Social Services Practice: Understanding Poverty

Answer

1. Social Services Practice: Understanding Poverty

   The connection between social work and poverty is inextricable. Since the beginning of social services/work as a discipline, poverty has always remained a central issue in the social justice conversation. In fact, in recognition of the role poverty plays in creating or compounding most of the problems that the social services profession seeks to address, social workers and other stakeholders have tried to work with communities, families, and individuals to address poverty. Cummins (2018) notes that despite such efforts, there seems to be a system-wife failure to adequately acknowledge the problem of poverty as to design specific principles and approaches for working with the poor. Nevertheless, poverty continues to receive a lot of attention in the arena of researcher, where it has been elevated in as far as the agenda of social work research is concerned.  This paper discusses the issue of poverty and its significance in social services organization/practice.

   The central place of poverty in social work practice cannot be overemphasized more so considering that it (poverty) affects many of the groups that are the target of social services. Social sciences in general have attempted to change how poverty is conceived by conceptualizing it in relational terms that mainly focus on how the haves and have nots relate in political, economic, and social aspects (Elwood et al., 2017).  In this breath, it is safe to infer that a relational analysis of poverty would reveal complex relationship patterns and webs that yield poverty and ensures it persists for certain segments of the population. 

   True as it were, an integral element in social services’ core mission is, as it should be, the elimination of poverty. Through its elimination, it will be easer to liberate the oppressed and vulnerable while also promoting social cohesion and inclusion.  This objective informs much of social work’s rhetoric in the same respect, but there have been system-wide failures stemming from a lack of seriousness in addressing the main issues surrounding poverty (Krumer-Nevo, 2016).  While poor people are the primary target of social work, the discipline tends to be keener on clinical and therapeutic interventions with the contextual focus being on the array of intra-psychic challenges that many a client face. Another focus has been on social inclusion, whereby the profession employs interventions geared towards promoting and expanding participation in economic and social life as would be achievable through human capital development. In recent years, there has been a noticeable preoccupation of the discipline with the concept of case management involving the coordination of various disparate services informed by client needs, thereby ensuring the delivery of the same as a package. Overall, these have led to the divorcing of client issues from the wider context in which they occur, including poverty. Here, there has not been much focus on the various types of impoverishments that people experience, and the exploitation that results thereof.  In the words of Cummins (2018), this a poverty paradox where actors in social services (that is social workers) are close contact with poor clients, yet they are blind to their poverty.

   Noting this blindness to poverty by social workers is Thompson (2016), a scholar who discusses what he calls an anti-discriminatory approach that ought to be applied in social services organization and/or practice.  This approach recognizes that poverty is part and parcel of the various layers and forms of inequality visible at different areas of society, which negatively affect communities, families, and individuals.  More importantly, the interaction of poverty with various types of inequalities (like disability, gender, and religion) leads to a complex ground that requires reflective social services practice to understand as well as respond to various contextual power relations. In this vain, it is imperative for social services to be cognizant of the social, political, and economic relations that exist between various segments of the population, in addition to the multiplier effect of poverty and related inequalities. Thus, social workers need to comprehend poverty in the implied relational terms so that they can be well informed on how to develop the necessary skills and interventions that will bring them closer to the achievement of the objectives of social services as a profession.

   Experience in practice has been found to determine the extent to which social workers understand the interrelatedness of various forms of inequality (McLaughlin et al., 2017). Those who have worked longer in the field often feel they are better equipped and informed to comprehend the complex web of factors that impact social justice. Considering the fact that there is a significant percentage of newly trained social workers joining practice, it is important to develop orientation programs that give insight on all forms of poverty-related inequalities, so that practice is reflective and evidence-based, as opposed to being based on mere regulations, rules, and procedures. Failing to understand the role of poverty in the inequalities that are a target of social services can potentially impact the planning, designing, and development of interventions. The impact of poverty seems to be elevated in almost all areas of social services practice. For instance, in the sphere of child welfare, it has been found to be closely associated with neglect of children. There have been many lessons to pick from here since, as opposed to focusing solely on abuse and neglect, there has been need to consider the various inequalities that yield these phenomena, or increase their chances. The UK social work landscape helps illuminate the significance of such consideration since with the exploration of poverty and related inequalities in relational terms has led to child protection plans and general welfare interventions that consider individual factors (Davidson et al., 2017).

   The implications of poverty on social services organization and/or practice can be demonstrated by looking at the child welfare arena.  In the context of child welfare, there is a high likelihood that an issue such as neglect can be mistaken with the failure to provide necessities like shelter, food, and clothing. If a social worker examines a case and establishes there is neglect, there is a possibility  that such an inference is wrong as the parents of a given child might simply not be in a position to play their role of provision, all because of poverty. Therefore, as part of their commitment to the core objectives of social services, social workers ought to go the extra mile of understanding issues at hand not just in their immediate context but in the broader societal context since by so doing, the interrelatedness of  various forms of inequality can be understood (Daly & Grace, 2015; Lawson & Elwood, 2014). Since many of such inequalities have a direct or indirect relation to poverty, addressing poverty will be one of the surest ways of addressing the rest of the issues. For example, to consider the issue of child abuse, there is a possibility that a parent has been so frustrated by poverty that he or she finds herself displaying emotional outburst to children, even physically assaulting them at times. Here, when social workers devise psychotherapy interventions aimed at bringing about behavioral change in the client, they should understand that such interventions are by themselves not alone (Coulton et al., 2016). A bigger issue that needs to be addressed in such a case is material deprivation, which is the root cause of contextual abusive/violent behavior. Zilberstein (2016) agrees that social workers should look beyond the issue and interventions as to understand the root cause of problems.

   In a word, considering that most of the issues that social services seeks to address are in one way or another related to poverty, it is imperative for social workers to understand the role of poverty in the same respect and as such target it vis a vis other interventions (for other problems). There is need to comprehend poverty in the manner it relates to other factors in society, more precisely the inequalities that social work seeks to address. Social justice is not possible if poverty continues to persist. Social services organization and/or practice should incorporate an agenda to understand poverty and related inequalities in relational terms if the social justice mission is to be achieved.