Social work as a Multidiciplinary Subject

Introduction

Social work is a multidisciplinary subject. Social work includes many more subject within it. Social work as an applied science extracts knowledge from other disciplines and subjects and executes it into its field. Though Social Work is not one among the social sciences, it has meaningful relationship with many of these sciences. For example: Psychology is a different subject but it is related & can be linked with social work.

It is not exclusively related to any of the social sciences such as sociology, economics, history, philosophy, political science or psychology. With each of these, social work maintains cordinal relations but its function is something other than that of any one of them. At the same time, all of these social sciences contribute to the enrichment of this profession. Prof. Friedlander points out, “Social work has drawn its knowledge and insights from political science, psychology, sociology, economics, medicine, psychiatry, anthropology, biology, history, education and philosophy, but by synthesis it has developed into a science of its own. As a profession social work depends upon the body of knowledge based upon these other social sciences….’’

Interrelationship between Social Work and other social sciences

1.    Social work and sociology

Social work is often regarded as “applied sociology”. Despite the historic ties between the two, there is no exclusive relationship between them as such. Social work draws its insights and skills from many fields of knowledge within the social sciences and sociology is one of them.

Sociology and social work are both interested in people, their interactions and understanding these interactions. Both sociology and social work look society as essentially a network of social relationships. Sociology provides a scientific analysis of society as essentially a network of social relationships. Sociology provides a scientific analysis of society and its problems whereas social work provides the most scientific and suitable means and methods for scientific solution. It is in this way, sociology inspires social work.

The sociologist is particularly  concerned about how, when and why people behave as they do in association with others. He is also interested in studying social problems, conducting research, collecting facts about the social realities and doing everything possible to understand interaction in human associations.

The social worker, on the contrary, is more interested in helping the people to solve social problems they have and to improve their social functioning. He attempts to establish adjustment between the individual and his social environment. In the spheres of community organization, social co-ordination, provides for co-operation and makes possible synthesis between various social programmes and welfare activities. Social work represents socially oriented services.

2.    Social work and political science

Social work is a profession for those with a strong desire to work with people. Social workers assists individuals, families, groups, organizations or communities to enhance or restore their capacity for social functioning and work to create the societal conditions necessary for the people to flourish. Social workers are employed in both public and private human service agencies as well as in private corporations and often work directly with people by linking them with needed resources, providing counseling and advocating for needed service.

Political science deals with the political activities of man. It studies social groups organized under the sovereighty of the state. It studies man as a ruler and being ruled. Laski, Gettell and Gilchrist, the eminent political scientist, are of the opinion thet the scope of political sciences embraces the study of both State and Government.

Political science has its own topics such as the origin, evolution and function of the state, the forms of government, types of constitution, administration, law, legislation, international relations, method of political representation, elections, voting, political movements, political ideologies, etc. “political science is an historical investigation of what the state should be”.

Political science and social work are so intimately connected. In fact, political activities will have no meaning outside the social context. Politics is after all the reflection of the society. This is made clear by the common saying that ‘people have the government which they deserve’. Political science gives social work facts about the organization and function of the state and government. Political science derives from social sciences like social work  the knowledge of the origin of the political authority.

Political science is concerned with the state. But social work is objected to help the people to become good citizen and help to adapt or adjust in the political environment. That is why, political scientist must also be a social worker and vice-versa. The laws are largely based on customs, traditions, conventions and usages. But these customs, tradition, etc are the concern of social work. The institution of family, for example, is an element in social life. It is the concern of social worker. But laws of marriage, made to regulate the family, fall within the field of political science.

3.    Social and psychology

Psychology is the science of human behavior. A psychologist is always interested in understanding the individual and his/her behavior. As Silverman suggests “psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and something change the behavior of man and other animals.”

A psychologist and a social worker are often members of the same professional team. Psychology and social work operate in some common grounds. Both are interested in the behavior of people , although the psychologist focuses mainly on individual behavior and social worker on social functioning. Both of them seek the thinking and feeling processes of the people.

As far as the difference are concerned, the psychologist is particularly interested in the individual attributes of the people and aims to understand their characteristics and behavior. However, some psychologists (particularly clinical psychologist) go beyond the study phase and work directly with the people in the helping process. Though some of these activities overlap with social work, the focus of both the sciences seems to be different. The psychologist usually works with individuals on a rather  intensive basis. He often becomes a psychotherapist even. The social worker, on the other hand, is interested particularly in the social functioning and relationships of his clients. He is equally concerned with the idea of utilizing community resources to meet their personal and social problems.

4.    Social work and advocacy

Advocacy is the act of pleading for, supporting or recommending. It is an active support of an idea and the cause. In terms of social work, advocacy is forced towards social and economic justice.Policy, advocacy and justice is very essential. We always have to question that “Can we serve social and economic justice” or “Do we merely support the conventional system?”

Every societies have same policy, they follow it, whether its good or bad.But we must be able to fully support the correct policy and prepared enough to go against the negative ones .Social Workers are often in a position of acting as Advocate for individuals and families such as negotiating a 'stay' on a housing eviction for example. However, one needs to be careful with the use of 'advocate' as a key social work skill. An Advocate acts according to the wishes of the client/customer; the Social Worker, morally, ethically and according to the terms and conditions of employment, must act according to the assessed best interests of the client/customer.

5.    Social work and economics

Economics as one among the social sciences, is concerned with wealth. It deals with the way in which man earns wealth, distributes it and finally enjoys it. Economics, as Prof. Marshal  points out, studies on the one hand material wealth and the other, human happiness. It tends to study how man satisfies his wants, what economic problems he faces and what material resources he has at his disposal to solve them.

Social work tries to find out the best courses of action towards the solution of the social problems. Social problems never occur in vaccum. Of the various factors that contribute to social problem, economic factors are the chief ones. They are at the root of many social problems. Social problems such as crime, poverty, unemployment, beggary, bonded labour, child labour, prostitution, exploitation, etc., are by and large, based on unsatisfactory economic conditions. Individual happiness is often dependent upon economic factors. Hence, social worker cannot afford to forget the role of economic factors in influencing human problems on one  hand  and human happiness on the other. Both study the general principles of human relation.

6.    Social work and psychiatry

·         Psychiatry is that branch of medicine dealing with the genesis, diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders.

·         In simple words, psychiatry is that branch of knowledge which deals with the treatment of the mentally ill by medically trained practioners.

·         Psychiatry is a branch of general medicine using drug treatment as a clinical resource, and also other physical methods such as surgery and ECT(Electro Convulsive Therapy.

Social work  and psychiatry are interrelated. They have many things in common. Both of them work with people who possess personal and social problems. They help people to improve their relationships with others. They  have considerable interest in sensitivity and ability to understand and direct feelings emotions.

Social work and psychiatry have some differences  between them. As someone has commented the psychiatrist deals mainly with depth in regard to personal and social problems, and the social worker with the breadth. The psychiatrist in his studies delves deep in to intrapersonal dynamics, he goes into the depth of the roles of conscious level of behaviour. He also tends to utilize environmental and community resources to achieve his purposes. In order to improve the social relationships, he is  compelled to tap many material resources economic and otherwise.

The psychiatrist is busy in dealing with patients on a medical basis. He prescribes medication and hospitalisation, and if needed, he even tends to focus on the unconscious and intrapsychic factors. Sometimes, social workers use psychiatric understandings in diagnosis and treatment of social diseases and some other times work directly with the seriously disturbed individuals and families.

Finally, it can be said that psychiatry tends to focus on pathology and the healing of illness. The psychiatrist is particularly interested in the internal dynamics of individual behaviour. The social worker, on the other hand, is more concerned about social functioning involving social and community factors and interactions.

 Conclusion

Social work as the “study” of agencies, programs, personnel and policies which focus on the delivery of social service to individual, groups and communities.

Social work discipline is a vast, almost enormous since it deals with the society itself from microscopic unit to the larger unit. Hence, it extracts knowledge from other disciplines onto its field and executes the knowledge for the welfare of the society, since that is the sole purpose of social work.

Major motive of social work discipline is to obtain knowledge about social problems, their causes and alleviation.

Social work is slowly emerging as a subject of its own these days. The increased research is an indication that social work is evolving as its own knowledge.

Bibliography

ž  Google

ž  Wikipedia  encyclopedia

ž  Oxford  advanced  learner’s  Dictionary  (7^th  edition)

ž  Rao, C.N. Shankar……Introduction to  Sociology