CODA - Issues in Social Work Practice

Abstract

This chapter highlights various issues in social work practice. The fundamental problem in evaluating social work practice is that social work so often has to deal with the intangible such as feelings or the vague such as wellbeing, and the criteria are difficult to establish. It is possible to demonstrate what could be done through theory substantiated by experiment. However, experimentation in social work is difficult: quite apart from the ethics involved, there are enormous problems in controlling the variables to establish just what it is that social work has contributed rather than other people, maturation, change of circumstances, or just sheer accident or luck. Even substantiated theory often does not get incorporated into practice, sometimes validly because experimental situations are rarely completely replicated and sometimes invalidly because old habits die hard and new knowledge and new ways that appear to denigrate the old are rejected.