Social Work and Social Justice Tie Together

¶ … social work and social justice tie together in the respect they both deal with individual, group, and community needs. Whether it is about meeting individual needs or working to change laws to meet the fairness of all individuals, social work reaches out to a broad area of meeting needs in general. It takes justice to work with individuals, groups, and communities and meet the needs thereof.

"Social Work is the professional activity of helping individuals, groups, or communities enhance or restore their capacity for social functioning and creating societal conditions favorable to this goal." (Definition of Social Work, 2011) Social work is the professional application of values, principals, and techniques of helping people obtain services, such as counseling, and helping communities or groups provide and improve processes that meet needs. It requires a great deal of knowledge in human development and behavior of social, economic, and cultural institutions, as well as, the interactions of these factors. Social work is designed to help people reach the abilities to accomplish life tasks, realize values, and alleviate distress. It involves problem solving, coping, and developmental learning techniques, promoting the effectiveness of systems that provide resources and services, and linking individuals with systems that provide resources, services, and opportunities.

Social justice is "The fair and proper administration of laws conforming to natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, possessions, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equally and without prejudice." (social justice) It takes social workers, people who are familiar with human development and behavior, as well as, dedicated to reaching out to hurting people, to work to change laws to make society fair for all people, regardless of where they come from, how they were born, or what race they are. Social justice is concerned with law that is fair to all individuals, groups, and communities. In order to make law equal for all, knowledge of human development and behavior in social, economic, and culture is required to understand what it is that needs to be changed about society to make all things as equal as possible.

Assessment, person in situation, process, relationship, and intervention is the basic concepts of social work and social justice. The assessment of the individual, group, or community is needed to understand what the problem or problems are that need change. The person in situation could be an individual, a particular group of people, or a whole community that needs some kind of assistance. Determining the process is important to ensure that the problem or problems are dealt with for the advantage of all concerned. Relationship is what builds the trust and helps people learn to work together to accomplish tasks and bring about change. And, intervention is especially important to prevent things from happening or to prevent things from repeating themselves.