Topic

Malcolm Payne’s Three Course Model of Social Work

Instructions

You will write a 4 page (not including title and reference pages) double-spaced typed paper that addresses the following questions:

Comment on how each of the views of social work play out in your field placement agency. Are they equally balanced? Does your agency tend to emphasize one over the other? What evidence do you have that helps you know that? What in the agency’s policies, procedures, and practice lead you to that conclusion? Include an analysis of the agency’s mission statement in the above, if applicable.
What impact does your response to the first prompt have on the clients that the agency serves? On the workers in the agency? On the community at large?
How does your professional helping style fit into the “views of social work” paradigm represented by your agency? In other words, which skills, qualities, characteristics, and attitudes are you personally aware of that could contribute to and/or “run against the grain” of the way your field agency operates?
What recommendations (based on Payne’s model) would you give to your field supervisors and/or administrators that would enable a more productive and functioning agency? Base these recommendations on your analysis above.

Please format your paper using APA. Although no outside sources are required, they might be helpful as you formulate and argue your ideas. You may want to speak to your field instructor about his/her perceptions of the agency’s social work view, for example. Remember to cite all sources correctly in your text and include a title and reference page.

Answer Preview

As social workers we try as much as possible to closely interact with the clients we serve. In this way, we get to understand their own paradigms, simply put, the way they interpret the world. Once an understanding has been achieved, the client and the social worker establish a kind of mutual co-existence. According to Payne, this is akin to reflexive-therapeutic where economic and social development go hand in hand to achieve individual and social improvement. Apart from therapeutic views, the agency has a bigger vision for the immediate society with which we serve. A good example, was in the focus on improving education for the local children within the agency. Apparently, the area teems with employment opportunities, but there are no qualified people to take on the jobs. The agency feels that if the children could study all the way to college, they will take on the jobs. If the children get employed, it will be a big step into the eradication of poverty for the entire community. This is in line with the feeling that the society could do better with a full transformation. This is akin to what Payne calls transformational views where the society can be helped more by changing it to ensure that the poor and the most oppressed get a chance to stand on their own two feet.

Word Count: 1300