Student Handbook - Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences ...

Changes are also taking place because of internal forces at work within the field of humanservices. In reaction to human service systems that are unresponsive, stigmatizing, andineffective, there has been a ferment of local experimentation in recent years. Practitioners inmany fields, usually working in isolation from each other, have redesigned services and reshapedpractice. Those involved have worked to make services less fragmented and reactive, morecomprehensive, integrated, flexible, and responsive (Johnson, 1998a).Schorr (1988), for example, described examples of successful programs in education, health, andsocial services and drew lessons from successful for those who wish to redesign services. AsSchorr’s examples indicate, innovative service delivery requires a shift in relationship betweenprofessionals and those who use their services – a shift that recognizes the strengths andcapacities of families, social networks, and communities, and seeks to work in partnership withthem. The community, rather than the service system, needs to be the starting point of analysis(Adams & Nelson, 1997).Shifting the focus on human services in this way emphasizes that the care and protection ofchildren or elders or people with disabilities is a shared responsibility (Moroney, 1986) involvingfamilies, local communities, and the state. The view leads to a broadening of the conception ofhuman services, as promoting and enhancing the development of families and communities, aswell as responding to problems and deficits (Chapin Hall Center for Children, 1994). Forexample, social support interventions direct social work attention toward enhancing the growth,development and adaptive capacities of people, removing environmental obstacles, andincreasing the responsiveness and nurturing properties of the social and physical environment(Tracy & Whittaker, 1987). Increasingly, social support is seen as having relevance for all typesof social work practice (Kemp, Whittaker, & Tracy, 1997).A community-based approach to service delivery and practice recognizes that most of the workin which social workers and other helping professionals are engaged is done by others – families,kin and neighborhood networks, informal groups, churches, schools, and other organizations. Intheir role, community-based social workers become involved with these networks of individualsand organizations. The social work task is to understand the patterns of interaction that generateor perpetuate problems that may involve multiple system levels (such as family, neighbors,school, and social service and juvenile justice systems) and to intervene to change them. Forexample, the vital role of family members as partners in the caregiving process expands the roleof the social worker to include serving as enablers, educators, facilitators, consultants andadvocates (Biegel, Johnsen, & Shaffran, 1997).In this context, the professional-client relationship is seen as involving partnerships andcollaboration. In family-centered services, for example, this has meant not only shifting from theindividual to the family as the unit of attention, but involving parents and caregivers as fullpartners in the design, delivery, and oversight of services (Cohen & Lavach, 1995). There isresearch evidence that a partnership mode of helping, which engages the strengths, resources,and creativity of service users, enhances people’s sense of control over their own lives (Dunst,Trivette, Boyd, & Brookfield, 1994; Saleeby, 1992). For example, solution-focused (Berg & DeJong, 1996) and other forms of therapies require that the client/client system and the socialworker become involved in the co-construction of competence.http://msass.case.edu/downloads/academic/Student_Handbook.pdf Page 25