Abstract
Social work can cover a variety of issues from the homeless, pregnant teenagers, the elderly, as well as the mental and physically challenged. The purpose of this paper is to address and understand the chief function of the field of social work. Brueggemann (2002) questions if people are generally healthy but live in an unhealthy society, or are people basically unhealthy and live in a healthy society. This question was answered by Saul Alinsky in the 1950's. Alinksy felt that, poverty, discrimination, economic insecurity, and unemployment; a disease as well as powerlessness were an unhealthy society. Therefore it was not the people but society itself.
The social work profession addresses a variety of issues from child abuse, homelessness, teenage pregnancy, poverty, the elderly, as well as the mental and physically challenged. The chief purpose of the field of social work according to Anne Minahan (n.d.), is to (1) help develop new resource systems to meet the needs of the people; (2) establish initial linkages between people and resource systems themselves to make them accessible to each other; (3) facilitate and improve interaction between people within resources systems to promote the effective and humane operation of these systems and to make them responsive to people's needs; (4) facilitate ongoing interactions between resources systems to enable them to work together effectively and; (5) help people develop and effectively utilize their own internal problem solving and coping resource (Minahan, n.d.
English: Nature vs. Nurture
Saul Alinsky
Brueggemann 2p. 3).
According to Brueggemann (2002) there have been many assumptions made in today's society about people, from which they are basically unable to solve their own problems and are in need of help. Brueggemann questions if people are generally healthy but live in an unhealthy society, or are people basically unhealthy in a healthy society (Brueggemann, 2002, p. 48). In further...