Understanding of Social Work, Including Traditional and Alternative Paradigms

Human behavior in social work provides social workers the purpose to actualized through their quest for economic and social justice and prevention of situations that lead to the elimination of poverty, limit human rights and enhance the quality of life (Van Wormer, 2018). Because being a social worker requires knowing why people do what they do. Many people do not realize that they are very similar to other people with the same background and social environment. Social workers can combine human behavior information and use one of many tools that have been proven to help people with different behaviors. The irony is the difficult part is not usually knowing about human behavior but looking at the person and asking them questions to deviate what type of behavior they are displaying and for what reason. Knowing about human behavior is an easier endeavor than extrapolating the information specific of that person being treated and their specific nuances (Jenkins et al., 2018). Understanding human behavior is necessary for social workers to provide appropriate social services to diverse populations without bias. To work effectively with people requires they must understand why they see the world the way they do.

Specific world views play a significant role in my understanding of social work practice. These word views help me develop the quantitative answers which lead to the qualitative results. So, when I can approach and assist in managing a person and situation, I can turn a broad picture into a specific “plan of action. Social workers work with a variety of demographics, and typically they may want to focus on one area, however, since people are complicated, and life circumstances vary, and social work knowledge varies (Jenkins et al., 2018). A social worker needs to be kept up on the world views, and how society, policies, people, and cultures have used, implemented, viewed, and known what works and doesn’t work. In the past, humanitarian efforts, for studying “social experiments” or labeled to find out “human nature” used horrible methods that ethically cannot be re-duplicated, due to the ethical treatment and fallouts. However, without such knowledge from these experiments, people would still be practicing inhuman tactics to one another in the name of “helping mankind.” Contemporarily it is expected that people will become better through developed policy and procedures, laws, ethic boards, and increased training (Van Wormer, 2018). There are several de-bunked world views, that social workers study. Social workers are to use the most up-to-date, ethical guidelines formed by the institution and community they represent.

Human behavior plays a significant role in social behavior. Social workers work with people and families, and in doing so they need to have an understanding of their behavior. They need to able be to assess the needs of people to be able to assert different forms of help for them (Jenkins et al., 2018). The other part is understanding the social environment because they are looking at human behavior in their environments. The environment affects human behavior and vice versa. To help people social workers, need to assess people’s circumstances and then they can further advise in a variety of different contexts. They help for example mothers of newborn babies, families struggling to look after their children, people in poor living conditions, etc. All aspects of their work involve people and their social surroundings. Thus, human behavior provides a significant understanding of people and their environments.

References

Jenkins, A. C., Karashchuk, P., Zhu, L., & Hsu, M. (2018). Predicting human behavior toward members of different social groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(39), 9696-9701.

Van Wormer, K. (2017). Human behavior and the social environment, micro-level: Individuals and families (First Ed). London: Oxford University Press.