning is the link between assessment and intervention and process translates the
content of assessment into a goal statement that describes the desired results and is
concerned with identifying the means to reach the goals.it allows the worker, with the
participation of the client, to move from problem definition to problem solution towards
achieving a planned change as and goal (Johnson, 1986, p. 283).

Planning involves two major tasks: formulating goals that directly relate with the client’s
problem and defining the specific actions or interventions that are necessary in order to
achieve the goals.

In social work practice, the defined goals and plans guide the worker’s activities. Goals
are desired or expected outcomes or the “ends” of a certain endeavor while plans are
means to achieve them which consists of the specific actions or steps to be done in order
to reach the goals. Plans are jointly made by the worker and the client.

Intervention
Intervention has a lot of terms in social work literature which include: action,
plan implementation, and treatment .Intervention is concerned with the action that would
solve the client's problem. It involves rendering of all the specific and interrelated
services that are deemed appropriate to address or respond the client's problem. It
includes series of activites that the client and worker will undertake following an
agreement forged between them based on the problem that they need to be addressed and
the plan of action they will pursue.

Evaluation
Evaluation is defined as the collection of data about outcomes of the program of action
relative to goals and objectives set in advance of the implementation of that program
(Johnson, 1986, p, 385). In social work, it is a continuous process of gathering
information which can be utilized in an ongoing reassessment of objectives, intervention
plans, and even the problem definition which is reffered to as ongoing evaluation.
Nevertheless, the worker also undertakes terminal evaluation when s/he is about to end a
helping relationship.

In social work place, conduct of evaluation is imperative because social workers and
social welfare agencies must answer for their work to the public that supports them and
this is referred to as accountability in the profession. this has two aspects: (1)
effectiveness which refers to the question on whether or not the services or intervention 
plans accomplishing their intended  goals; and (2) efficiency which refers to the cost of
services and intervention plans in money, time, and other resources (Compton &
Galaway as cited in Mendoza, 2002, p. 249).
 

Evaluation in social work can be done in two levels: (1) on the level of direct practice
with clients; and (2) on the level of program implementation. However, the procedure in
undertaking evaluation and the challenges along the way are believed to the same in both.
An evaluation which is concerned about the outcome or effectiveness is called summative
evaluation, whereas formative evaluation is concerned with looking at the process of the
work. These can be both undertaking at program and direct practice levels. Hudson and
Grinnel (1989) illustrated four elements or sets of variable that the structure of evaluation
will involve. These are the following:

Inputs- are the resources that are essential to implement the program or intervention.
Activities- are the things that agencies do to produce change. These are also considered
variables.
Outputs- are the immediate results of the program or intervention plan and called as
dependent variables.
Outcomes- are the longer-term benefits from the program or intervention plan.

Termination
 The helping process has a time limit therefore a social worker is expected to discuss with
the client the expected duration of the helping relationship. Also, the client should be
made aware that the client-worker relationship will not last long and that the
interventions and services will not stay for them forever. It should be made clear with the
client that disengagement is the natural conlusion yo such a relationship.
Medoza (2002) mentions the most common reasons for terminating the client-worker
relationship as follows:

1.When the goals set by the worker and the client have been reached;
2.When, after a reasonable period of time, there has been little movement toward the
attainment of the goals formulated and the prospect for any change in the situation is held
unlikely;

3.When the client thinks that the worker has provided sufficient help so that it is now
possible for the client to pursue problem-solving on her/his own.

4.When an agency does not have the resources needed by the client of the worker does
not get his/her agency’s approval to provide the services needed by the client;

5.When the systems outside the client make it difficult for the client to continue with the
helping relationship or when these systems influence the client to discontinue the
relationship; and

6.When for one reason or another, the worker must leave the agency
 
There were two terms used in relation to the termination of the client worker relationship-
transfer and referral. Transfer is the process by which  a client is referred by her/his social
worker to another  worker, usually in the same agency, because the former will no longer
be able  to continue working with the client, or because s/he thinks another worker is in a
better position to work with her/his client's  problem. However, referral is the act of
directing a client to another worker/agency because the service that the client needs is
beyond the present agency worker’s competence, or the client needs additional services
which the current agency cannot provide.