Multiple Roles of a Social Service Professional Flashcards
What is a role?
Role refers to the usual behaviours of persons occupying a particular social position.
What is the role of an Enabler?
- Enablers are helpers in Micro, Mezzo, Macro sytem
- Helps client cope with various stresses varying from crisis situations like divorce, job loss, inadequate housing and day care
- Skills used in enabler role - convey hope, reduce resistance and ambivalence, recognise and manage feelings, identify and support personal strengths and social assets
- Able to help clients break down problems into manageable parts, emphasize goals and identify ways to attain them
What is the role of an Mediator?
- Mediator resolves arguments or conflict among micro, mezzo and macro systems
- Macro level - mediator helps various factions with a community, or a community and some other systems work out their differences
- Micro and mezzo levels - mediation is becoming increasingly important in resolving divorce and child custody cases
- Enhance communication among dissenting individuals or groups and help them come to a compromise
- Remains neutral and does not side with either party
- Help to clarify positions, recognise miscommunication about differences and help those involved present their cases clearly
What is the role of an Integrator/Coordinator?
- Integration - the process of bringing together various parts to form a unified whole
- Involves organising components together
- Generalist social worker can function as an Integrator/Coordinator in many ways - from advocacy and identification of coordination opportunities, provision of technical assistance, direct involvement in the development and implementation of service linkages
- Example: teenager requiring intervention - collaboration with school teachers and allied teaching professionals like school counsellors, special education professionals, law enforcement institutions and health professionals
What is the role of an Manager?
- management in social wok involves having some level of administrative responsibility for a social agency or other unit in order to accomplish the following:
1. establish organisational goals
2. administer social service
programmes
3. improve agency effectiveness and efficiency
4. obtain financial
resources
5. request for community support
6.coordinate the work of agency staff.
Management tasks include a. planning programmes
b. getting and
distributing resources
c. developing and establishing organisational structures and processes
d. evaluating programmes
e. implementing programme
changes when needed
What is the role of an Educator?
The educator role:
- involves giving information and teaching skills to client and other systems
- to be an effective educator, the worker must first be
knowledgeable
- the worker must be a good communicator so that
information is conveyed clearly and is understood by client or macro system
What is the role of an Analyst/ Evaluator?
- Social workers with a broad knowledge of how various systems function can analyse or evaluate how well programmes and systems work
- They can also evaluate the effectiveness of their own interventions.
- Generalist social workers who have a wide knowledge of how various social systems operates can
analyse and evaluate how well the systems enhance the quality of people’s lives.
What is the role of an Broker?
A broker helps:
- link clients (individuals, groups, organisations, or communities) with community resources and services. -
- may help a client obtain emergency food or housing, legal aid, or other needed resources.
- put different community groups or organisations in touch with each other so that they can work together and achieve mutual goals.
In micro and mezzo (meso) systems, the role of broker requires the worker to be familiar with community services, have general knowledge about eligibility
requirements, and be sensitive to client needs.
What is the role of an Facilitator?
A facilitator:
- guides and directs a group encounter or gathering. -
The group may be a family therapy group, task group, sensitivity group, educational group, self-help group, or a group with some other focus.
- works with groups in organisational and community settings to enhance communication, initiate meetings, contributes to plan development, request for needed
resources, provide information, and pursue goals.
What is the role of an Initiator?
- The initiator is the person who calls attention to an issue
- issue may be a problem existing in the community, a need, or simply a situation that can be improved.
- Prevent problems or enhance existing services
- A social worker may recognise that a policy is creating problems for particular clients and bring this to the supervisor’s attention.
- followed up by other kinds of work to solve issues
What is the role of an Negotiator?
- A negotiator represents an organisation, a group, or an individual that is trying to gain something from another group or system.
- Somewhat like mediation, but negotiation involves finding a middle ground that all sides can live with and
achieving consensus whenever possible. - negotiators clearly ally themselves with one of the sides involved (unlike mediator which remains neutral)
What is the role of an Advocator?
- Advocacy involves “the act of directly representing, defending, intervening, supporting, or recommending
a course of action on behalf of one or more individuals, groups, or communities, with the goal of securing or retaining social justice” - involves stepping forward and speaking on behalf of the client who is in desperate need of help.
- may be especially appropriate when a client has little power to get what it needs.
- Advocacy often involves expending more effort than is absolutely necessary to accomplish the job.
- may entail taking risks, especially when advocating on behalf of a client who faces a larger, more powerful system
