Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 1) | 页面 11

Social Work and Volunteerism

Dear Students of Social Work,
I hope you have learned about our journey towards recognition as a profession
in the first letter. One of the challenges for social work students is often how
to explain what social work is when the work of volunteers are mistakenly
credited as social work. So what is social work and what is volunteerism and
how are they different?

Volunteerism is not Social Work
So what is it about social work that differentiates it from being a volunteer;
what differentiates it from social policy and administration and doing good.
The reason why volunteers are mistakenly described as doing social work
is because of the seemingly similar tasks that both a social worker and a
volunteer do. These include visiting distressed families in their homes, giving
practical help and connecting them to help. This is where the similarity ends.
For the social worker, these tasks are but one of a whole range of tasks in
working with people and communities in a sustained way with a goal that
is jointly owned. What distinguishes social workers is their skill in calibrating
their facilitation along a continuum of interventions of various degrees of
difficulty which a volunteer will not be able to do.

So What is Social Work?
It is the ability to assess the complexity of any case, determine and carry out a
course of intervention and engage the client or the community and significant
others in a process that places a premium for “client ownership” of the results.
In particular, he spends time and effort in engaging people to generate
ownership of issues in order to achieve the goal. The goal is to raise the
capacity of the individual or community to take charge of his or their own
circumstances and garner strengths and resources to make the improvement.
Social work is about looking for strengths in people, garnering resources
or making systems respond better to the needs of individuals and groups.
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