Chapter Six

Social Work with Individuals

Text Analysis

• Related Information

• Questions about Texts

Social Work: Putting care into professional practice

China’s top leaders recently recognized the need for a corps of professional social workers. Chang Tianle (常天乐 ) reports on ongoing efforts and challenges in building the new profession.

China’s top leadership publicly stressed the importance of social work for the first time in a communiqué from the October, 2006 plenum of Central Committee of the Communist Party.

In order to construct a harmonious socialist society, the communiqué says, it is high time to build a large, well-structured and qualified corps of social workers, and to “have policy and relevant mechanism in place to educate, assess, employ and encourage social workers.”

Social work practitioners, educators and students have been greatly encouraged by the Party statement, anticipating a real breakthrough in China’s social work profession. But they still have concerns about government’s role in developing the profession, the quality of education and the career structure for social workers.

Until two decades ago, social work was not recognized as a profession in mainland China. The government, including state-owned factories and institutions, used to be the sole caretaker for the whole society. People such as Youth League secretaries, neighborhood committee officials, trade union leaders and teachers, carried out “political work” (政治工作 ), “mass work” (群众工作 ) or “community work” (社区工作 ) that included some dimensions of social work in the sense of “work with society.” But they usually operated within the “work-unit” (单位 ) system that has been progressively dismantled since the late 1980s, when state-owned enterprises and units began to retreat from such functions.

“At that time, the government felt the need to introduce a modern approach in social service, which is the concept of social work,” says Chen Tao (陈涛 ), Dean of Department of Social Work and Administration at the China Youth University for Political Sciences (中国青年政治学院 ).

With government support, Beijing University launched the mainland’s first social work program in 1988. Now, about 200 universities and colleges have social work departments or programs, producing nearly 10,000 graduates every year.

However, social work remains in its infancy in terms of both education and practice. Only a very small proportion of graduates go on to work in fields where they apply what they learned in school. Experts and practitioners blame the immature education system and limited career opportunities.

Question 1:

What are the worker’s skills for helping clients to manage their feelings?

1. Reaching inside of silences

2. Putting the client’s feelings into words

3. Displaying understanding of the client’s feelings

4. Sharing worker’s feelings

Question 2:

What is the role of field instruction in social work education?

Supervision in practice, or field

instruction in social work education,

can provide important assistance to

the worker or student in developing

genuine empathy in the tuning-in

process.

Question 3:

What is the importance of first meetings in all helping relationship?

First meetings in all helping relationships are important. If handled well, they can lay a foundation for productive work and begin the process of strengthening the working relationship between client and worker.

Question 4:

What are the worker’s skills for helping clients to manage their problems?

1. Clarifying the worker’s purpose and role

2. Reaching for the client’s feedback

3. Partializing the client’s concerns

4. Supporting clients in taboo areas

5. Dealing with issues of authority

Question 5: What is the importance

of the ending process in a helping relationship?

The ending process in a helping

relationship can trigger the deepest

feelings in both worker and client.