Social work is a professional and academic discipline that seeks to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of an individual, group, or community by intervening through research, policy, community organizing, direct practice, and teaching on behalf of those afflicted with poverty or any real or perceived social injustices and violations of their human rights. Research is often focused on areas such as human development, social policy, public administration, psychotherapy, program evaluation, and international and community development. Social workers are organized into local, national, continental and international professional bodies. Social work, an interdisciplinary field, includes theories from economics, education, sociology, medicine, philosophy, politics, anthropology and psychology. In many jurisdictions, clinical social workers are licensed mental health professionals.
Read more about Social Work: History, Contemporary Professional Development, Qualifications, Role of The Professional
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or work:
“Are we talking about a church founded by the Son of God made man? Or are we talking about simply a social gathering that we can rebuild as we wish?”
—Donna Steichen, U.S. opponent of women in the ministry. As quoted in Time magazine, p. 54 (November 23, 1992)
“He will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar’s pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died away.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)