According to Cowles, social workers have to know the five
health field-specific knowledge areas (2003).
They are client population and problem area, organizational setting,
community characteristics and resources, specific intervention modalities, and
research, evaluation, and documentation. Social workers have to find out the
characteristics of the client population, the role of human diversity in the
onset and course of the disorder. In
addition to that, they have to understand the population demographic, and provide
suitable interventions such as grief counseling. They also have to engage in
doing research, evaluation, and documentation. There are a multitude of intervention methods
which reflect six broad approaches such as counseling, education or skill
training, resource information and resource linkage assistance, advocacy,
environmental modification, and community resource development.
Ethical principles and ethical standards are interesting to
learn. Social workers value their
service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human
relationships, integrity, and competence.
They have a commitment to clients and their interest is the well-being
of their clients. They help their
clients to clarify their goals. Because
they respect clients’ privacy, they do not share the confidentiality to others
unless they have a good reason. For
social workers, sexual relationships with clients are not appropriate.
Therefore, they have to avoid having relationships with their former or current
clients. They are not allowed to conduct
some behaviors to their clients such as physical contact, sexual harassment,
derogatory language, payment for services.
Because they take part in many areas, social workers play so many roles
such as advocates, brokers, case managers, consultants, counselors, liaisons,
mediators, researchers, planners, and teachers.
References
Cowles, L. A. F. (Ed.). (2003). Social work
in the health field: A care perspective. (2nd ed.)
Binghamton, NY: The
Haworth Press.
Social workers do have to know the five health field specific knowledge areas and they have to find out the characteristics of the client population and the role of human diversity in the onset and course of the disorder. They also have to know the four core values of social work practice: human behavior and the social environment, social welfare policy and programs, social work practice, and social work research methods. Social work practice knowledge is very important to the social work field and must be continually developed and researched within this profession. This chapter discusses the values and ethics of the social work profession and the code of ethics of the NASW and how important it is in this field.There are many tings that social workers need to know in order to be successful and to continue to grow in this profession.
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