I’m not apologizing for organizations that don’t work well. They need our help and support. Neither am I going to brag about our organizations that work very well. I’m just going to clarify what they do, what they cost, and how well they’re doing the intended job of helping people resolve the social problems discussed in this book.
Social work is the profession originally developed to work with a number of these social problems. But it’s not the only helping profession: Psychiatry, psychology, and counseling are also helping professions working with people in difficulty.The difference is that social work is concerned about the internal side of a person’s behavior (his or her emotional problems and problem-solving skills) as well as the external side of a person’s life (the quality of family life, the school the child attends, the safety of the neighborhoods, and the amount of money he or she has to live on). In a sense, social work sees people from a total perspective and works to resolve both internal and external problems. But we use common sense. If people are chronically hungry, social workers try to eliminate their hunger while at the same time resolving the reasons for their hunger. In this way, theimmediateneedforfoodismet,andthelikelihoodofrepeatedneedforfoodmaybediminished.