Social work and the impact on human welfare

Social work and human services
Name
Institution

Sheppard, M. (2009), human services and social work are highly related although they serve the need of people in different ways. Both disciplines have a goal of ensuring social welfare to the community. Human services profession focuses on the bigger picture by helping plan programs to serve social needs of a particular population; they work in administrative roles to ensure that things run smoothly in their field of social services agency. They provide supervision and direction to the respective individuals who work with them. Social workers oftenly work in administrative roles but unlike health services professionals who can work hand in hand with the clients to carry out social programs, connecting the social assistants with the necessary services required to undertake tasks in social work to serve vulnerable populations.
Sheppard puts it that a social worker aims at ensuring social justice, the well-being of the marginalized and oppressed individuals. He utilizes different problem-solving approaches to bring peace among community members. The problem-solving process entails problem definition, problem analysis, establishment of goals, generating possible solutions, analyzing the solution and finally implementation.

While problem-solving a social worker should embrace strengths and solution focused practice. He should ensure that a solution is reached at the end of the session. He may do so through arbitrage and mediation among the conflicting parties.

There is need to understand one’s strengths and weaknesses for one to solve adequately a social problem.

Biomedical understanding of human problems is applicable in the medical profession to define feature of health care in a society hence the ability to solve them. It assists a social worker in identifying social relations that exist within a certain society in a particular time given the health aspects.The social worker should as well ensure social justice by trying to ensure economic, social and political rights are given to the members of the society. Social control ensures that these rights are given in a reasonable measure to bring equality among members.
Distributive justice seeks to ensure that social goods are divided accordingly depending on the social challenges of an individual. Those with more challenges should receive more as compared to those with less social problems. This is done to prevent inequalities.
A social worker core values should entail; social justice, value of service, integrity, competence, respect for the inherent dignity and the worth of a person without bias. He should also ensure honesty, embracing a heart that pursues social justice, service to humanity ensure integrity and confidentiality in professional practice.
Albert Bandura’s idea came up with social learning theory in which he says that learning occurs through observation and imitation. According to the theory, the learning process is made more efficient if the new behavior adopted.
The practice of social work focuses on various aspects of human life that touch on basic services. These areas include social policy, marginalization and oppression, counseling, mental health and addictions, assessment and diagnosis, child and human development.
In delivering human services, social workers must know how to work with families and consumers to weave together an array of community resources, ensure specialized assistance and natural supports to promote society well-being, community membership, and empowerment. The workers should train on a regular basis in a new framework of skills that incorporates the changes that shape the field being served.
In his book, Sheppard postulates statements that describe the major generic knowledge, attitude and skills necessary for all human service work. To ensure proper service delivery, social workers should understand the nature of human systems, individual, group, society, and the community. They should also understand the conditions that promote or limit the functioning and deviations from human systems. After identifying the specific challenges, the social worker should select interventions that promote growth and goal attainment by conducting a problem analysis. Problem analysis enables him to undertake proper planning, implementing and evaluating interventions thus being able to design a plan of action for an identified problem. It is through these steps that a social worker will achieve his objective of ensuring human welfare.

Reference
Sheppard, M. (2009). Appraising and using social research in the human services: An introduction on social work and health professionals. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

SOCIAL WORK AND HUMAN SERVICES PAGE * MERGEFORMAT 5

Running head: SOCIAL WORK AND HUMAN SERVICES PAGE * MERGEFORMAT 1