Abstract
Social work competencies are abilities that demonstrate a social worker’s prowess in solving client problems. Based on the 2015 Council on Social Work Education’s standards, ten competencies direct social workers’ roles. These include professionalism, values and ethics, diversity and difference, human rights, social and economic justice, research, policy practice, human behavior and social environment, context, critical thinking and engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation. Social workers who demonstrate these abilities can be regarded as competent. A social worker is more than a job title because it requires continuous improvements to guarantee effective work performance. The competencies present several benefits to the social workers, like improving their service delivery because the professionals can gain new insights from evidence-based research. In addition, competencies like professionalism and ethical principles guide social workers on how to relate well with their clients while avoiding conflicts. A competency like policy practice informs social workers on their role in creating changes within the social systems.
Introduction
Social work is a practice-based profession that advances social change, development, empowerment, and cohesion of individuals and communities. A social worker is a professional whose role is to improve general wellbeing by meeting the basic and multifaceted needs of different individuals and communities. According to research, there are over 700,000 social workers in the United States, with the number expected to increase by 12% by 2030 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022). The social work practice is divided into micro, mezzo, and macro levels. At the micro-level, social workers offer direct services to individuals, families, and small groups of people to address a broad range of issues like mental health counseling and offering housing support. Alternatively, social workers at the mezzo level work with groups of individuals in different neighborhoods, prisons, or schools (Berg-Weger & Birkenmaier, 2017). On the other hand, macro-level social workers are involved in policymaking, community-based interventions, and research. Social work competencies include professionalism, values and ethics, diversity and difference, human rights, social and economic justice, research, policy practice, human behavior and social environment, context, critical thinking and engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation.
Social Work Competencies
Competency is the capability of an individual to perform a given task effectively. In line with the 2015 Council on Social Work Education’s standards, ten core competencies guide the role of social workers.
Professionalism
It is based on a social worker’s ability to behave professionally. The competency necessitates that social workers understand the principles that define their profession and relevant regulations that may affect their practice. Additionally, competent social workers comprehend their profession’s mission, roles, and responsibilities. The social workers’ function involves advocating for clients’ access to the different services. The professionalism competency also advocates for social workers to ensure that their personal beliefs and values do not compromise their professional work. In this case, social workers need to avoid personal biases and prejudices to effectively assist their clients. Similarly, this competency requires social workers to consult and use supervision to direct their professional behavior and judgment (Amelung et al., 2017). Social workers may face dilemmas when dealing with some clients; hence consulting with other professionals or supervisors may clarify such challenges.
In addition, professional competency necessitates life-long learning among social workers. As the world evolves, it presents new and complex issues that require solutions. Therefore, it is imperative that social workers engage in continuous learning to understand new evidence-based approaches that can help solve the emerging crisis in their profession. Equally important, social workers are expected to demonstrate professionalism in their appearance and communication, whether oral, electronic, or written (Amelung et al., 2017). This is because they act as representatives of all professionals in the social work field. This competency also requires them to reflect and manage their individual values when acting in professional capacities. Thus, extensive knowledge about the social work profession correcting personal biases, engaging in continuous education, and consulting with other experts improves the professionalism of social workers.
Values and Ethics
It forms a foundation that directs the social workers in their interactions with their clients. It is demonstrated through a social worker’s ability to apply ethical values in decision-making. The ethical principles and the code of ethics offer critical guidelines that social workers can refer to when faced with uncertainties on which course of action to take when dealing with clients. Regarding ethical behavior, social workers need to understand ethical decision-making frameworks and how to use critical thinking in practice, policy platforms, and research. Ethical decision-making should be based on the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) standards, appropriate regulations and policies, and other ethical decision-making models (Gehlert & Browne, 2019). Social workers deal with complex issues and may experience great dilemmas when handling some cases, requiring them to refer to the set ethical principles. They are also expected to abide by the values of social justice, service, integrity, and human relationships when interacting with their clients (Gehlert & Browne, 2019). Thus, applying ethical reasoning and values help social workers in making informed decisions and avoiding conflict with their clients.
Diversity and Difference
It is demonstrated through a social worker’s ability to determine how aspects like culture, age, social status, gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion make clients different and unique. This necessitates the need for client-tailored approaches to solving special individual needs. Therefore, to effectively fulfill their roles, social workers need to understand their clients’ diverse needs and how to resolve them without any misunderstanding or conflicts. In this case, social workers must assume the role of a learner and engage clients as experts to know more about their client’s experiences (Iovu & Lazăr, 2021). Understanding a client’s needs from their perspective may help social workers to devise the most appropriate ways to assist them. Knowledge about different cultures may assist social workers to comprehend the extent to which a culture’s values and structures marginalize, burden, isolate or provide power and privilege to some individuals over others. Such awareness may help the social workers promote equity and implement strategies that reduce such disparities. It may also be instrumental in policy advocacy and research to help other professionals understand different cultures better.
The diversity and difference competency also highlights social workers’ self-awareness when working with different cultural groups. Social workers should be aware of personal biases and stereotypes to avoid assumptions that may hinder their service delivery. In this case, they need to learn about other cultures to understand their client’s way of life and how to adequately assist them. Furthermore, social workers need to show that they know and respect their clients’ differences to get them to open up about the difficulties that they experience. For example, when dealing with members of the LGBTQIA, it is crucial to be open-minded and show support for their sexual orientations without judging them. Such regard for clients’ differences may help change the negative attitude that LGBTQIA has against the human service organizations and make them feel included in society or community issues. Therefore, social workers need to be cognizant of their clients’ diverse and different needs to implement the most appropriate strategies to offer the much-needed services.
Human Rights, Social and Economic Justice
Social workers’ proficiency in using their skills, knowledge, and ethics to promote their clients’ human rights and social and economic wellbeing is what aligns with this competency. The main principle behind social work is to uphold and protect human rights. In this case, the social workers’ role is to ensure that everyone in the society, regardless of social status or position, enjoys human rights such as healthcare, safety, freedom, education, better standards of living, and privacy, among other privileges (Amelung et al., 2017). To achieve this competency, social workers should enhance their clients’ quality of life and economic wellbeing by assisting them to get job opportunities, education, access to quality healthcare, financial aid, and affordable housing if necessary. Additionally, these professionals are also required to engage in practices that promote social and economic justice. For example, social workers may organize rallies, make podcasts or appear on television interviews to castigate inadequate access to care for marginalized groups. Creating such awareness among the public may influence the relevant authorities to enact the needed change.
Similarly, social workers need to understand different forms of human rights violations and oppression in society and use their social and economic justice knowledge to implement strategies that eliminate structural barriers. Knowledge about discriminatory practices helps social workers to challenge regulations that favor some individuals and ignore the rights of others, particularly the marginalized or economically-disadvantaged individuals. To promote equality and justice, social workers need to cooperate with other professionals, such as human rights activists, towards creating positive change in institutional structures (Amelung et al., 2017). Such collaborations may effectively push for policy change to promote more equality among people in society. Therefore, the human rights, social and economic justice competency requires social workers to be vocal about human violations and oppression and implement appropriate interventions to help the affected.
Research
Social workers’ aptitude to engage and integrate scientific research into their practice forms the basis of this competency. In this profession, extensive evidence-based information helps social workers be aware of current services, solutions, and support interventions to solve their clients’ issues. Therefore, social workers should understand how to use qualitative and quantitative research to build their knowledge on various issues. It is also imperative that these professionals comprehend the research findings to appropriately integrate the knowledge into their everyday practice (Iovu & Lazăr, 2021). The aptitude of referring to case studies, laws, and theories to develop an understanding improves a social workers’ competence to generate suitable interventions. Additionally, evidence-based research helps these professionals enhance their awareness of a client’s potential risk factors such as resistance, psychological concerns, vulnerabilities, and emotional trauma. This knowledge equips social workers to anticipate their clients’ reactions and how to make them comply. Research guarantees the effectiveness of different interventions because they have been tried and tested in real-life scenarios making them more practical and appropriate for complex cases.
Equally important, the research competency requires social workers to engage in scientific research to share information with other professionals based on their own case studies and assessments. In this case, some caseworkers may identify new strategies that work best for particular clients; hence sharing the information through research may assist other professionals experiencing the same challenges. As a result, social workers need to be informed about the principles of scientific inquiry, ethical approaches, and logic when engaging in a research process to make the information credible. Thus, research improves information sharing, which updates social workers on the most appropriate evidence-based approaches to solve their clients’ problems.
Policy Practice
It outlines social workers’ involvement in policymaking to promote social and economic wellbeing. Social work deals with human rights and social justice issues, which are affected by different policies and regulations at the local, state, and federal levels. Therefore, social workers need to be aware of the current structures of various social policies and how they impact access to social services and service delivery. Consequently, social workers are expected to understand the cultural, environmental, social, economic, and other influences that affect social policies (Pawar, 2019). Knowledge of various policies may help social workers identify their roles in policy development and implementation at micro and macro levels.
It is the responsibility of social workers to challenge policies that they perceive to create more inequalities in society. In this case, social workers need to communicate with the relevant stakeholders regarding the effects of the existing policies on the lives of particular client groups. Such awareness may create the need for policy changes aimed to improve the lives of marginalized individuals. To effect such policy amendments, social workers may collaborate with other professionals.
Human Behavior and Social Environment
It necessitates social workers to have adequate knowledge about human conduct and their social systems to recommend effective intervention measures. Since these professionals are tasked with providing solutions to various human problems, they need to understand and anticipate their clients’ behavior. Social workers need to be knowledgeable about the kind of systems that people live in and the manner in which the existing social system deters or promotes individuals in achieving healthy wellbeing (Sherr & Jones, 2019). For this reason, social workers need to synthesize and apply different theoretical frameworks of human behavior and social environment to understand their clients. For example, the theories of social change may be instrumental in guiding community practice. The conceptual frameworks direct clients’ assessment, thus assisting social workers in implementing practical intervention approaches.
Context
The competency encourages social workers to respond to the changing contexts that define their profession. Society and policies change with time causing problems and conflicts within communities. For instance, technological and scientific developments, as well as social trends, create new needs in the society that social workers are obliged to address. Thus, they need to be adaptive, resilient, and reactive to changes around them to offer appropriate solutions. Social workers may assume a leadership role to assess any change within an organization or community and propose relevant approaches to remedy the situations (Sherr & Jones, 2019). Similarly, these professionals are continually updated on any policy changes. Therefore, it is their responsibility to communicate such changes to their micro and mezzo levels while helping the clients overcome any challenges that the new changes may pose. The awareness about policy amendments enables social workers to consider the impact on the community and generate amicable solutions beforehand. The ability to respond to evolving changes is based on a social worker’s problem-solving skills and their access to organizations’ support and relevant legal advice.
Critical thinking
It is evidenced by a social worker’s ability to reflect and evaluate their performance to ascertain that their decisions are ethical and professional. The social work profession is guided by many theories, case assessments, and research findings. However, professionals are expected to analyze and assess the evidence-based information to determine which approaches are suitable and more effective for their cases (Boryczko, 2020). This is because clients have different values, cultures, and preferences; thus, what works for a particular client may not work for another. Critical thinking helps social workers to prevent their personal biases from interfering with their decision-making process. It also helps them develop new creative ideas to solve existing or emerging challenges. Therefore, critical thinking skills equip social workers with the capacity to analyze and make informed judgments that are client-centered.
Engagement, Assessment, Intervention, and Evaluation
This competency demonstrates a social worker’s ability to interact, appraise, implement appropriate interventions, and estimate the efficiency of strategies when dealing with clients. While working with individuals, families, organizations, groups, or communities, social workers should use culturally appropriate and trauma-informed techniques when establishing communication. Such an approach may help the clients be compliant in receiving the recommended support. In addition, social workers need to use empathy and other interpersonal skills to build mutual trust and client confidentiality (Berg-Weger & Birkenmaier, 2017). For example, giving the clients hope may improve their motivation for change and break down barriers that hinder the much-needed reform. Furthermore, communication is very critical in the engagement process; the social workers need to inform the clients about the desired goals. This may help create a mutual consensus to work towards the set objective.
Regarding assessment, social workers must gather, organize and interpret data to better understand their clients’ needs. The multidimensional evaluation may also assist these professionals in being aware of their client’s strengths and weaknesses to determine which interventions can adequately fulfill the desired outcomes (Berg-Weger & Birkenmaier, 2017). After evaluating a client, social workers are then expected to develop a mutual agreement regarding the intervention goals. Clients need to be involved in all major decisions concerning their lives which necessitates the social workers to inform them of all courses of action. Therefore, social workers have to discuss the intervention approaches with clients to get their approval and compliance when resolving diverse problems.
In the intervention phase, social workers need to use the most appropriate crisis intervention strategies to help clients resolve their problems. The intervention approaches should be ethical and effectively match the client system problems as well as safeguard them against any harm. Additionally, the social workers are expected to communicate the strategies to other professionals because solving a client’s problems may require interdisciplinary and inter-organizational collaboration. Similarly, the intervention stage requires the social workers to negotiate and advocate their clients’ needs with different stakeholders (Berg-Weger & Birkenmaier, 2017). While designing, developing, and implementing the proposed strategies, social workers need to apply the most suitable evidence-based research which incorporates the client’s cultural perspective. Moreover, social workers are required to facilitate transitions or terminations in case the interventions fail to work.
Evaluation involves critically analyzing, monitoring, and assessing the impact of the crisis intervention strategies. In this case, the social workers may use different techniques to examine the client’s activities and the outcomes of the implemented interventions to determine whether they are effective or need to be replaced by other approaches (Amelung et al., 2017). Therefore, performing a critical analysis on such methods allows for improvements and necessary changes. All these efforts are geared towards ensuring that the interventions fulfill the desired outcome for which they were intended.
Importance of Social Work Competencies
Social work is a dynamic profession that creates the need for social workers to have high educational levels and a broad range of values and skills. However, being a social worker is more than just a job title; it involves the ability to perform an assigned task effectively and produce the desired outcomes. Therefore social work competencies have many benefits for social workers. For instance, they promote excellent practice because they recommend continuous learning, interprofessional collaboration, and evidence-based research to guide social workers’ practice (Sherr & Jones, 2019). In addition, these competencies guide social workers on how to relate to and solve clients’ problems. In this case, competencies teach ethical behavior and values that social workers should utilize when interacting with clients. They also emphasize critical thinking and direct how to respond to different contexts to solve diverse social issues effectively. Furthermore, the competencies assist social workers in better understanding their roles. They teach about professionalism, social and economic justice, and social policies, which enlighten social workers about their responsibilities and how to achieve them (Sherr & Jones, 2019). Hence, the social work competencies have a positive influence on social workers’ roles.
Conclusion
Social work involves creating social change in society by solving basic and complex problems that affect individuals, families, organizations, groups, and communities. In this regard, social work competencies play a critical role in helping social workers to adequately resolve client issues. Competencies such as professionalism and ethics guide the social workers’ conduct when handling clients to prevent conflicts and solve any dilemmas. The competency of diversity and difference encourages social workers to accommodate and show regard to all individuals regardless of culture, gender, age, and sexual orientation, among others. In addition, critical thinking and research competencies necessitate social workers to analyze information before making a decision and emphasize the importance of utilizing evidence-based research in case management. Other competencies like social and economic justice and social policy inform social workers about their responsibilities in fighting for human rights, especially through their participation in policy amendments. Generally, these competencies provide many insights to social workers and should be mandatory for all students wishing to join the social work profession.
References
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