Essay on Social Work Practices, Safeguarding, and Interventions

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of social work practices, emphasizing the crucial roles and responsibilities of social workers in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. It explores various intervention strategies, including counseling, psychotherapy, and multi-agency approaches. The essay delves into the importance of anti-oppressive practices, the application of diverse social work theories (such as systems theory and psychodynamic approaches), and the legal frameworks surrounding safeguarding. It highlights the significance of government policies, the roles of social workers in assessments, providing support, and facilitating access to resources like financial assistance, housing, and legal aid. The essay also examines the functions of social workers in monitoring and evaluating the progress of clients, alongside the role of multi-agency interventions in developing effective policies. The content is designed to aid students in understanding the complexities and multifaceted nature of social work.

Essay

Social work practices is a wide area indulge with application and practises of values at social
work, principles at social work and techniques to helping people to obtaining tangible services.
Social work practises generally concerned with providing help to the people by organizing the
counselling and psychotherapy sessions with the individuals, families and groups. The social
work practises needed knowledge and experience as concern with human development and their
behaviour. Generally social services has a wide work area but safeguarding children's and
vulnerable adults in one of the most complicated area compare to others.(Miley, K.K. O'Melia and
DuBois. 2016)
Children and vulnerable adults face ample of complexities from the side of society. Here
social workers works before developing the innovative way through which they can effectively
work towards the solving those difficulties and complexities which vulnerable people are facing.
Social workers works with the holistic approach in complicated social circumstances and try to
help the people and their families. To get the best possible results social workers should inculcate
the habit of understanding the value judgement and also increase the ability to reduce the
occurrence of conflict of interest for the people.(Hepworth,And et. al 2016)
Social workers has a knowledge and understanding about when is the time to take the
decision about to transfer the case to Adult protective services, crisis mental health intervention,
and legal services. The social workers plays various role when it come to the context of adults
related affairs. The social worker must be take responsibility of successful conduction of
operation in their organizational context. The social workers must be able to develop an
understanding about their legal frameworks, organizational structures and cultures, obligations
and should be with the mindset of fulfilling the organizational goals with families.(Rothman, and
Mizrahi,2014)
Social workers are those individual who considers as the first respondents in those
situations where assessment of an older person is required. The roles and responsibilities of
social workers towards the vulnerable adults start with assisting them in an understanding
manner. Giving full attention to what adults are saying and understand the points being made by
them. Ask them appropriate question and question should be related to the complexity which
adults are facing. Understand the reaction given by the adults and try to figure out the core of it.
(Ferguson,2016) Social workers sometimes may need to play a role such as conglomerate with the
professional for the better evaluation of the patients so that it will be easy to asses the need of the

client. Social workers can also refer their patients to the community resources so that adult can
be recover from the physical and mental illness. Financial assistance is also a responsibility
which social workers can play and other than that social workers may also provide assistance to
adults regarding housing, legal aid, education or job placements. Social workers are playing a
role as they are monitor, evaluate and record the progress as with the help of this they are able to
measure objectives stated in the treatment and care plan.(Donaldson, And et. al 2014)
There are various type of charity organization are there which providing the assistance
and care to the vulnerable people adults and children's. The term safeguarding is a very broader
term when it comes to 'child protection' and the related action which are taken to promoting the
welfare of children and protect them from harm. Safeguarding is the biggest responsibility plays
by the social workers. The assessment which are consider as effective regarding safeguarding are
protect the children from maltreatment, try to prevent the reasons which are assessing harms to
children's health and their development, ensuring the circumstances for the children in which
they can grow consistently with safe and effective care, focusing on the actions which can bring
the best possible outcome for the children. Social workers which are working for the vulnerable
groups that can be children's and old age people has always prefer the condition which is bring
best interest to them and ensuring to take the steps towards minimize or eliminate the factor
which can bring harm to them. (Wilks, And et. al 2015)
Social workers are supervising and working directly with the individual clients and with
their families. Social workers are offering assistance to children, youth as well as their parents,
family and guardians. Social workers are working with the families because these is the place
where cases such as abuse, malnutrition are happened, and provide assistance to those families
where there is any mental or physical illness exist. In the context of the children illness social
workers are helps their parents in the assistance regarding finding the resources which they are
needed to take good care of their ill children. In the context of the children personal problem
such as stress, acting out or being bullied by others, crisis in the classroom and so on social
workers assist and counsel them to get over with it and leave a normal life. Social workers also
helps to the children and youth who are experiencing serious problems such as traumas, losses or
extra familial abuse.(Gratwick,And et. al 2014)
Social workers are using various theories and approaches in order to contribute more to
the society, these approaches are guiding the social work practices . These approaches gives a

vast understanding to social worker so that they would be able to figure out the mind set of the
client. System approach helps social workers in understanding the human behaviour in the
complex system. The system approach consist with the idea which based on making an effective
understanding about the rewards, individual needs, expectations, attributes of those people who
are leaving in the particular system. In these approach if an issue is related to an individual than
family, organization members, friends will directly involved in the system to resolving the
problem. Social learning theory is another approach for observation and imitation, as per
according to this approach rather than just listening a new concept and implement it learning
process will be developed is more efficient manner it the new behaviour is modelled as well.
Psychological development approach is an approach consisting with the eight stages of
development over the life cycle. These eight stages are hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity,
love, care and wisdom. It will provide a wide scope to social workers in understanding the core
of the issue facing by their client. Psychodynamic approach for social workers describes a
personality consisting with the three factors which are Id(responsible for following basic
instincts), the superego (attempts to follow rules and behave morally) and the last one is ego (fall
between the Id and the ego ).Rational approach is also use by the social workers to fundamental
understanding about the character and the calculated risk for any action before making decision.
(Manthorpe,And et. al,2013)
The society is facing the complex nature of oppression in the lives of people. Social
workers has the responsibility to challenge the inequality and disadvantages. Anti oppressive
practises is a process depends on change in the pattern of social relations. It consists so many
factors which have an impact on the general life of society such as difference among the society,
personal and political linkage, power, historical and geographical location and mutual
involvement. As anti oppression practices determined the experiences of the people as according
to various factors such as their race, religion, background, mental and physical ability, sexual
identity and gender identity. Anti oppression factors affects each and every person so social
worker use these as a tool or framework to satisfied the need of the client. Before the treatment
of the person they considers people experience in the world instead of judging them on the basis
of their situation. Social workers use identity, oppression and privilege as the tool to help their
client to overcome the issues which they are facing.(Ferguson,2016)

AS we discussed earlier that safeguarding is the term which have a broader meaning
when it comes to the concern of child protection, welfare of the children and protect them from
harmful events. Safeguarding is a everyone's responsibilities and government also consider it as
primary issue in the context of social work practises. Safeguarding is simply defined as
safeguarding of children and adults. Government sets out a legislator framework and policy
regarding safeguarding issue. Government changes policy time to time as government proposed
the safeguarding regulation to the organizations where they mention major changes. Some
changes are the referral of allegations against those who work with children, Notice all the issue
and incidents concerning the care of children's, The definition of serious harm for the purposes
of serious case reviews. The government legal framework indicated that a notifiable incident can
be a child has died and neglect or abused is suspected, a child in a regulated setting or service has
died. Cases of seriously harmed consist with a life threatening injury, a long term destruction of
physical or mental health or physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development.
The government proposed all the social work organizations to look after these issue seriously as
these definition given by government is not exhaustive and look after an take care of the child
because serious harm can be occurred if the child is recovering from a serious incident.
(Whitmee,And et. al,2015)
There is a legislation, policy and legal framework practice guidance is there for
safeguarding the adults. Local authorities and social workers has assigned various duties
concerning safeguarding the adults such as assess a multi agency local adult safeguarding system
that is looking after to prevention the abuse and neglect related issue concerned with adults and
hold it quickly before it happens, Prepare enquiries and request others to prepare them whenever
social workers feels that an adult with care and support needs may be at harm of abuse and
neglect and social workers needs to figure out that what type of actions are required, Developing
safeguarding adults board which includes the local authority and police so that they can develop ,
share and implement a combine safeguarding strategy, Bring out the safeguarding adult reviews
whenever someone with care and support needs dies because of the reason like negligence or
abuse and when there is a issue that local authority or social workers could have done more to
protect them. Arrangement of advocate is also an element which comes under safeguarding the
adults related framework, it is useful to represent and support a person who is the subject of the
safeguard enquiry and review on the basis of requirement. Government establishes the 2014 care

act, according to that safeguarding adult boards (SAB) is fully responsible for the safeguarding
adult reviews it will be useful in the process development and helps safeguarding adult board to
thinking about how they fulfil the responsibilities which is their objectives. The main focus of
the board is selecting the key issues and supplement the policy development.(Whittington,
Alison,and Pearson,2016)
Social work and multi-agency intervention both has a significant role in context with
developing effective policies for the children and adults. Social work practices are designed for
prevent the abuse and negligence in terms of children and adults. Social work are provide
services to the victims in the mode of counselling and advocacy. Apart from these social services
has ample of interventions such as family support programs, alternate arrangement for leaving,
out of home placements for children and adults, protect the guardianship for the adult who are
abused, provide shelter to needed women's, educational programmes for abused adult and
children, providing services to the family at the risk of loosing child. Social services intervention
are supposed to be well designed to provide education to parents about the upbringing of the
child, give counselling to children and family. Interventions in social service also consist with
other prudent services such as income support, material allocation, placements, mental health
services, In-home health related services, transportation, education , supervision, legal services ,
medical services, socialization and nutrition related factors. All these services are considered as
basic needs in the context of work with children and adults. Some risk are also occurred in the
intervention related process as the intensity of framework in the services and assistance to
children and adults in the family violence interventions are mostly nit well framed and
documented and they are also very diverse in nature within the intervention programmes resulted
similar interventions of parenting related practices and family related services may generate very
different type of services from the resources which are available in the society.
Multi agencies also works towards the provide prudent services to child and adult related
concerns through developing various intervention programme. Multi agencies are work as in the
form of the processes of reaching and sharing the strategic goals but all these should be happen
in the form of single agency activity. The agenda of government behind adopting the multi
agencies pattern is to restructure the children and adult related services. Multi agencies are also
work with the mind set of social workers within an early intervention family support team.
Working in the pattern of collaboration is what makes multi agencies different form the social

workers.(Karmel, 2015) Multi agencies gives support to an individual in a timely manner with the
counselling like activities. In these multi-disciplinary teams are work as a single entity to
satisfied the multiple and complex needs of the client. Strategies such as personalization acquired
by multi-agency aims to provide a strong position and strengthen the level of health and social
care and children and social care. As same as social work practices multi agencies also have
some risk factors consist in it such as effective working process of multi agencies is consider as
biggest challenge in day to day work. It is possible that it may lead to conflict as it is a very time
consuming process so if client is in bad condition and required the on the spot treatment than it
will become difficult for the multi-agency to satisfied the need of the client. If the collaboration
factor is poor in the multi-agency than the core of the services which they intend to provide will
definitely become useless.(Huang, 2015)
The practises which are operational in the social work are intend to work towards the
goal of society welfare by providing solution to the every person who needed, collaborating with
the client, developing the strategies to establish a prudent framework, decreasing the level of
depression which client is facing, Reconstruct the treatment and counselling techniques with the
help of the past result, provide safety to the society, building the rapport, identification of the
problem, develop an action plan ad follow it and the list will go on. Social work practices are
providing safeguard programme to the children and adults proves as a revolutionary step in the
welfare sector other then this anti oppression activities also give a better standard of living to the
people.

References
Donaldson, L.P. And et.al 2014. Contemporary social work licensure: Implications for macro
social work practice and education. Social work.p.swt045.
Ferguson, H., 2016. Researching social work practice close up: Using ethnographic and mobile
methods to understand encounters between social workers, children and families. British
Journal of Social Work.46(1).pp.153-168.
Ferguson, H., 2016. What social workers do in performing child protection work: evidence from
research into face‐to‐face practice. Child & Family Social Work.21(3).pp.283-294.
Gratwick, And et. al 2014. Social work practice with LGBT seniors. Journal of gerontological
social work.57(8). pp.889-907.
Hepworth, D.H. And et. al., 2016.Empowerment Series: Direct Social Work Practice: Theory
and Skills. Nelson Education.
Huang, K.Y., 2015, November. Disseminating a Multi-component School-Based Preventive
Intervention to Community-Based Service Agencies to Promote Asian American
Children's Mental Health. In 2015 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo (Oct. 31-Nov. 4, 2015).
APHA.
Karmel, R.S., 2015. Marshall J. Breger & Gary J. Edles, Independent Agencies in the United
States-Law. Structure.and Politics.
Manthorpe, And et. al 2013. Content and purpose of supervision in social work practice in
England: Views of newly qualified social workers, managers and directors. British Journal
of Social Work.p.bct102.
Miley, K.K., O'Melia, M.W. and DuBois, B.L., 2016. Generalist social work practice: An
empowering approach. Pearson.
Rothman, J. and Mizrahi, T., 2014. Balancing micro and macro practice: A challenge for social
work. Social Work.p.swt067.
Whitmee, And et. al 2015. Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The
Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet. 386(10007).
pp.1973-2028.

Wilks, And et. al 2015. Reference accuracy among research articles published in Research on
Social Work Practice. Research on Social Work Practice. p.1049731515626802.

1