Social Work - Ch. 2 - Assumed Roles

Role Assumed by Social Workers

Broker

links individuals and groups who need help (and do not know where it is available) with community services. For example, a wife who reports being physically abused by her husband might be referred to a shelter for domestic violence. Nowadays even moderate-size communities have 200 or 300 social service agencies or organizations providing community services. Even human services professionals may be only partially aware of the total service network in their community.

Case Manager

is responsible for pulling together the services required to assist individuals, families, and groups. The case manager identifies resources needed, identifies goals, builds relationships with others involved in the client’s life, and follows up to ensure all goals are being accomplished by the client and others providing services/support.

Empowerer

A key goal of social work practice is empowerment, which is the process of helping individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities increase their personal, interpersonal, socioeconomic, and political strength and influence through improving their circumstances. Social workers who engage in empowerment-focused practice seek to develop the capacity of clients to understand their environment, make choices, take responsibility for their choices, and influence their life situations through organization and advocacy. Empowerment-focused social workers also seek to gain a more equitable distribution of resources and power among different groups in society. This focus on equity and social justice has been a hallmark of the social work profession, as evidenced through the early settlement workers such as Jane Addams.

Initiator

An initiator calls attention to a problem—or even to a potential problem. It is important to realize that some problems can be recognized in advance. For example, a proposal to renovate a low-income neighborhood by building middle-income housing units may result in the current residents’ becoming homeless. If the proposal is approved, the low-income families won’t be able to afford the costs of the middle-income units. Usually the initiator role must be followed by other functions; merely calling attention to problems usually does not resolve them.

Advocate

The role of advocate has been borrowed from the legal profession. It is an active, directive role in which the social worker advocates for a client or for a citizens’ group. When a client or a citizens’ group is in need of help and existing institutions are uninterested (or even openly negative and hostile) in providing services, then the advocate’s role may be appropriate. In such a role, the advocate provides leadership for collecting information, for arguing the correctness of the client’s need and request, and for challenging the institution’s decision not to provide services. The objective is not to ridicule or censure a particular institution but to modify or change one or more of its service policies. In this role, the advocate is a partisan who is exclusively serving the interests of a client or a citizens’ group. In being an advocate, a worker is seeking to empower a client or a citizen’s group through securing a beneficial change in one or more institutional policies.

Activist

An activist seeks institutional change; often the objective involves a shift in power and resources to a disadvantaged group. Activists are concerned about social injustice, inequity, and deprivation, and their strategies include conflict, confrontation, and negotiation. The goal is to change the social environment to better meet the recognized needs of individuals. Using assertive and action-oriented methods (for example, organizing concerned citizens to work toward improvements in services in a community for transgender people), social workers engage in fact-finding, analysis of community needs, research, the dissemination and interpretation of information, mobilization, and other efforts to promote public understanding and support on behalf of existing or proposed social programs. Social action activity can be geared toward a problem that is local, statewide, or national in scope.

Mediator

The mediator role involves intervention in disputes between parties to help them find compromises, reconcile differences, or reach mutually satisfactory agreements. Social workers have used their value orientations and unique skills in many forms of mediation. Examples of target groups in which mediation has been used include disputes that involve divorcing spouses, neighbors in conflict, landlord–tenant disputes, labor–management disputes, and child custody disputes. Mediators remain neutral, not siding with either party, and make sure they understand the positions of both parties. They may help to clarify positions, identify miscommunication about differences, and help those involved present their cases clearly.

Negotiator

A negotiator brings together those who are in conflict over one or more issues and seeks to achieve bargaining and compromise to arrive at mutually acceptable agreements. Somewhat like mediation, negotiation involves finding a middle ground that all sides can live with. However, unlike a mediator, which is a neutral role, a negotiator usually is allied with one of the sides involved.

Coordinator

Coordinators bring components together in some kind of organized manner. For example, for a multi-problem family it is often necessary for several agencies to work together to meet the complicated financial, emotional, legal, health, social, educational, recreational, and interactional needs of the family members. Someone at an agency needs to assume the role of case manager to coordinate the services from the different agencies to avoid duplication and to prevent the diverse services from having conflicting objectives.

Researcher

Every social worker is at times a researcher. Research in social work practice includes studying the literature on topics of interest, evaluating the outcomes of one’s practice, assessing the merits and shortcomings of programs, and studying community needs.

Group Facilitator

A group facilitator is one who serves as a leader for group activity. The group may be an educational group, a task group, a self-help group, a family therapy group, or a group with some other focus.

Public Speaker

Social workers occasionally are recruited to talk to various groups (such as high school classes, public service organizations such as Kiwanis, police officers, staff at other agencies) to inform them of available services or to advocate for new services. In recent years, various needed services have been identified (for example, providing resources for members of the LGBTQ+ population facing homelessness, services for families affect by domestic violence, rape crisis centers, services for people with HIV, and group homes for youths). Social workers who have public-speaking skills can explain services to groups of potential clients.

Policy Analyst

Policy analysis involves systematic evaluation of a policy and the process by which it is formulated. Those who conduct such an analysis consider whether the process and result were clear, equitable, legal, national, compatible with social values, superior to other alternatives, cost-effective, and explicit. Such an analysis frequently identifies shortcomings in the policy. Those conducting the policy analysis then usually recommend modifications in the policy that are designed to alleviate these shortcomings.

Other Activity

consulting, supervising social workers and other professionals, planning, program development, policy development, and teaching (primarily at the college level).