Social Work

• Crisis intervention is a short-term, immediate response to a crisis situation to stabilize individuals and prevent further harm.
• The Developmental Approach, emanating from the writings of Grace Coyle during the Settlement House Movement, emphasizes the value of collective self-help in group work.
• Group work models can be used as an agent, medium, and target of change in people.
• The helping models used with groups include the Developmental Approach, the Interactionist Approach, the Reality Approach, the Task-Centered Approach, and the Strengths Approach.
• The Strengths Approach, developed by Cynthia E. Miller, emphasizes the group's strengths and resources.
• The meso practice of social work involves helping and using groups, small groups, and families in effecting change through group work models.
• Each helping model has its own stages and processes, and addresses specific types of group problems.
• The Reality Approach, developed by Robert K. Conyne, emphasizes the importance of understanding the group's reality.
• The Interactionist Approach, developed by Emmanuel Tropp, focuses on the interaction between group members and the social worker.
• The Task-Centered Approach, developed by Robert K. Conyne, focuses on the tasks that need to be accomplished by the group.
• Social work profession deals with multi-problem client systems necessitating an application of problem-solving change-directed intervention best fit and appropriate to find answers to problems sought for.
• To determine what helping model and approach suits and responds to types of client problems is crucial to hitting your aim or target solutions on a bullseye.
• As symbol and spokesperson, the social worker is an agent of legitimate norms and values, personifying these norms and values.
• Locality Development emphasizes democratic procedures, voluntary cooperation, self-help, development of indigenous leadership and educational objectives.
• A social worker can use one or more any of these approaches depending on the nature and severity of problems to work on.
• Evaluation and termination in group treatment entails the review and evaluation of individual treatment goals and plans, whether achieved or not, as the basis of termination.
• Indirect Means of Influence are interventions that aim to modify group conditions affecting one or more group members.
• Extra Group Means of Influence are events and processes which occur outside the treatment group and treatment sequence, involving extra group relations, which can influence positive changes in group member’s behavior.
• As motivator and stimulator, the social worker provides encouragement and motivation to achieve individual goals and tasks in the form of encouraging individuals to meet certain expectations like assuming a leadership role and acquiring new skills.
• Group treatment termination can occur when it is apparent that treatment goals have been substantially achieved, when maximum benefits have been attained or when any anticipated additional gains are insufficient to merit continuation, when clients are dropping out, or when the agency is unable to continue providing the services for whatever reason.
• Face to face contact between the social worker and group members is a type of social worker’s means of influence.
• Family Assessment involves identifying one family issue or problem which can be a crisis, personality or behaviour problem of a family member causing trouble in relationship, material, physical or financial need, or problem/s caused by external factors.
• As a central person, the social worker assumes an object of group identification, and drives the group guided by objectivity and professionalism.
• The Strategy of Intervention A includes Direct Means of Influence, which are interventions to affect change through immediate interaction with a group member, such as face to face contact between the social worker and group members whether in the group or outside the group.
• Helping Models can be applied to find solution or answer to the identified problem.
• As an executive controller of member, the social worker enables the group to function according to set norms and rules, provides guidance, and regulates group behavior and interaction.
• Social Planning emphasizes a technical process of problem-solving with regard to substantive social problem.
• The phase of community organization involves identifying potential leaders, educational and conscientization activities, core group formation and developing leadership skills.
• This phase of community organization involves setting up the organization, committee formation, group mobilization, assessment and planning sessions.
• Organizational Development and Management are hand in hand with leadership development, appropriate organizational mechanisms must be established.
• Community Mobilization involves identifying the goal category of community action, assumptions concerning community structure & problems, basic change strategy, characteristic of change tactics and techniques, and salient practitioner roles.
• Social Action seeks redistribution of power, resources, or decision-making in the community and/or changing basic policies or formal organization.
• The problem-solving model developed by Helen Perlman recognized the innate drive or instinct capacity of anyone to find means of escape from stressful life events.
• The goal of using this model is to increase the person’s coping mechanism and ability to move on even in disrupted role performance and relationship perceived and felt as stressful with ease and without outside help.
• The stages of the problem-solving model include recognition of the difficulty or problem, identifying the person’s subjective emotions and experience of the problem, listing down the causes and effects of the problem and its impact and influence upon the person’s life space, searching and identifying for the means and modes of solutions to do, making the best decision among identified options the best strategy as a result of thinking and feeling through the problem, and implementing and evaluating the results.
• Major themes or principles of narrative therapy include Reality is socially constructed, Reality is influenced by and communicated through language, Having a narrative that can be understood helps us organize and maintain our reality, and There is no “objective reality” or absolute truth.
• During the termination phase of crisis intervention, the client and therapist review the client's progress in terms of the goals of the intervention, decision to terminate, and discuss the client's plans for the future.
• An evaluation of the tasks accomplished including the client’s developed adaptive coping patterns and the ties build with persons and resources in the community are emphasized during termination.
• Rani, Poonam, authored the book "Concepts and methods of social work", published by Random Publications.
• Crisis Intervention Model [Samuel Dixon,1987] includes stages such as establishing a positive relationship early in the relationship, eliciting and encouraging the expression of painful feelings and emotions, discussing the precipitating event, assessing and evaluating, formulating a dynamic explanation, restoring cognitive functioning, and planning and implementing treatment.