Social Work: Notes, Assignments, projects

Social work: Notes, assignments, projects.

Ethical Standards in Social Work

The ethical standards relevant to the professional activities of social workers. These standards concern:

(i) the ethical responsibilities of social workers to clients,

(ii) the ethical responsibilities of social workers to colleagues,

(iii) the ethical responsibilities of social workers in the exercise of their profession,

(iv) the ethical responsibilities of social workers as professionals,

(v) the ethical responsibilities of social workers to the social work profession and

(vi) the ethical responsibilities of social workers to the entire society.

NASW Code of Ethics

National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is the largest membership organization of professional social workers in the world.

The core of social work includes the professional ethics. The profession has basic values, ethical principles and ethical standards. These values, principles and standards have been set forth by the code of ethics to guide social workers how they should function. It is relevant to all social workers and students in the field.

NASW Code of Conduct guides decision-making and conduct and has six objectives:

(i) It identifies core values in social work’s mission.

(ii) It summarizes ethical principles that show core values of the profession and establishes ethical standards for social workers.

(iii) It helps social workers know relevant considerations when they face ethical uncertainties.

(iv) It presents ethical standards to which the public can hold the social workers accountable.

(v) It explains the new practitioners the art mission, values, ethical principles and ethical standards they should adhere to.

(vi) It presents standards that the profession can use to assess whether social workers have adhered to unethical conduct.

Question: Explain field work practice with communities based on your field work experience with examples.

Answer:

Field Work Practice With Communities: Social work with community involves under standing of needs of a community, facilitating interaction between the different parts of the community such as the institutions, leadership–informal and formal, other members and the geographical subdivisions. It facilitates maximum use of its internal and external resources.

Learning goals of field work practice with communities

• Students understand different communities– Urban, rural and tribal.
• Students require skills like skills in interacting with people, conflict management and resource mobilization.
• Understanding the needs of the communities and prioritizing their needs and assessing the strength of the communities.
• Understanding the importance of the communities and taking part in implementing the planned intervention.

Students may visit the local municipal office or the Panchayat office to collect information about the community– on population, households and occupation. Besides, students can carry out a survey of the community to collect information on the sex ratio, distribution of the population by caste and religion, family income and education.

Students should develop the skills of interacting with people both formally and informally and comprehend the outstanding felt needs of a community.

Students have to understand the politicization of development processes and anomalies in the community. There may be apathetic attitude from certain section of the community. The community organization should facilitate community integration and advocate self-help to the community. All sections of people have to be involved in the determination and solving the problems in the community. Communication networks between different interest groups in the community have to be developed.

In the interventions/initiatives undertaken, the members of the power structure as collaborators have to be involved. Students need to develop organizational skills. Problem solving and interactional skills help in reaching solutions for reconciliable differences of different members in the community.

The fieldwork content that the school of social work offer to its students determines the success of fieldwork practice. For example, effective community practice depends on the students’ understanding of the legal framework besides administrative principles to effectively participate in the learning process. Students need to have a sound knowledge of the resources available within the community becomes essential.

Social workers face the challenge of ensuring participation of different stakeholders and ensuring their support. The students should have a proper understanding of the concept of community and the nature of community problems. Social status, social stratification, power structure and the manifest and the latent functions of organizations are some relevant social science concepts.

The students should have an understanding that the services and work of the community agency cannot be viewed as ends in themselves but as parts of a larger entity like the communities’ themselves. Community work in only restricted to disadvantaged groups alone, it covers heterogeneous entities. The student also should teach the community a philosophy grounded in a basic commitment and the importance of a democratic approach in carrying our work.

The following are some of the skills relevant to community-based practice:

• Engagement Skills: It is required for developing relationship with staff, local residents and community leaders in unstructured and sometimes chaotic situations.
• Organizational Skills: It is required to build organizations, work with committees and organizing public events.
• Planning and Policy Skills: It is required for analysing issues and problems, to generalize from the specific and relate individual grievances to organizational responses.
• Action Skills: It is required to make decision in situation where all the relevant information is never available and strategize to meet the goal.
• Communication Skills: This is needed communicate with different stakeholders in different situations.
• Political Skills: It includes the knowledge of the sociology of political decision-making and a grasp of different varieties of political ideologies and their implication for change.

Question: Briefly trace the historical development of group work in India.

Answer:

Historical Development in India Group Work was introduced in India in 1936 with the establishment of the first School of Social Work, the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work in Mumbai. The second school of Social Work set-up in Delhi included the Social Group Work Method in the curriculum. The third school came up in Baroda with a strong trend of group work practice.

The Association of Schools of Social Work in association with Technical Cooperation Mission (U.S.A) laid down minimum standards for group work. Almost all schools offered courses on case work, group work and community organization on an American Model in the Indian context.

Most schools of Social Work in India at present teach group work as a generic method alongwith case work and community organization. This method is used in correctional and residential institutional setting, hospitals and in special schools. It has been extensively applied in community work also.

Q) Mention the types and uses of attitude scale.

Answer:

Attitude scales provide quick and convenient measure of attitudes. In attitude and opinion research, two methods i.e., equal appearing intervals (Thurstone Scales) and method of summated ratings (Likert Scales) have been used extensively.

In the method of equal appearing intervals, the attitude score of an individual obtained by this method has an absolute interpretation (neutral, favourable, unfavourable) in terms of the psychological continuum of scale value of the statements making up the scale.

In the method of summated ratings, the item score is obtained by assigning arbitrary weights of 5,4,3,2,1 for Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Undecided (U), Disagree (D) and Strongly Disagree (SD).

Uses of Attitude Scales

These scales are used to measure the degree of positive or negative feeling associated with a slogan, person, institution, etc. It is used to make some important or crucial decision in public-opinion-surveys. For example, the educationalists surveys to know what people feel about the educational issues. Similarly, opinion surveys are conducted by politicians to predict how people will vote.

Q) Explain Participatory Research Method

Answer:

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an approach to research in communities that emphasizes participation and action. It seeks to understand the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and following reflection. It helps in articulating the problems and indicating what could be done to ameliorate their conditions.

Some of the participatory researches include Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) which later evolved into Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and then later into Participatory Learning and Action (PLA). Participatory Rural Appraisal was used initially to appraise the existing situations only in rural areas and it was used in the urban areas and other fields like adult education, policy influencing and advocacy and organization development.

The objective of the approach is to let the poor and marginalized people become capable of analyzing their own realities and those they should be enabled to do so. Some of the commonly used techniques in PRS are meetings, group discussions, socio-drama and sharing of knowledge generated through various forms of folk, oral, written and visual arts.

Question: What is labeling theory/ Elaborate.

Answer

Labeling theory states that people come to identify and behave in ways that reflect how others label them. This theory is most commonly associated with the sociology of crime since labeling someone unlawfully deviant can lead to poor conduct.

Describing someone as a criminal, for example, can cause others to treat the person more negatively, and, in turn, the individual acts out.

Labeling theory was created by Howard Becker in 1963. Labeling theory takes the view that people become criminals when labeled as such and when they accept the label as a personal identity.

Important concepts in labeling theory include primary and secondary deviance, retroactive and prospective labeling, as well as the importance of being stigmatized. Primary deviance refers to episodes of deviant behavior that many people participate in. Secondary deviance is when someone makes something out of that deviant behavior, which creates a negative social label that changes a person’s self-concept and social identity. We call this negative label a stigma.

Labeling theory is one of the most important approaches to understanding deviant and criminal behavior. It begins with the assumption that no act is intrinsically criminal. Definitions of criminality are established by those in power through the formulation of laws and the interpretation of those laws by police, courts, and correctional institutions.

Deviance is therefore not a set of characteristics of individuals or groups but a process of interaction between deviants and non-deviants and the context in which criminality is interpreted.

Many children, for example, break windows, steal fruit from other people’s trees, climb into neighbors’ yards, or skip school. In affluent neighborhoods, parents, teachers, and police regard these behaviors as typical juvenile behavior.

But in poor areas, similar conduct might be viewed as signs of juvenile delinquency. This suggests that class plays an important role in labeling. Race is also a factor.

Critics of labeling theory however argue that it ignores factors—such as differences in socialization, attitudes, and opportunities—that lead to deviant acts.