Social Workers and Community Welfare Workers Making a Difference

Social Workers and Community Welfare
Workers Making a Difference
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Introduction: The focus of social and community welfare workers of Australia have always
been on the development of the countrymen who are in need of their services. It is the prime
responsibility of social and community welfare workers to help the countrymen achieve wellness
through intensive study on their background and analysis of their current situation (Townsend et
al. 2018). Finding of the analysis helps the social and community welfare workers to assess the
particular type of service user, their traits on the basis of their race and culture, the problems they
are facing, ways to combat those problems effectively and provide a safer environment to the
service user.
Working with refugees: When it comes to working with refugees, the social and
community welfare workers need to be well-equipped with certain skills and knowledge in order
to ensure effective result. There are two distinct indigenous groups in Australia; aboriginal
people and Torres Strait Islander people. Both of them belong to a community which has a
specific belief system that allows them to stay spiritually connected with land, sky and sea
(Coffin and Green, 2016). These people have a lot of language groups; they can speak 260
different languages with 500 dialects (Somerville et al. 2017). Since fifty thousand years
aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are living as a part of Australia, they are termed as
the first Australian, whose land is now being shared with people from different other races and
cultures. These people were the part of British colonised Australia, with 700,000 aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people. Having sophisticated family and kinship structures, they are rich in
culture and possess scientific knowledge traditions which are long-lasting as well (Bennett,
2015). To handle people belonging from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities,
social and community welfare workers must be aware about their activities. The actions of the
social and community welfare workers must not hurt the rich culture and values of the people of
aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This community is facing certain problems in
different social fields. The problems are hereby-
 Increasing unemployment rate
 Degraded mental health
 More number of prisoners
 Lack of education
 Higher suicidal rate
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 Decreased life expectancy rate
 Lack of child protection (Hunter et al. 2016)
All the above mentioned factors have deeply affected the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities, slowing down their overall growth rate. In the meantime, social and community
welfare workers are focused to provide sufficient support to these communities so that they are
able to attain ultimate wellness. The prime concern of the support workers is upgrading the
condition of the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through well-structured work
process. Social well-being is the key to lead a satisfying life and the condition of aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people should be upgraded (Gwynn et al. 2015).
To provide best services to the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, a skills audit is
required so that the skill set of the social and community welfare workers can be tallied with the
skills required to ensure better services for the refugees in Australia (Boyle, 2016). In the given
context of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, certain things should be kept in mind as
they are culturally rich and possess a different type of thought process. As a beginner in the field
of human and service related work, I need to perform a skill audit so that I am equipped with
needful skills which are required to produce effective social and welfare services for the
aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Skills which I possess
Skills which are required for
the betterment of aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander
people
Skills which I need to acquire
Listening skills Empathy Tolerance
Empathy Tolerance Social perceptiveness
Emotional intelligence Social perceptiveness Decision making
Co-ordination Co-ordination
Self-awareness Decision making
Skills can be of different types on the basis of the particular context where the skills will be
applied. In the given context of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, there are
several skills which should be effective to provide needful social services to the people of
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