Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 2) | Seite 99

Practice Issues
In doing so, we should continue to hold on to our belief in self-reliance and
personal responsibility while at the same time recognising that this alone is
not enough. We need to continuously pay attention to ensuring life chances
by twinning the giving of outright assistance with social support, be it advice
or counselling, social work intervention, supplementary support or remedial
and rehabilitative services.

Research informing services in the social sector
So what has securing human rights got to do with the current step up in the
development of the social sector? The main focus and mission of the social
sector is about ensuring the human right to basic safety and security where
everyone as much as possible has a place called home and a family that
provides a source for encouragement, support and comfort.
Our emphasis on housing and jobs have placed most families in a secure
position. Every child who has had a difficult start has a good chance of a
brighter future. With rising living standards and improvements in terms of
people’s incomes, health, employment, education and child mortality rates,
our challenge is sustaining the gains. The challenge can be magnified in
the midst of a widening income gap due to globalisation, the technological
revolution and the vision that no one gets left behind.
At the personal social service level, the challenge remains in tackling
generational unemployment, addiction or poor mental health. Today, it
is less about material poverty but about how to enable more to access
opportunities. On the bright side, we don’t have to grapple with the
perennial issue of the child’s life being affected significantly due to the
resources and risks in the neighbourhood where he/ she was born, which is
something that many other countries face.
But the social sector will have a stepped up role in addressing human rights
in the dimension of inequality. This includes tackling the social causes of
poverty, the reasons why people get stuck in the cycle of poverty and how
they become isolated.
Examples of the kinds of persons who require social work interventions and
social support include someone who is a single parent in need of financial
help and suffers from chronic depression; someone who has to work, care
for her children and ailing parents; someone who has to provide and access
services for a person with disability or frail older person and someone who
is trying to overcome previous abuse or trying to live through or get out of
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