Social Work
What makes a good social worker? Many things. Paramount in the make-up of a social worker is a deep and genuine interest in good people, bad people, famous people, humble people, rich people, poor people, young people and all people. People of every type.
A person, who doesn’t have this interest in other people will never make a good social worker. If you are not interested in other people, if you think that most people are a bit of a nuisance, if you prefer not to have anything more to do with others than is necessary, then social work is not for you.
Hand in hand with this interest in people should go the qualities of sympathy, open-mindedness and an inquiring mind. These traits allow you to get to the bottom of the problem you are trying to resolve. The social worker spends most of his time talking or listening to other people. These are the basic qualities for a social worker, but the required qualifications are very different.
Obviously he must be well educated. He must be a real psychologist who understands the inner world, mental state and feelings of a person.
Nowadays, social work is at an important stage in its development. All professions must be responsible for changing social and economic conditions. Social workers can make contribution to the well-being of our society. In fact, every social worker is in a position to solve a variety of problems: Children at risk, violent families, or even the seriously handicapped.
Family therapy has proved to be a creative method of problem solving for social workers. In family therapy, attention should be paid to single parent families, step families and foster families. That’s why social workers are required, more often than other professionals, to help families who are in different stages of fragmentation.
Sources of knowledge for such work are derived both from clinical experience and clinical literature. They are also evolved from a close familiarity with family studies which helps to develop the professional eye so as to be able to know which families are most vulnerable.
The
main methods
of a social worker are: interviews,
inquiries and
surveys.
These methods enable the worker to understand the needs of a
particular family more sensitively and accurately. Understanding
enables introduction of appropriae and novel tools for helping the
family evolve a satisfying pattern of group life.
How can the social worker learn to help a family discover their own resources? By being in a position where the social worker can ask questions that only the outsider can ask. A high proportion of first interviews takes place within the family’s own home. There may also be an agency interview. In the first case preliminary courtesies are part of therapeutic work.
There can be variations on handing of family interviews. Here are some of them:
We like to see all the members of the family.
Fathers as heads of the family are very important in all kinds of interviews.
In families everybody has a point of view and these are not always the same. In our experience it is very important to hear what everybody has to say.
We often find other people in the family have ideas about how to deal with the trouble that’s going on. A chance to talk about it together produces a much better plan for changing the situation in the family for the better.