Fifty years ago in the 1960s, a Jesuit Priest and a member of the Roman Catholic order published a book called the “Casework relationship” and it indentified seven principles of social work practice. The principles were, Confidentiality, Acceptance, Non judgemental attitude, Purposeful expressions of feelings, continued emotional involvement, self determination and individualisation. But many things have changed over the time, in the 1960s there were not any computers so confidentiality only matters to what’s been said to clients or service users. But now with increasing technology it is easier to make big mistakes and there many people that can hack into computer system to steal information. But with firewalls and virus protection, these problems are ironed. But on the other hand, there have been news articles recently of business men leaving highly confidential information on the train. Another thing is different is not continued emotional involvement does not always apply as you cannot get emotionally involved with service user’s problems.
In the 1960s, it was more about individualisation, but this not always the case and now it is more about statistics, government targets and yearly community care reviews. In the 1970s and 1980s, the focus on social work, was societal, for example public, shared and collective in the same decade, there were many laws coming out. For example, people with disabilities were instead moved to community settings rather than long stay hospital or establishments. That was a lot different to what it was previously were people were sent the long stay hospitals. There are many life stories that can support this, for example the story of Mabel Cooper. A woman with a learning disability was moved from hospital into community care and then when she reached old age, she was moved back into a care home. In the 1990s things were slightly different as it saw the coming of care management and now we at time of personalization, choice, independence and control which are now in firm ally at the centre of attention.
But now, social services run like big businesses where in some cases, the service user pay for their own care has. For example, Clarke argues that “Social work and Social care services are increasingly required to operate as enterprises selling their products on the open markets. “ Therefore public services have to become more efficient, more flexible and treat service users as customers to become more like a private sector organisation,” (Clark 2004) But that is wrong as service users are people are not statistics in book. They are not people buying their goods from grocery shops and they need individualized and personalized care
Nowadays, the five principles of the core value base is. Human Dignity and Worth, Social Justice, Service to humanity, integrity and competence. I will be now looking at values individually. Social workers need to respect the human dignity and worth of their service users to ensure that needs are respected, they need feel empowered to make decisions on their own and they also need feel as they are worth something. Social workers should also understand that need to challenge social justice, for example, suggesting to the service if he or she works and how it can improve self esteem issues if the service user has depression, another example is that you have a service that lives in poverty due to not working and is on a low income. Surely suggesting to the client that working would be a way forward. Social workers should recognize the important of human relationships and how it could impact of service users, for example living with friends and family instead of being alone. Social workers behave in a trust worthy matter that promotes good care, for example not turning up late for work or drunk. But at the same time should competent in what they are doing to ensure they do not cost someone their life.
To conclude, there are many reasons why social work has changed over the past 50 years, social work used to be a place where people came to you when they had a crisis and the problem was solved, but nowadays it is more about Government targets, seeing the service users as customers, but at the same time there has been many issues that have happened where social work is really needed.
Bibliography
Casework Relationship, Felix Biestek, Loyola Pr (Jun 1957) Quote’s and information from - Roles and Tasks of Social Workers
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