Social workers
Due to the increased of older adults in the United States, John A. Hartford established social work to help the elders and other individuals in society with their special needs. Specialist
mainly focus on
children, Individuals struggling with addiction, giving aid to those going through life-threatening problems, and also help with the needs of the older adults. Social workers go through training for them to carry out their daily duties. They help clients and patients adjust to life changes such as divorce, death of loved ones, and illness.
History of geriatric social work
John A. Hartford established the Geriatric social work initiative in 1999 to address the needs of aging social workers and the rapid growth of older adults in society. It focused on the fact that many social workers worked with older adults yet had no skills to help the elders with their special needs. The social Society of America was its coordinating center. The initiative also emphasized academics, leadership, and the development of curriculum changes in the school of social work.
Since its opening, the initiative has been able to convince people on the importance of aging and also found a way of recruiting the students into the field by giving them experience with the older adults. It also did a lot of content analysis on books about its curriculum. Though authors that they are working with, they will be able to add content to the books about aging to educate more people.
Roles of social workers
Social workers apply social work principles, values, or techniques through helping people obtain tangible services, having counseling with individuals, families, and groups. With the increase of health issues among people in society, social workers improve health services by providing medicine to the sick and ensure the elderly adults follow the doctor’s prescription. They also help individuals that are struggling with addiction by giving them the support they need to overcome addiction. With the help of the doctors, they develop the treatment plans for the addicted. Today, many social workers provide mental health services as part of the treatment for addiction. All these practices require one to have knowledge of human development and behavior of social, economic, and cultural institutions.
Social work practice settings
With the rapid increase of mental health issues, drug abuse, and special individual needs in society, there are many different sectors that deal with the different issues that people are going through. Some of the social work settings include Practice settings, Mental health settings, Clinical settings, and Nontraditional urban settings
Levels of Social work
Social work practices are categorized into three—Micro, mezzo, and macro. Micro social work focuses on individual and family issues. Macro concentrates on driving change in the community, institutions through the government or non-profit agencies. Mezzo deals with groups that are between the individuals and their neighborhoods.
Micro-level careers
This is the most common type of practice since it involves working directly with and individuals or families. The clinical social workers employed treat people’s mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Patients are counseled and treated so that they can be able to think in a more positive way compared to how they were thinking. The clinical social workers work in hand with the doctors and other mental health professionals to decide on the treatment to be used to different patients. Medical social workers give the patients psychological and social support to cope with chronic or terminal illness, healthcare social workers in the other hand start counselling the patient from the beginning of their diagnosis and throughout the treatment process.
Mezzo level careers
If a social worker decides that mezzo level of sociology interest them, then they may work with different clients from schools, local organizations, small to medium sized businesses and many other small groups. Working on small groups enables the workers to mainly focus on promoting cultural and institutional change. Due to the many challenges that social workers in mezzo go through, they are able to acquire experience in both micro and macro work and use it. Workers in this level are both interpersonal and community experienced.
Macro level career
While many social workers choose to specialize in clinic settings or many other career in the social work world, others choose to focus on macro level practice. Here the workers work with large groups of people, communities, cities and major institutions in the society. This practice does not involve working directly with individual patients. However the social workers my work with some community members for research or when trying to solve a problem such as poverty, increased literacy, and human trafficking that is affecting the community. Macro social workers may be qualified for a wide range of positions. Managing large national or international agencies could be easy for them. Apart from that macro social workers can also get involved in large scale research such as determining what has led to the increase mental health in the society. Research social workers conduct high level research to determine the effectiveness of a certain program that is to be used in the community. They can also specialize in environment health work in public education to promote environmental health and safety in the communities. Macro social work is important in helping to identify the community’s needs, design interventions and implementing strategies designed at improving life in the community.