By Sonia Suka
Social Workers are evolving into “care coordinators”, according to the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sport, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan. By adding, “coordination then means you need to be able to communicate with all the other stakeholders in our society”, Dr Vivian actually meant that social workers are evolving from being case managers, into being care coordinators.
This evolvement of social workers is good, for as long as social workers are going to work as case managers, their focus will be on containing costs, utilisation management, prior authorisation, welfare context, services that are covered and on promoting coordination and communication across disciplines within the organisation. Case management is about social work in the micro level.
When social workers move from being case managers to care coordinators, they move from the micro to the mezzo level; for care coordination is about facilitating access, quality assurance, problem-solving, psychosocial context, covered as well as non-covered services and more importantly promoting coordination of social support services across different organisations and providers.
But there is yet another level for social workers to evolve into – the macro level. The macro level involves society or communities as a whole. This type of social work practice would include policy forming and advocacy on a national or international scale.
One can only wonder if the government of Singapore will encourage the evolvement of social workers to go from the mezzo level to the macro level.
When most national bodies of social work are members of the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW), Singapore’s very own National Council of Social Services (NCSS), renounced its membership of ICSW not too long ago.
ICSW states in its website that their basic mission is to:
“Promote forms of social and economic development which aim to reduce poverty, hardship and vulnerability throughout the world, especially amongst disadvantaged people. It strives for recognition and protection of fundamental rights to food, shelter, education, health care and security. It believes that these rights are an essential foundation for freedom, justice and peace. It seeks also to advance equality of opportunity, freedom of self-expression and access to human services.”
This mission statement is loaded with quite a bit of ‘macro’ ingredients – rights, advance equality of opportunity and freedom of self expression.
Did NCSS withdraw its membership from ICSW some years ago also because it was not ready to allow social work to develop to a macro level?
Social work can be a thankless career. It is perhaps more a calling than a career. Anyone who has spent any amount of time working in the social services sector is probably familiar with the concept of burnout. Burnout destroys the social workers motivation, work ethics and, most of all, the inner hope, that the work they do makes a difference.
Although raising the salaries of social workers is a move in the right direction, doing so to keep them motivated can only go so far, as extrinsic motivations like higher salaries are only temporary.
The government should not stand in the way for the intrinsic motivation of the social workers to evolve to the macro level. Give them a sense of feeling that they too can make a difference in the national and even international level.
_________________________________________________
Related posts:
- CPF – social security or social bondage?
- Report: Mooting a social assistance scheme search engine
- TOC Feature: Social work – a human rights framework
- Giving equal access to social benefits
- The evolving role of women in S’pore
This evolvement of social workers is good, for as long as social workers are going to work as case managers, their focus will be on containing costs, utilisation management, prior authorisation, welfare context, services that are covered
great balakampon…now you want a social worker to be profit drivens as well..it liked askin mother teresa to charge for every donations she get when treatin the lepers…
dr balekampon i prayed to you that you will never contract leperosy disease…
by the way..have you been to calcutta lateLEE?
Social workers are sadly limited in their field of work to case management, counselling, financial assistance, and programme management. Although these are worthy fields of work on their own, the missing piece is advocacy for the people. Social work here is far behind that of Hong Kong.
Being a complete reprobate and yet defining and dictating about social work. Aiyoh, even an imbecile can see thru this hogwash lah.
This is the legacy lah of 50 years of unbridled rule!
The problem with social work, is that they are faced with insurmountable red tape from the government.
Speaking from experience through my divorcee cousin with 4 kids, who lost her flat after being unable to pay for it, when he husband left. Instead of the MCDYS helping her, they offered her several contact numbers to NGOs.
It took one of the NGOs nearly 5 years to convince HDB to allow her to rent a flat for her and her 4 kids. I assume the reluctance to help from our govt/stat boards is due to the fact that they like to paint a rosy picture of how well Singaporeans are. My cousin’s plight would be a blemish on their records should they provided help for her.
TOC really need to interview these NGOs and expose the hyprocisy of the MIW.
I have seen too many corrupted official in Singapore. I too have seen too many jobless Singaporeans taking up jobs not related to their field of study.
Those who get the jobs are the Foreign Thrash. Is time to vote wisely before they get in more Foreign Thrash to justify for their ridiculous salary.
Locally born Singaporeans need to get violent now. If not, we will be marginalized. Hope being in riot control can help me help every locally born Singaporean.
Hi nuts,
fully agreed with you on that…The time for talk is over…i would get violent for now.. but at least Singaporean must be more assertive in their own country..enough of foreign trash
Ya, all fair and square, PAP are bringing in the foreign trash in drones, Native Singaporean MUST bring in oppositions in drones to match!
Hopefully we can see the SOCIAL being brought back into social work. In the structured social work model, there is a lot of WORK but largely anti social.