Generalist Social Work Practice

Macro Social Work

Is interventions provided on a large scale that affect entire communities and systems of care.

Micro Social Work

Is the most common practice, and happens directly with an individual client or family.

Mezzo Social Work

Happens on an intermediate scale, involving neighborhoods, institutions or other smaller groups.

Examples of Macro Social Work

lobbying to change a health care law, organizing a state-wide activist group or advocating for large-scale social policy change.

Example of Micro Social Work

Helping individuals to find appropriate housing, health care and social services. Family therapy and individual counseling. This may even include military social work, where the social worker helps military service members cope with the challenges accompanying military life and access the benefits entitled to them by their service.

Example of Mezzo Social Work

Include community organizing, management of a social work organization or focus on institutional or cultural change rather than individual clients.

Generalized Practice Definition #1

It can be seen as the ability of a practitioner to work with all levels of social work clients: individuals, couples, families, groups, organizations, neighborhoods, and communities.

Generalized Practice Definition #2

Having the ability to employ a variety of social work methods.

Generalized Practitioner

Can be seen as a person who can make a broad assessment of individual group, or organizational needs and then make the connection to resources that will meet these needs (often a function of a case manager).

"Strengths Perspective"

Holds that it makes far more sense to focus on the strengths and abilities a clients brings to working on a particular life difficulty that to stress the client's deficiencies.

Those working from a strength perspective assume:

People have untapped, undetermined reservoirs of mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual ability

"Empowerment"

Generalized practitioner stress clients "unique coping method and adaptive patterns, mobilizing their actual or potential strengths, emphasizing the role of natural helping networks, and using environmental resources.

The skills of generalist practice include:

Assessment, referral work, brokering between clients and agencies and other sources of help, and evaluation of services in terms of usefulness of clients. They also must possess communication skills including empathy and an understanding of the needs and strengths of clients within all the levels of client systems, from micro to macro system.

Assessment

Is the core of generalist practice. It entails a thorough explanation and analysis of the client's situation, whether the client/client system is an individual, a family, a group, and organization, or a community.

Another basic skill in generalist work

is the ability to refer clients to various resources of help. This often calls for referrals to other professionals.

Assessment & Referral Work

Calls for communication skills and the ability to build on client strengths The ability to listen to clients often needs to be practiced.

Empathic Listening

Is when you try to hear responses non-judgmentally and to put yourself in the client's place, whether you are listening to an individual or to a group of people. You will also come to rely approaches such as asking peon-ended questions and avoiding asking why questions because in many cases the person may not readily understand the reason behind his or her behavior.

Termination Skill

Ending a relationship with a client. A final evaluation is apart of this practice.

Case Management Roles

Has been broadly applied to describe a method or process of service delivery and a set of roles assumed by various providers of health and social services: including social workers, nurses, and other professionals and paraprofessionals.

Case Management # 2

A way of helping people identify the areas where they need help and connecting them to the personnel and community resources that will help them.

NASW Case Management Definition

"A mechanism for ensuring a comprehensive program that will meet an individual's need for care by coordinating and linking components of a service delivery"

Difference between Case Management & Generalized Social Work Practice Skills

All of the realms of practice involve in-depth assessments, development of goals and intervention plans, and assessment of these plans when completed. Case Management work, however, tends to emphasize the broad use of community resources to help clients build on their own strengths and meet their needs.

Schema for Assessing Resources Include

Relevance, availability, accessibility, eligibility, applications, fee, and feasibility

Relevance

Does the resource offer service that are congruent with the clients system's identified needs? Will the rescue meet the client system's goal?

Availability

Will the resources be available when the client system requires it? Is there a waiting list? Do certain circumstances qualify for a quick response?

Accessibility

Is the office located on convenient travel routes? Does the resources offer services in the client's language? sign language? Are the facilities accessible to those with disabilities?

Eligibility

What are the guidelines for receiving services? Are there income, location, age, or other qualifiers?

Applications

Is there a formal application process? Who needs to fill out form? What time frame is impose don the application process? Are supporting documents required?

Fee

Is there a sliding fee scale? If fees are involved, has the client system been informed of the fee schedule? Will the client realistically be able to pay for the service? Under what circumstances can the fee be waived?

Feasibility

Considering all of the aforementioned, is this a viable resource?

Institutional Framework

Social workers may be employed by hospitals, nursing homes, psychiatric facilities, community centers, schools, and broad-purpose social agencies such as friendship House. In other words, they can be found in any setting where clients need a variety of resources to help them make changes in their lives.

Case Workers

Work in public and private organizations. Those working in private, for-profit settings sometimes face difficulty because some of these organizations can limit the types of resources case managers can use for clients. This is one of the situations that calls for client advocacy.

Case Managers

Are essentially client advocates; they exist to help people, groups, and communities find appropriate resources for their needs. These resources do not always exist, or if they do, they can be too expensive or difficult to access. They will often need to publicize the lack of certain resources and make sure that existing resources can be in fact used by clients.

The person-in environment equation can best be balanced by:

An understanding of individual factors and underlying social issues.

The integrated Methods Model

Combines casework, group work, and community organization approaches to social work practice.

Generalist Practice

Is when social workers use a broad range of methods to intervene with all client system sizes.

The Core of Generalist Practice

assessment

Case Management tends to emphasize

The broad use of community resources to help clients build on their own strengths and meet their needs.