SOCIAL WORK COMPETENCIES

The professional social work education and the student social workers are familiar with the paradigmatic shift in the organization. We desire that social workers to be competent to offer quality services to the needy and participate in bringing about structural changes so as to meet the challenges known us during the modern times, and in the light of changing ideologies. We have to deliberate on the requirements for improving the quality and competency of the social work professionals.

We have seen that to practice social work effectively, one must be able to provide a variety of helping services. The social worker not only must be able to work directly with a client or clients, but also must be prepared to understand and work to change the environment of these clients. The social worker must be competent in knowledge, values, and skills to help clients resolve a broad range of existing or potential problems in social functioning.

What are the basic competencies that are fundamental to social work practice?
Depending on the particular job a social worker occupies, the type of agency, client capabilities, problems being addressed, and resources available, the social worker will need to have differing competencies. With a generalist perspective and a gamut of helping techniques, the social worker is prepared to begin most social work jobs. As one becomes experienced and jobs become more specialized, additional skills may be required.

As social work gradually has reached greater consensus regarding how it should be defined, it has become possible to be more precise about the competencies required to fulfill that role. Throughout social work's recent history several efforts have been made to identify the critical tasks performed by social workers. The primary limitation of these approaches was their reliance on experts to describe what social workers do in their daily practice. Too often these descriptions were more assertions about what social workers should be doing than factual statements of what tasks social workers actually perform. NASW conducted a project designed to address its concern that many human service agencies were reducing the professional education requirements for many social work jobs and, therefore, reclassifying them to lower level positions. In an effort to establish a method to determine if there is a valid relationship between the content of professional education programs and social work practice activities, the NASW Classification Validation Project constructed a "job analysis" approach for studying social work practice that yields important empirical data about the activities of social work practitioners.

Several studies have been completed in which the job-analysis methodology has been used. One such study using this methodology yielded the following sixteen clusters of practice activity as performed by social workers in both governmental (public) and voluntary (private) social agencies:

1. Formal Intervention with Individual Clients. Use specific assessment or intervention techniques to provide support, improve client functioning.
2. Ongoing Case Management for Specific Clients. Organize work and make arrangements for carrying out an ongoing plan of services for a specific clent.
3. Teaching of Adaptive and Daily Living Skills. Give informal instruction to help clients, volunteers, and agency personnel acquire adaptive skills for daily living.
4. Linking Clients to Resources.
5. Resource Assessment and Aggressive Client Brokering Identify service providers.
6. Initiation and Adjustment of Service Plan. Carry out activities for individual or multiple clients, to develop a service plan (at intake) or change it at strategic points.
7. Assessment of the Need for Protective Services.
8. Arrangement of Specific Services for Clients.
9. Formal Intervention with Groups. Use formal interventive techniques with groups in order to teach skills in group participation to group members or to improve social functioning by taking part in the group process.
10. Self Development/Information Transmission. Engage in activities designed to develop self-awareness with regard to one's knowledge, skills, and values as such self-awareness relates to improvement in job functioning. Keep, current by reading various materials, attending workshops, and exchanging various types of information.
11. Quality Assurance Monitoring. Communicate organizational performance expectations in order to insure compliance with organizational standards.
12. Staff Management. Clarify job duties and agency rules, establish work schedules, and assign cases and other responsibilities to staff members.
13. Internal Paper Flow. Fill out and/or sign vouchers, requisitions, or standard data collection forms
14. Ongoing Program/Unit Administration. Perform tasks associated with day to day operation of a program or administrative unit. Activities include budgeting, monitoring, and documentation of expenditures, keeping track of supplies and inventory, monitoring the status of buildings and equipment, and summarizing information about staff.
15. Management of Organizational Change/External Relations.
16. Program Planning / Design/Evaluation. Assess the need for new services, establish program goals, design programs, plan service delivery mechanisms, secure support and resources, prepare staff, and evaluate program differences.

Analysis of rankings of the importance of each of these sixteen clusters of practice tasks indicated that persons engaged in direct service jobs were most likely to engage in the activities described in clusters 1-9 while those in supervisory or administrative jobs were likely to find clusters 11-16 most important in their work. All workers were somewhat evenly involved in cluster 10, Self Development/Information' Transmission. It is evident from these data that social workers have varied jobs that require competence to perform many tasks. It takes rigorous professional education to master the necessary competencies to enter social work practice prepared to provide the services required by persons in need.

To prepare a competent social worker following Suggestions are given to the academic institutions:

1. The academic syllabus for the social work students needs a revision.  Along with the theoretical aspects, greater time shall be reserved for skill development aspects. 
2. The language skill though a technical skill, is also the part of communication skill.  Especially, the English language being a problem for the rural social work students, Schools of social work are called for taking initiatives to conduct the language courses with emphasis to English Language.
3. The social exposure is lacking especially in the rural areas.  Academic institutions are recommended to maximize the social exposure.
4. The managerial and leadership skills can be cultivated only through the process of trainings. The skill development programmes are to be the part of academic education so that the learners are able to relate the theoretical aspects to the present day situation.
5. The parents of the learners and the management of the academic institutions are to be kept informed about the needs and requirements of the present day organization and secure their cooperation and support for the overall well being of the individual social worker and society as a whole.
6. The academic institutions should take initiatives to remind the corporate social responsibility and keep in touch with the social/business units that operate in the mainstream of the society for student benefits.

Dr. K. G.PARASHURAMA
Associate Professor and Head, Department of P.G.Studies and Research in Social Work, Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College, Ujire- 574240, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka, India