Social Work Mission
Central to the social work mission, there are two distinctive elements:
The relative emphasis of social workers mission may change as social circumstance changes. For instance, in the 50's and 60's, because of massive migration of people from China to Hong Kong and the associated problems caused by upheaval and relocation, to help those who had been unfortunate became the mission of social workers at that time.
By 1970, economic growth and the complexity of individual and social problems in the modern urban city were developing in a rapid pace. To seek earnestly a fairer distribution of social resources became the major concerns of the social workers. Politically, there was no element of representation of public opinion in the governmental decision making process. To seek provisions of social welfare services for the disadvantaged, social actions were the common strategies employed by the social workers. The social workers acted mostly outside the political system.
With the development a limited representative government at the district level, i.e. the District Boards in the early 1980's and the election of Legislative Councilors from functional constituencies and electoral colleges, the strategy of participation of public policy making process moved from the "outside" to the "inside" of the government system. Social workers participated actively in the elections held at the district board and Urban Council levels.
Though it sounds odd to say that setting up the registration system for social workers was the mission of social workers in the 80's (Hui, 1989), it was a key milestone marking the development of the social work profession.
Stability and economic growth (
安定繁榮) was the slogan of the 90's. In the early 90s', rapid development of the tertiary education system, and in the basic infrastructure of Hong Kong including building of the new airport and construction of the new harbour transportation networks drew away substantial resource from the government. To advocate the needs of the disadvantaged and to help the disadvantaged to organize and speak for themselves were the important aspects of social work mission in this period. The development of self-help organizations was a significant landmark of this short period, e.g. the Community Rehabilitation Network (CRN) has spearheaded the development of the chronic patient groups. This period of work could be seen as quite successful. At least, the ex-governor of HK, Mr. Chris Patten, newly arrived at HK, was convinced that there was no way to meet the growing social welfare needs through the regular public funding mechanism. He, then, injected $2.3 Billion into the Lotteries Fund in 1993, to meet the targets of the White Paper on Social Welfare and Green Paper on Rehabilitation by the year 1997.The following 5-year period between 1993-1998 was perhaps the golden period of social welfare in Hong Kong. From 1992-93 to 1997-98, total spending on welfare had increased by 188%, almost tripled. The number of social workers recorded in the Social Welfare Manpower Planning System of the Social Welfare Department had increased from 4,674 to 6,929 in the same period (April 1, 1993 to April 1, 1998), marking a growth of 48%.
Perhaps, it is always true that the sense of mission would service most at difficult times. It is not easy to identify the key tenets of social work mission in this rapid growth period. While most social workers were busy expanding their agency services, social work in the period was also marked with considerable controversies and conflicts. There were hot debates on the appropriateness of social action in several incidents (e.g. On March 23, 1993, the "Rich Tenant Policy" debate in public housing policy ("
富戶政策"), and on December 14, 1994, the clearance of roof top units in Tsuen Wan had both led to the arrest of quite a number of social workers.) Conflicts between social workers and the management had heightened to the extent that one social service agency was finally closed down. The fate of the Neighbourhood Level Community Development Projects (NLCDP) was a hot topic since 1995. The introduction of the Social Workers Registration system after 1997 had also awakened many social workers who had ignored of this discussion since the early 80s.Since the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998 and the subsequent economic downturn, social workers are facing repeated challenges. The development of the Service Performance Monitoring System (SPMS) and Service Quality Standards (SQSs) had significant demands on social workers time and efforts. The challenges of the Enhanced Productivity Programme (EPP), the Fundamental Expenditure Review (FER), Lump Sum Grant (LSG), competitive bidding, and numerous service reviews are almost overwhelming. All these require social workers to deliver their service with better quality and lower cost. At times of great challenges, social workers would have to revisit its central core mission, i.e. back to basics.
Role and Functions of Social Worker
Role
The set of society's expectations of behaviour, attitudes, and values towards a particular person occupying a certain position in the society.
Socialization
The process through which the individual acquired the behaviour, attitudes, and values of a particular role or learned about the obligations and responsibilities of such a role.
The role of social workers depends on the target system and type of service
In helping people to solve their social function problems, social worker may seek changes in the individual system (e.g. person, family, community, etc.), or its environment (e.g. family to an individual, society to a community, etc.), or the linkage between the individual system and its environment.
Social worker may perform different roles for different target systems. For example, when a social worker helps a group of residents in a community to request a bus lane passing through the neighbourhood, he may
Social workers as a group may perform different roles at different times as their emphasis on social work mission changes. Different social workers may perform different roles. Caseworkers pay more attention to the individual and their families, community workers pay more attention to the community and social policies. They perform slightly different roles.
Role and Functions of Social Worker
Roles |
Functions |
Person<-->Society |
Knowledge & Skills |
| Advocate (social change agent) | Speak for the benefits of clients and seek change in social policies | social change | Social policies, policy making & legal processes, power structure & network, press and public relationship, marketing skills, rhetoric |
| Broker | Linkage between clients and service system | system maintenance | case management skills, knowledge of community, operating procedures of and services provided by agencies and organizations |
| Mediator | Resolve conflict/difference between clients or between different client systems | interpersonal system maintenance | Analytical skills to. Identify difference and similarities; creativity to identify or construct alternatives for compromises |
| Enabler | Enhance the problem solving ability of clients(mainly non-directive) | social system change or personal change depending on the nature of target system | Problem solving skills, support and reinforcement, assessment of strengths and weaknesses in target client system(s) |
| Teacher | Enabling through provision of information knowledge, and skills. (mainly directive), | personal change | Training skills (e.g. use of role play, behavioral rehearsal), and having the specific information, knowledge or skills to be taught. |
| Controller | social control agent | personal change | Knowledge and skills to bring about cognitive &/or behavioral changes. |
Role of social workers in Hong Kong
Mission and Role
It is not easy to differentiate the two concepts in the context of social workers: Missions are the goals of the profession and these goals are the reasons for the existence or the development of the profession. Role of social workers is the expected set of behaviours or tasks to perform in the society. Obviously, such roles should be consistent with its missions. But conceptually, it is possible that roles may not be consistent with missions. Missions are usually self-defined, i.e. the social workers define their own missions. However, roles are "expected" by others.
It is interesting to note that in both readings (Tam, 1989; Yeung, 1989), the authors discussed the role(s) of social workers as if they were defined by social workers, i.e. they assessed the social, political and economic environment of Hong Kong and tried to "derive" the roles of social workers. They saw the role of social workers in the perspective of social workers and not from the perspective of the general public.
Roles of social worker
Unfortunately, there is hitherto no research conducted in Hong Kong that aims at identifying the roles of social workers expected by the general public. It is, however, not difficult to see that the image of social workers is usually "do-gooder" and "helping the unfortunate". Helping the vulnerable and the disadvantaged will always be the mission of social work. However, the view that one of the roles of social workers in the 1990's is to provide leadership is rather odd. It is definitely what social workers would like to see themselves as but not necessary what the general public expected from them.
The roles discussed so far in the literature of social work, such as enabler, advocate, mediator, etc. are mainly analyses derived from the observation of what social workers are doing, i.e. functions of social workers, but not roles expected by the general public. [Note: The term Function refers to the types of needs that the activities of social workers are meant to meet or the types of problems that the activities of social workers are expected to solve.]
On the other hand, if we analyze the kind of jobs performed by social workers and subvented by the government, we can conclude that such tasks performed by social workers reflect the roles of social workers expected by the general public. For example, in the late 1970's and the beginning of 1980's, the growth of Neighbourhood Level Community Development Projects in priority areas (including squatter areas, temporary housing areas, and Mark I-III public housing) reflected the expectations of the general public, i.e. expecting social workers to help residents in these deprived areas to solve their own community problems.