Professional Perspectives: Knowledge, Skills, and Values of Social Workers

The reading gives the hallmark of social work in history. The United States was the first county country to adopt warfare services and social work as a profession. The initiation of warfare service groups started in early 1800. The warfare agencies emerged in urban areas and were coined by the religious groups who willingly rendered communal services to the underprivileged people in the society. Such theories give an explanation that offers guidelines to understand the reason for the existence of community organizations.

Notably, only the ordained individuals or wealthy individuals were concerned to organize social warfare activities to ensure the less privileged in the society receive basic needs like housing, shelter, and clothing. In this respect, the charity organization were established and met the needs of mentally challenged and an unemployed individual in the society. The piece of writing offers a glimpse on the origin of settlement schemes. The idea primarily started in the U.S, but apparently, almost all the countries have copied and are embracing the idea.

Besides, it is interesting to learn the idea behind the establishment of settlement schemes. Settlement schemes were meant to achieve environmental reforms. Ideally, the founders of warfare and community services were not greedy. The ancient people had to think of a way to conserve the environment for the future generation. As a result, the environmental conservation agencies were established.

It is amazing to learn social work is regarded as a professional career although most people never recognize the task as a career. However, before the World War 1 people never recognized social work as a profession. The initial of some programs have contributed to the strengthening of the program. According to the author, Depression and federal programs brought expansion of services and opportunities for those in the field of social work. The statement offers a substantial evidence why social work is regarded as a profession just like other occupations that require human skills.

I concur with Zastrow idea that social work is a multi-skilled profession. According to Zastrow, "Social work is a professional field that requires professional approach while enhancing service delivery to individuals, communities, or groups for creating and improving societal goals." Therefore, a professional social worker requires many skills including but not limited to the ability to interact and communicate with groups and practitioners in the area, have counseling skills, and understand the strengths and weaknesses as a social worker.

The goals of social work are universal, and they are never variant. The goals of social work are to improve the functioning of social units either as individuals, groups, or communities. Therefore, a social warfare program attempts to render the optimum level of services to the relevant social groups.

In the reading, the author has explicitly show addressed diverse disciplines related to social work. Most importantly, the recognition of significant elements in the process of practicing social work has been discussed. Self-awareness and identity formation, community organizations and case management are regular life skills that social worker should never miss. A proper evaluation of the aspects mentioned above is necessary for the verge of delivering and enhancing community service.

In this discussion, what tends to confuse me are the goals of a social worker and those goals of the social work practice. In my opinion, it is challenging to differentiate the two aspects. All these elements seem to have collective goals, but social work practice has a broad scope of goals. Besides, the latter is more perceived as a program while the former is regarded as a profession.

In my view, considering community organizations-those that work in close collaboration with the community to ensure they improve their existence, there should be an extensive debate to identify many areas of involvement rather assuming of the three areas of community involvement: planning community policing, seeking for donors to facilitate community projects and ways of combating crime in the community. Therefore, the discussion will unveil more area of involvement by the community organization.