INTERVENTIVE ROLES

IN
DIRECT PRACTICE
• The social worker’s problem-
solving efforts will require a
variety of interventive roles
which refers to the composite of
activities or tasks that she is
expected to undertake in order
to accomplish the goals agreed
upon with the client.
 RESOURCE PROVIDER
• This role engages the worker n direct
provision of material aid and other
concrete resources that will be useful
in eliminating or reducing situational
deficiencies. Concrete resources are
mobilized, created, and directly
provided to the client who is assisted
in making optimal use of them.
• The provision of resources as a social
work activity should not be equated
with dole-outs.
• The word “dole, means alms, or the
giving out of money or goods, usually
out of charity. It has a connotation of
indiscriminate giving which is not done
in social work.
• The direct provision of any form of
material aid in social work is always
preceded by a careful evaluation of
client need and the most appropriate
ways by which it can be met.
• Resource provision is not limited to
money or goods but others concrete
services that are necessary in order to
achieve the helping goals for the client.
Example:
Romy was referred by some rebel returnees to the
LSWDO which has special programs and
services for their client group. After the intake
interview, the worker found him eligible for
several of the agency’s services that would
make it possible for him to start a new life.
These included financial assistance for a low
cost shelter, a loan for a livelihood project
under the agency’s SEAP, skills training for his
two teenage OSY sons, and enrollment of his 4
yo daughter in the Day Care Center where his
wife became a parent-volunteer and therefore
profited from the agency’s PES.
 Social Broker
• Involves the process of negotiating the
“service jungle” for clients, whether singly or
in groups.
• The worker links or connects the client to
needed services in the community.
• She has to perform a variety of activities –
helper, interpreter, facilitator, expediter,
escort, negotiator to insure rapid service
delivery.
• The role of a social broker
requires a broad knowledge of
community resources as well as
knowledge of the operating
procedures of agencies so that
effective connections can be
made.
• Referral is considered a basic activity in
social broker. It essentially involves
connecting the client to needed
resources.
• Networking – a related term, refers to
the worker’s efforts at establishing and
maintaining relationship with other
community entities which have resources
that can support and supplement her
own agency’s resources.
• Social broker is similar to resource
provider role. Its distinguishing
element is that the worker has to
match client needs with community
resources outside her agency and
assist the client to make use of these
resources.
• In the resource provider role, the
resources needed are being administered
by her agency or organization an all that
she has to do is assist the client to avail
them. In cases where the needed
resources do not exist, the worker has the
power or authority, and usually, the
corresponding capacity and skill to
mobilize efforts and /or create needed
resources.
Example:
Client may refer to agencies that could help her
get/access the services that match her
needs/problems:
o PCSO for medicines
o LGU for financial assistance
o SOS Village for temporary shelter of children
o Psychiatrist for psychiatric treatment
o PAO for free legal service
o TESDA for skills training
 Mediator
• A person who acts as an intermediary
or conciliator between two persons or
sides. In her work with individuals,
families, groups and communities, the
worker often has to engage in efforts
that will resolve disputes between the
client system and other parties.
• The objective is to find a
common ground which will make
it possible to resolve the dispute.
• Compton and Galaway describe what is
expected from the worker who performs a
mediator role:
“ You will use techniques to bring about a
convergence of the perceived values of both
parties to the conflict; help each party
recognize the legitimacy of the other’s
interests; assist the parties in identifying
common interests in a successful outcome;
avoid a situation in which issues of winning
and losing are paramount;
“ localize the conflict to specific issues, times
and places; break the conflict down to
separate issues; and help parities realize
that they have more at stake in continuing a
relationship than the issue of the specific
conflict. You will work at facilitating
communication between the parties by
encouraging them to talk to each other;
sharing information and persuasion
procedures may also be used.”
 Advocate
• The term advocacy comes from the legal
profession. Like the lawyer, the social
worker has to take a partisan interest in
the client and his cause. She cannot
remain neutral.
• The objective is to influence, in the client’s
interest, another party, usually possessing
same power or authority over the client.
• The advocate will argue, debate,
bargain, negotiate, and manipulate the
environment on behalf of the client.
• She may even have to utilize non-
consensual strategies, such as direct
confrontation, administrative appeal,
and the use of judicial and political
systems as appropriate.
 Enabler
• Involves the social worker in interventive
activities that will help clients find the
coping strengths and resources within
themselves to solve problems they are
experiencing.
• The client serves as the primary
resource, and change comes about
mainly through the client’s efforts.
• The worker’s responsibility is to
perform a supporting and
empowering function so as to enable
the client’s accomplishment of a
defined change.
• The enabler role can be used to effect
change within the client or in the
client’s pattern of relating to others or
the environment.
• The enabler role is also useful in helping
the client change his/her own reality or
environment, if this is the source of the
problem.
• Groups and communities can be agents of
change to improve their own life
situations. They can be helped to organize
themselves in order to work for the
provision of facilities, services and
opportunities they need.
• The work of mobilizing the resources
of client systems to change their own
social realities or situations is the
ultimate meaning of people
“empowerment” and of the
developmental function of social
work.
Example:
A woman’s joining an assertiveness
training group in order to learn how
to cope with her husband’s physical
or emotional abuse as well as other
people’s violation of her human
rights.
 Counselor/Therapist
• The goal of the worker who performs
a counselor or therapist role is the
restoration, maintenance, or
enhancement of the client’s capacity
to adapt or adjust to his current
reality.
• It is premised on the belief that there
are client problems which are caused
not so much by situation factors as by
factors in the client himself, such as
wrong attitudes, distorted values, low
self-esteem, limited use of knowledge,
lack of self-understanding, etc.
• The worker is called upon to engage in a
case-to-case approach to problem-
solving to benefit the client.
• Schneiderman submits that the goal is
achieved through provision of services on
an individual or group basis to provide
emotional support, generated through an
enabling relationship with the social
worker and through support given to
those strengths in perceptive, integrative
and executive functions as well as to those
material and relationship resources in the
environment which facilitate adjustment.
• Specific techniques under this interventive
role are:
o Purposive listening
o Reassurance
o Persuasion
o Direct advice
o Teaching
o Guidance
o Suggestions
o Logical discussions
o Exercise of professional and or legal authority
INTERVENTIVE ROLES
BEYOND DIRECT PRACTICE
• Social workers are also engage in
interventive activities that do not
require direct, face-to-face relationship
with clients.
• These are interventions the worker
employs on behalf of, or in the interest
of not only one, but many client
sectors.
 Mobilizer of Community Elite
• Involves the worker in activities aimed
at informing and interpreting to certain
sectors of the community, welfare
programs and services, as well as
needs and problems, with the
objective of enlisting their support and
/or involvement in them.
• This sector of the community called
“elite” is comprised of individuals
and groups who are usually in a
position to provide, in one way or
another, the resources the worker
needs in her work with clients.
• The elite would be the professionals
who constitute a well-informed
group whose talents and skills can
improve or enrich agency work; the
politicians whose legislative acts can
have far-reaching effects on social
welfare; policy makers who make
decisions that impact on the
situations of clients;
• the leaders in communities who may
not be wealthy or educated but are
respected and have a following in their
respective areas; the rich whose
financial support welfare agencies
must often depend on for their
budgetary needs; and volunteers who
represent an important but largely
untapped human resources that can
enhance service to clients.
• It is imperative that the worker learns
effective ways of working with them
and be skillful at utilizing their
contributions.
• Specific activities in relation to the
elite include being an information-
giver, interpreter, resource person,
consultant, negotiator, coordinator,
lobbyist, organizer and mobilizer.
 Documentor/Social Critique
• The social worker is employed by her agency for
the purpose of translating agency policies into
service to clients.
• In this interventive role, she documents the
need for more adequate social welfare policies
and programs based on her knowledge (gained
from actual experience) about the inadequacies
or deficiencies in these existing welfare policies
and programs, as well as on her beliefs as to
how they ought to be, in the light of
professional values and goals.
• As a documentor or critique, the worker
should have a good understanding of
existing agency policies, programs, and
services; have accurate knowledge of
data about their actual implementation,
and have the skill to analyze these data.
Also she is expected that she has
knowledge about how these policies,
programs, and or/services ought to be.
 Policy/Program Change Advocate
• In this interventive role, the worker involved in
efforts to change policies and programs on
behalf of particular sectors of the population
based on the values of the profession.
• This role concept requires the worker to take a
stand regarding important issues relating to
social welfare policies and programs affecting
client populations, and argue for or defend
her proposal.
• Every worker can be an individual advocate,
by means of writing or making verbal
pronouncements (as in public forums) that