Lesson 9

Settings, Processes, Methods, and Tools in Social Work

In the previous chapters, we have discussed about what social work is, the clientele

group that social workers cater to, and the settings where social workers can be

found.

In this lesson, we will discuss how social workers to their job-whether the clientele

group they are helping are individuals, groups, and or communities.

Social Work Practice Settings

Social work practitioners work in various types of practice settings. Du Bois and

Mikey (2014 91) identified two broad categories of social work setting: primary and

host setting ls. Primary settings chiefly provide social services that are directly

related to the mission of the organization. Host settings, on the other hand, provide

social work to complement, support, or enhance the mission of host institutions.

Primary Settings

Morales and Sheafor (2002,110) identified three primary settings where social

workers can be found: government sector, voluntary sector, and business sector.

• Government

One of the settings where most social workers can be found is the government. In

the Philippines, the government provides job opportunities for social workers

primarily through the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

DSWD has regional offices nationwide. Social workers assigned at DSWD’s central
office are primarily fulfilling the role of system and program developers, planners,

advocates, and researchers. In its regional offices, in addition to administrative and

management roles, social workers also engage in direct service work as case

managers and coordinators for institutions dealing with different clientele groups and

for community-based programs.

Social workers also work for government units, either at the City or Municipal

Social Welfare and Development Office. City and municipal social welfare and

development officers usually cater to clientele groups from “womb to comb”,

meaning infants, children, youth, adults, men and women, disabled persons, and the

elderly.

• Private Sector

Companies have come to recognize that they also have a responsibility of making

the world a better place fir everyone to live in. This “corporate conscience” is referred

to as corporate social responsibility (CSR). To ensure that this goal is fulfilled,

companied hire social workers who work as researchers and system and program

developers. Social workers maximize the resources that corporate entities have in

improving the quality of life of the members of a certain community. An example of a

private sector group that practices CSR is the Philippines Business for Social

Progress, a nonprofit organization that brings businesses together to address

poverty. Another example is the Ayala Foundation, Inc., which aims to help

community members become “productive, creative, self-reliant, and proud to be

Filipinos” (Ayala Foundation 2013).

Nongovernmental organizations (NGO), which is a major employer of social work

practitioners, usually focus on specific clientele groups. NGOs that cater to children,
for example, may deal specifically with child domestic workers, children in conflict

with the law, or sexually abused children. Other NGOs dealing with adult clients

focus on providing program and services for battered women, women victim of

trafficking, persons with disabilities, and the elderly , among others.

NGOs can either be local or international. Local NGOs usually operate in a

specific area, say Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, or Davao, or may also have regional

offices depending on the nature and extent of their programs and services.

International NGOs are usually funding agencies that do not only operate locally but

also on a regional level. Examples of international NGOs are World Vision, a

humanitarian organization that addresses on poverty and injustice especially among

children; Plan International, one of the oldest and larger development organization in

the world; Oxfam, an international confederation of organizations that mobilize

people to thrive against poverty; and CARE, a humanitarian group that aims to

support communities implement sustainable poverty-fighting efforts.

• Host Settings

Schools, courts, and hospitals are examples of host or secondary settings. In these

settings, social work professionals work as members of an interdisciplinary team.

Healthcare Settings. Social workers in health care settings work hand-in-hand

with medical professionals, such as doctors, nurses, dieticians, and therapists.

Social work practice in these settings has greatly evolve since its beginnings.

Whereas, at first, the profession was only focused on improving social conditions

that bred health concerns , the tasks of social workers evolve to include the following

tasks:

-plan for a patient’s transaction to home or to another level of care;

 -provide specialized services, such as care for people with serious illnesses or for

the elderly;

-influence policy change and development within systems of case;

-conduct research and case management;

-provide health education and supportive counseling; and

-participate in crisis intervention (NASW 2005).

Social workers have also become more equipped to practice in the healthcare

field, such as in cases of traumatic events and disasters. They assist in all practice

areas of health care-from assessment, care, to treatment.

• School Settings

The goal of social work to school settings is to make students fully available for

learning by promoting their academic and social-emotional well-being. They address

issues that block academic progress by helping student-clients overcome their social

, psychological emotional, and physical difficulties. They also design youth-oriented

projects and programs for preventing students from dropping out of school. Social

workers in academic settings serve as a link between clients, the family, the

community, and other professionals. Social work in these settings may be in the form

of counseling, crisis intervention, and prevention programs.

• Court Settings

There are two primary roles that social workers play court: evidence gives and report

writers. Social work practitioners provide testimonies in court hearings,

predominantly in childcare or family proceedings. They also conduct interviews,

gather and assess data, and cite recommendations in social case reports for court

use.

Some host settings, such as courts and hospitals, are government-owned and

funded. Social workers in said settings are referred to as court social workers and

medical social workers, respectively. NGOs, which can be considered as host

settings for social work, focus on certain issues and concerns-such as education,

health, migration, peace and governance, human rights, disaster risk reduction and

management, and climate change adaptation.

• Social Work Networks

Although social works clients and audiences are classified as individuals, groups,

organizations, and communities, the social work profession do not see them as

separate, but as interconnected and interrelated entities.

No matter what the setting where social workers practice, social workers should

have a basic knowledge on how the other settings work in terms of policies, delivery

systems and mechanisms, and procedures as well the programs and service these

settings provide. It is important that social workers establish networks so that they

can tap these resources for their own clientele groups.

A social worker in an NGO, for example, may refer cases of physically abused

children to the Child Protection Unit, an entity under UP-PGH ( University of the

Philippines – Philippine General Hospital) for medical check-up and further

psychological assessment and intervention. Another program that a social worker

may tap for clients who felt displaced in city-living is DSWD’s Balik-Probinsya

Program, which assists Filipinos seeking to return to their provinces.

Generalist Social Work Practice

In Lesson 8, we discussed (a) social work practice with individuals, (b) social work

practice with groups, and (c) social work practice with communities. Initially, this is

how social work is conceptualized and the three are usually referred to as the

methods of social work practice, which in confined to a particular specialization, that

is casework, group work and community organizing. However, recent literature talks

about generalist practice or generalist social work practice. Pearson provided an

explanation of generalist social work, which says:

Generalist social work provides an integrated and multileveled approach for

meeting the purpose of social work. Generalist practitioners acknowledge the

interplay of person and collective issues, prompting them to work with a variety of

human systems-societies, communities, neighborhoods, complex organizations,

formal groups, families, and individuals-to create changes that maximize human

system functioning. This means that generalist social workers work directly with

clients systems at all levels, connect clients to available resources, intervene with

organizations to enhance the responsiveness of resource systems, advocate just

social policies to ensure the equitable distribution of resources, and research all

aspects of social work practice.

The following discussion on the social work helping process is premised on the

generalist social work practice framework.

Social Work Helping Process

The beginning generalist social work as a helping profession is also considered as a

relationship between the social worker and the client. Just like any other relationship,

it has a beginning and an ending. In Lesson 6, we discussed social work as a

helping profession. However, social workers do not just help people based on their

motivations and compassion; rather, it follows certain steps and processes, that in

why it is also called a science.

Johnson (1998, 263) claimed that the process can be conceptualize as having

four major components: assessment, planning, action and termination. However,

most social work literature (Brill and Levine 2002, Sheafor and Horejsi 2003, Kirst-

Ashman 2007) would include engagement as part of the helping process, which

takes place prior to assessment.

Hepworth et al. (2010, 34-41), on the other hand, viewed the helping process

as made up of three phases. Phase 1, which is the beginning phase includes

exploration, engagement, assessment, and planning. Phase II, which is the Middle

Phase, involves the implementation of the plan and the attainment of goals. Lastly,

Phase III which is the Ending Phase include evaluation and termination. The social

work helping process can be viewed as a stair as illustrated in Figure 9.1 below, as

each step corresponds to the different activities or component under each from the

beginning to the ending phase.

Figure 9.1 Social Work Helping Process
So, whether its components, phases, or stages, they all refer to the same thing, they

are actually complementing each other. Let us now look at phase or components one

by one.

Phases of the Social Work Helping Process

Hepworth et al. (2010,34) maintained that each of these phases has distinct

objectives, and the helping process generally proceeds successively through them.

The three phases, however, are not sharply demarcated by the activities and skills

used. Certainly, the activities and skills used in the three phases differ more in terms

of their frequency and intensity than in the kind used. The process of exploration and

assessment, for example, are crucial during Phase I, but these processes continue

in somewhat diminished significance during the ensuing phases of the helping

process.

Phase I: Beginning Phase: Exploration, Engagement, Assessment, and

Planning
Phase 1 of the Social Work Helping Process focuses on four aspects, namely:

exploration, engagement, assessment, and planning. Exploration can be summed up

as getting to know the clients and their concerns, feelings, and experiences while

engagement is about helping the clients solve their problems and guiding them

toward goal accomplishment. Assessment deals with gathering relevant information

that can help the clients and providing possible courses of action that can help the

clients solve their problems and meet their goals. Planning centers on the creation of

a contract plan that the clients would follow and fulfill in order to accomplish their

goals.

Exploration

Cournoyer (2014) maintains that during the exploration phase of the helping process,

the social worker encourages the clients to share thoughts, feelings, and

experiences about the issue or concerns that led the clients to contact the social

worker. The following exploring skills are especially useful for encouraging mutual

consideration of information regarding the person or client, the issue, situation, and

strengths:

• Asking questions in order to elicit facts, ideas, and feelings concerning the person,
the issue, the situation, and potential means for solutions. Questions that social
workers ask can either be open-ended or closed-ended.

• Seeking clarification involves asking the client to elaborate about something the
client has just said or done. This generates complete and comprehensible
information about particular aspects of the person-issue-situation.
• Reflecting content means communicating the social worker's understanding of the
factual or informational part of a message, by paraphrasing or restating the client's
words.

• Reflecting feeling can be done through a brief response that communicates the
social worker's understanding of the feelings expressed by a client.

• Reflecting feeling and meaning is manifested by paraphrasing or mirroring the

client's emotions along with the facts or beliefs associated with them.

• Partializing means helping clients break down multiple or complex aspects and
dimensions of the person-issue-situation into more manageable units so that it can
be addressed more easily.

• Going beyond involves taking a small leap beyond the expressed message to bring
into greater awareness or clarity information that a client already knows.

Engagement
Whether the generalist social work practitioner begins to work with an individual,
family, group, organization, or community as the client, action, or target system, one
of the social worker's immediate task is to engage the system in strengths-based
problem solving directed toward goal accomplishment. Timberlake et al. (2008)
assert that during the engagement phase, the social worker attends to the seven
guiding processes:
1. Establishing Professional Relational Boundaries
The purpose of engagement with client, action, and target systems differs; hence,
the nature of professional relationship will also differ. Client systems, for example,
are seeking services and are expected beneficiaries of services. As such, the
professional working relationship with clients includes the more facilitative relational
conditions of respect, empathy, warmth, genuineness, and unconditional positive
regard and conveys energy and hope for goal accomplishment.

2. Identifying Problems, Needs, and Strengths

Before actually discussing the problem with a client or the action system in any
depth, it is necessary for the social worker to prepare for the contact. As mush as
possible, the social worker tries to learn about the culture, need, strengths, and
resource of the client system. More than just the system that he or she will interact
with, the social worker also tries to understand his or her own culture, needs, and
resources. He or she also comprehends how the two, social worker and system of
contact, may form a “fit” for positive interaction.

At the point of initial contact and after brief introductions, the purpose of the social
worker’s meeting with the clients needs to be expressed. Such purpose could be
defining a problem or a need or even identifying client’s strengths and resources. All
these should be kept by the social workers in mind for future purposes.

3. Recognizing Feelings and Reactions

The social worker strives to become aware of the feelings of the client system as
they relate to the problem situation. The feelings encourage and expressed however
are mainly conscious and identifiable. Although feelings are conscious, the social
worker knowns that they are often difficult to share. It may be awkward for a person
to engage in a discussion about private feelings with a social worker in the early
phase of a working relationship. To be able to help a client system discuss relevant
feelings, the social worker needs to have a broad vocabulary to describe feelings.
Morin (2020) made a list of feeling words from A to Z which can be found at
https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647. Words

describing feelings on this website will prove to be of great help to social workers
during the engagement phase.

The important point in the engagement phase is not so much on how that feelings
are expressed, i.e., freely or without restraint, or with hesitations or reservations, as
each client is different. The fact that the clients have expressed their feelings means
that the social workers has provided an atmosphere of trust, practiced purposeful
listening, showed interest in what the clients are saying, and, at the same time, has
nit condemned the feelings expressed by the clients.

4. Increasing Client System Investment

As early as the engagement phase, social worker should be able to build

collaborative relationship with the client system. To be able to achieve this, the social
worker should make use of active and reflective listening behavior, paying full
attention to the client system’s verbal and nonverbal expression of thoughts,
feelings, and experiences with the problem presented, current situation, and means
of coping, and changes that may have occurred. Techniques that will be of great help
to the social worker include paraphrasing, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing
themes and points in the client system’s narrative to accurately reflect the content
and process of their messages.

5. Determining Goals
Goals are the desired outcome toward which intervention activity is directed.
According to Kirst-Ashman and Hull (1999); Sheafor, Horejsi and Horejsi (1999); and
as cited in Timberlake et al. (2008), goals may take many forms such as:

• Learning a skill or acquiring particular knowledge for decision making or fulfilling a

particular role.

• Making an important decision about a course of action, such as deciding to change

a lifestyle or marital status or relinquishing custody of a child.

• Changing behavior or increasing desired outcomes, like adopting a study habit for a
student to improve their performance in school.

• Altering feelings or attitudes toward oneself or others, like believing more in oneself.

• Resolving a conflicted relationship, either with siblings, parents, or an intimate

partner.

• Changing the appraisal of life events or circumstances to develop a new

perspective.

6. Making Initial Plans

In the engagement phase, a working climate is established wherein the client

system’s fears, problems, needs strengths and goals are explored. There are three
possible outcomes of the engagement:

• Role induction – The clients system agrees to proceed with the outline intervention
process.

• Referral – Since the client system cannot be adequately served by the present
agency and the social worker has an obligation to help the system gain access to
needed services, linking or brokering service is offered.
• Discontinuation of service – the client system and the social worker agree not to
continue because of the following reasons: (1) the problems, needs, and issues
presented cannot be addressed by the agency services; (2) the client system and
the social worker agree that the initial contacts were insufficient to mobilize
strengths-based problem-solving process and resources; or (3) the client system
choose not to invest further time, energy, or resources in partnership.

7. Monitoring the Engagement Phase

Monitoring the engagement phase would involve reviewing up to what extent the
engagement principles and processes have been accomplished. These processes
may include – but are not limited to – identifying strengths and resources, and
recognizing feeling and reactions.
Assessment

Assessment is defined both as a process and a product of understanding that serves

as the basis for action (Boyle et al. 2006, Timberland et al. 2008). Hepworth et al.
(2010) described assessment in social work as a fluid and dynamic process that
involves receiving, analyzing, and synthesizing new information as it emerge during
the entire course of a given case. Bolger and Walker (2014) propose to define
assessment in social work ad a structure activity with the characteristics shown in
Figure 2 on the next page.

Adams et al. (2002,292) state that assessment in social work consists of the
following tasks:

• gathering relevant information

• constructing a “picture” of the situation;

• considering possible courses pf action; and

• deciding upon the courses of action to be pursued.

In data gathering fir assessment, it is essential for the social worker to apply the
“principle of parsimony,” wherein only information that has relevance to the situation
at hand and is essential to the formulation of valid working judgment must be
collected (Brill and Levine 2002). There are many sources of data for cases handled
by social workers. The primary one is the client. Meanwhile, people who play a
significant role in the client’s life can be considered secondary sources of
information. These include both people with whom they have personal relationships
such as family and friends-and people within the more extended systems of which
they are a part-such as church, job, and so on. The final sources of data are records,
test reports, studies, and evaluation of kinds.

Johnson (1998,289) supports the idea that a social work assessment is a picture-
however incomplete-made up all available facts and fit together within a particular
frame of reference for a particular purpose. Furthermore, Johnson identified the task
of assessment as follows: (1) identification of the need or problem as well as of
client strengths and resources; (2) identification of the information needed to further
understand the need or problem and to determine appropriate means for dealing
with the need or problem; and (3) collection and analysis of information.
Figure 9.2 Structure of Assessment in Social Work
 The skills that are used during the assessment include goal setting, planning,
contracting, and recording. Goals emphasize client system growth and gains in
specific terms. According to Timberlake et al. (2008, 250) goals have multiple
functions, such as the following:

• Provide direction and continuity for the intervention.

• Provide a means for the client system and the social worker to come to an
agreement about the outcomes to be achieved.

• Facilitate the selection of intervention strategies.

• Facilitate monitoring progress.
• Serve as outcome criteria.

In view of the goal’s functions, goal setting is explored in the context of the client
system’s values as well as the goal’s feasibility in light of agency functions,
environmental constraints, and the reality of the situation, behaviors, and attitude
targeted for change.

Moreover, as the social workers involve the client or action system in

contracting, interviewing skills, such as clarifying, bargaining, and confronting, may
be needed. The supportive skills of listening , guiding, feeling, and sensing are
prevalent throughout the assessment and contract planning process.

There is inevitably a subjective element to assessment , but this is not to say

that the worker should not endeavor to be as objective as possible. Adams,
Dominelli, and Payne ( 1998, 307) said that assessment should not be narrow and
service-oriented. It is not a simple question of assessing needs but rather of
assessing circumstances, and such circumstances should include strengths as well
as weakness, rights, and needs. Lastly, the process of assessment is an iterative
one not a mechanical, linear progression from one stage to the next.

Planning

In some literature, the term used is contract planning. Contract planning is the link
between assessment and intervention and is the activity focused on change. During
this phase, every effort is made to conceptualize and verbalize the identified
problems, strengths, and corresponding goals. Not only were the task identified but
they are also placed in sequence. Dialogue between the social worker and the client
system includes a consideration of which tasks need to precede other (Timberlake
et al. 2008).

All these are put into what is called as contract plan. A contract plan specifies
the reason for each component and action in the plan. In developing a contract, full
participation of the client is imperative to increase chances of success and how this
gives the client a sense of being in control so as not to foster dependency. A social
worker should only agree to carry out a task for the client when it is apparent that
client is unable to perform the needed task.

In generalist social work practice, a tool has been developed that incorporates
the essential components of a contracted plan. The social worker can make use of
this tool to put into writing what is agreed on as (1) the problem, issue, or needs to
be addressed; (2) the goals to be achieved; (3) the task to be performed; (4) the
people who will implement each task; (5) the projected date that the task will be
carried out; and (6) the actual dates that the task will be accomplished.
The contracted plan is a tool for ongoing use. Problems, needs, goals, tasks,
and the contracted enactor may change in the course of the helping process. There
is a need to continuously update and review the plan to fil the client system’s
requirements. This tool may also serve as a major instrument for evaluating the
goals set for the helping relationship