ssw chpt 4

• Direct social work practice


  A step-by-step process intended to help clients achieve purposeful change
• Decision-making process in direct social work practice

  • Transparent
  • Purposeful
  • Free of bias
• Helping relationship in direct social work practice

  Central to positive outcomes
• Evidence-based practice (EBP)


  A process in which the practitioner combines well-researched interventions with clinical experience, ethics, and the client's preferences and culture to guide the delivery of services
• Evidence-based practice (EBP)


  • Attempts to facilitate the most effective outcomes as demonstrated by the research
  • Increases the likelihood that programs with proven success will be shared widely to benefit the greatest number of people
• Steps in social work practice

  1. Combining and recombining actions into new ways of looking at things

  2. Stepping back to look, listen, and reflect

  3. Closely linked to improvements in practice
• Critical self-reflection


  A frame of mind that helps practitioners understand how their own identities and beliefs, as well as their professional and personal lives, are shaped not only by unique traits and personal experiences, but also by societal forces such as parental influences, cultural influences, the media, educational institutions, and political movements
• Four stages of social work with individuals and family

  • Intake
  • Assessment and planning
  • Evaluation and termination
  • Intervention
• Groups that operate in most communities

  • Self-help groups
  • Educational groups
  • Support/therapeutic groups
  • Task groups
  • Social action groups
• Three Approaches to Community Work

  • Locality Development
  • Social Planning
  • Social Action
• Saul Alinsky's Approach to Community Activism


  • Believes in creating confrontation
  • Building community organizations is instrumental
  • Community work needs to be fun
  • Tactics must be within the experience of the community members and outside the experience of those you are organizing against
  • The element of surprise
• Paulo Freire's Approach to Community Mobilization


  1. Begin with a listening survey to find out what community members feel strongly about

  2. The organizer and a small learning group gather to go through the findings of the listening survey, making codes (images, films, or plays) from the ideas they have heard

  3. Codes are presented to the community to stimulate discussion about what is going well or badly and to stimulate action planning to create change
• Empowering People for Social Justice

  • What is integral to a Freirian approach to social change is a process of reflection and action called "praxis"
  • A successful action for social change must be reflected upon both in advance of the action and afterward
  • This process creates new and more effective actions, which are also then reflected upon
• McKnight and Kretzmann's approach to community work


  It is vitally important to develop an approach to community work that builds upon the strengths and assets of a community rather than focusing on the community's needs
• Phases of community work (Bill Lee, 1999)

  • Pre-Entry
  • Contact and Engagement
  • Community Analysis
  • Action Planning and Mobilization
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Evaluation
• Pre-entry phase1


  A social worker needs to spend time learning the general history of the community and its relationship with the funder before entering the community
• Contact and Engagement phase2


  1. The community organizer starts to meet community members, listens, and begins to engage them in a process of change

  2. Engagement is often a long and challenging process in which the organizer works to build trusting relationships
• Community Analysis phase3


  1. The most common approach used is participatory action research (PAR), where community members are involved in deciding the research questions, determining the research process, and analyzing the research data

  2. The community members develop skills

  3. The community gets the evidence they need to encourage power holders to listen to their demands
• Action Planning and Mobilization phase4


  • The most important predictor of success is the amount of community support
  • Any plan for moving forward relies upon people building consensus around a clear plan
• Conflict Resolution phase5


  • A key component of community work is trying to mediate conflicts either within the community or with parties outside the community
  • A community worker needs to be aware of what is at stake in a conflict
• Evaluation phase6


  The final stage of community practice involves evaluation, which allows a community to reflect upon whether they were able to achieve the goals that they set for themselves
• social work practice includes direct service delivery (e.g., counseling), advocacy, case management, group work, policy development and implementation, research, education, administration, supervision, consultation, and program planning and evaluation.