The role of a social worker

What is a social work? “Social work is a profession which promotes social change and problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance wellbeing. Utilizing theories of human behaviour and social systems, social work intervenes at the point where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work”. (Understanding Social work, Neil Thompson, 2005, page 13, 2nd Edition)

Social work is recognized as a specialist profession with a sustainable universal value, expertise and knowledge foundation. Over many years the social work services have provided these facilities to vulnerable individuals which …show more content…

However; a Social Worker’s role, is not to dismantle the family, but to maintain help and support in dealing with the individual issues and case, against the parties involved? This often leaves public and communities with a negative view of their position.
Social workers continuously administer the twin roles of care and control in unloading their obligations in a diverse and compounded environment, whilst assessing arising issues with both new and old case families that are very much against their policies. This means there has to be very strong case evidence and a very good understanding, of which action and approach to take. This is also reflected between their key roles of caring for and controlling the service users, which in turn influences service users and the general public into a negative opinion of them. The service user will also need to understand the entanglement of balancing the two roles of care and control.
So; how can one begin to educate individuals and public about this entanglement? It’s not society’s responsibility to educate themselves on the red tape or rules of the social services.
If we are to look at control, it’s being highlighted that some social workers do not show compassion for their service users, whilst the majority do. It is true to say that, those that don’t show any compassion, are unable relate and would base their decision unethically. This in turn reflect those non compassionate social workers’ focuses more on