SW

1. Fields of Social Work
I. Child Welfare
 Concerned with the well-being of children & youth
 Focus on the strengthening of relationship between parents and child, the role of
the family, and the responsibility of the community in the child’s development.
 It works with children who need protection against conditions that exploit their
rights as human beings or prevent them from their right to survival and
development.
2 Major Types of Child Welfare Services
1. Direct service – rendered to in the form of
* Assistance of children in their own homes
* Child placement through residential care in an institution, foster
care or adoption
2. Indirect Service –
* in the form of financing on a national or international event; or the
provision of supplies and equipment and certain facilities.
* coordination to facilitate linkages and avoid duplication among
agencies with similar or related services
Child Placement
 Adoption – a process whereby a child is deprived of a birth family is provided with
a substitute new ties.
 Legal guardianship- substitute parental care through the appointment of legal
guardian for the child, including his property, until the child reaches the age of
majority
 Foster Care- substitute temporary parental care provided to a child by a licensed
foster family under the supervision of a social worker. The ultimate goal is reunite
the child with the biological family or prepare the child for adoption or in the case
of older children, to prepare them for independent living.
 Residential/institutional care – this provides temporary 24-hour residential group
care for children . It is under the guidance of trained staff, but it is used as a last
recourse, resorted to in the absence of foster families.
II. Family Welfare
 It is concerned with the improvement, strengthening and support of the
family in meeting its own needs.
 It is basically helping the family to perform its functions as the basic social
unit.
Programs/ Activities
o Parent effectiveness
o Marriage Strengthening
o Establishment of Community Support Programs
o Strengthening of Family Values and Preservation of Cultural
Heritage
o Family and Environment
o Livelihood Programs
o Fertility and Family Planning
o Activities in family welfare setting

2. o Engaging the family in a problem solving relationship
 Mobilizing existing resources and if possible creating non-existing
resources needed by the family.
 Working with individuals,groups and other entities whose support and
cooperation are needed to effectively help a family.
 Continuously/regularly assessing the adequacy and effectiveness of
existing policies, programs and services that relate to the family;
 Supervising staff in their various activities in relation to the families being
served.
III. Health
 Concerned with continuously defining and solving problems aimed at
facilitating social relationships and mutual adjustments between individuals
and their environment.
 The main concern is the interplay of economic, social and psychological
forces in medical care, and finds or develop ways and means to solve
problems related to illness and treatment.
 Focus on hospitals to serve patients whose emotional and social institutions
directly or indirectly cause, maintain or aggravate their illnesses.
 Medical Social Workers work directly with medical personnel and considered
members of the medical team.
 Medical Social Workers work with:
a. psychiatric unit of hospital
b. mental health agencies which provides SW opportunities to engage
activities like outreach, counselling, rehabilitation to former drug users,
alcoholics,legal offenders etc.
c. Agencies catering to mentally & physically challenged
IV. Corrections
 SW works as part of the administration of process wherein the offender is
corrected, his current behavior is kept within acceptable limits at the same
time, his general life adjustment is modified.
 PD968 known as Probation Law of 1976 had employed SW and in RA
8369(the Family Courts Act, establishing family courts where RSW has to be
employed to counsel and do social services to children and their family.
V. School
 Provide helping service to students whose problems in school stem from
social and emotional causes which interfere with their adjustment and
potential academic achievement.
Purposes of School Social Worker
1. Restoration of impaired adjustments.
2. Provision of resources by mobilizing capacities of individual students,
their parents, families, and the families and larger communities
3. Prevention of maladjustment
VI. Special groups
 Drug Dependents-
 Socially Disadvantaged Women(raped, sexual harassment, wife beating)
 Released prisoners and former patients of psychiatric institutions.

3.  Older Persons
 Persons with Disabilities
VII. Community welfare
 Work with individuals, families, and small groups, and their concern is the
provision of opportunities that would enable people in the community to work
together towards common goals particularly those that world bring about their
common upliftment.
VIII. Cultural communities
 SW works with the cultural communities and these includes administration and
supervision of resettlement areas for cultural minorities.
IX. Industry and labor
 Focuses on the welfare of the people particularly of the provision of employment
benefits and other services for their overall welfare as well as welfare of their
families.
X. Education and training
 Bisno calls this the “ facilitative instructional methods of social work practice.
XI. International Social Welfare
 SW are employed on abroad and that they can exercise their profession. The SW
can help in the determination of possible ways how we can contract international
social welfare.
XII. Social Planning
 SW is now involve in social planning to meet the welfare requirements of
development.