5.Social Workers' Duties

Direct service social workers help clients develop plans to improve personal well-being and make referrals for services such as food stamps or health care. Clinical social workers, more commonly called licensed clinical social workers or LCSWs, also make referrals, but they are more likely to be to other mental health professionals or support groups. The LCSW develops a treatment plan and provides direct therapy to families, couples, groups or individuals. The LCSW also develops a care plan, usually in collaboration with other health-care professionals such as physicians or nurses, to promote the client’s mental and emotional well-being. Although social workers and clinical psychologists are both in professions that try to help people deal with problems, there are considerable differences between the two. A social worker can work in direct services, helping people cope with problems related to poverty, legal issues or human rights. Or, they can work in the clinical field, where they diagnose and treat mental, behavioral or emotional health issues. Psychologists study human behavior and the ways in which the human mind works. The work of clinical social workers is more similar to that of a psychologist.

6.Mary Richmond

She was born in 1861 in Belleville, Illinois and lived until 1928. Her parents died when Mary was very young, which forced her to live with her grandmother and aunts in Baltimore, Maryland. Her grandmother was an active women's suffragist who was well known for being a spiritualist and a radical. She grew up being constantly surrounded by discussions of suffrage, political and social beliefs, and spiritualism. After living in poverty for two years in New York she returned to Baltimore and worked for several years as a bookkeeper, and became extremely involved with the Unitarian Church and developed good social skills. In 1888, she applied for a job as Assistant Treasurer with the Charity Organization Society .

Contribution to social work -Mary Richmond increased the public's awareness of the Charity Organization Society and for fundraising. She was trained to be a "friendly visitor," which was the term for a caseworker. She visited the homes of people in need and tried to help them improve their life situation. She began to develop many ideas of how casework could best be conducted to help those in need. In 1909 she helped establish networks of social workers and a method by which they did their work. The social workers she worked with at the Russell Sage Foundation were among the first enabled to develop methods and systems for helping needy families. Her success and leadership at developing social work and research encouraged many other organizations to continue financial support and development of the practice of social work.

7.Methods of Social Work

The concepts ‘theory’ and ‘method’ are both independent and interrelated. As independent concepts, a theory is a hypothesis, an idea or prediction about what can or might happen in certain situations given certain circumstances. A method is what the social worker actually does when working with a client. In simple terms, a theory is what you think about a specific situation and what you speculate might occur based on that situation, and a method is what you do given your thoughts or speculations about a situation. A theory helps to predict or describe a particular phenomenon and a method specifies what to do when faced with that particular phenomenon. These terms all denote action, which is synonymous with method, in regard to something the social worker does or implements. As interrelated concepts, a theory often informs social workers as to the type of method they should use with clients in certain situations. A theory assists social workers in understanding various situations, difficulties, behaviours and experiences, and a method instructs the social worker in what to do in response to the identified phenomenon . For example, the stages of change theory specifies that individuals proceed through distinct stages when making a behavioural change and they often cycle through the stages several times before the change is maintained. Therefore, when working with clients to make a behavioural change, social workers should use the stages of change theory to assess the current stage of the client as this will determine the type of method, or technique, that is used with the client. If the client is in a contemplation stage, where she or he is ambivalent about making a change, the social worker would know to utilize techniques, such as the decisional-balance or scaling in an attempt to resolve the ambivalence in favour of change. In this situation, the social worker utilizes the stages of change to assess where the client currently sits in regard to behavioural change and then, based on this assessment, implements specific techniques and interventions to reach