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Question Paper
MASTER'S DEGREE IN SOCIAL WORK (MSW) - Term-End Examination
MSW-001 : ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL WORK
Time : 3 hours Maximum Marks : 100
Note :
(i) Answer all the five questions.
(ii) All questions carry equal marks.
(iii) Answer to questions No. 1 and 2 should not exceed 600 words each.

1. Trace the history of social work in Asia. 20

OR
Write an essay on social work education through distance learning. 20

2. Define case work. Delineate historical development of case work in the West and in India
OR
Delineate the emergence of social work in Europe. 20

3. Answer any two the following questions in about 300 words each.
(a) Differentiate between voluntary action and professional action. 10
(b) Discuss NASW code of ethics. 10
(c) Elucidate the scope and relevance of group work. 10
(d) Explain "indigenisation of social work knowledge". 10

4. Answer any four of the following questions in about 150 words each
(a) Trace the development of social work practice in Egypt. 5
(b) Highlight linkage between Social Action and Social Justice. 5
(c) Differentiate between social welfare,social work and social policy. 5
(d) Describe assumptions involved in social welfare administration. 5
(e) List the characteristics of the generalistic perspective in social work intervention. 5
(f) What is the present status of social work education in Newzeland? 5

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5. Write short notes on any five of the following in about 100 words each :
(a) Charity. 4
(b) Major characteristics of social security. 4
(c) Philosophical assumptions of case work 4
(d) Perspectives on community work. 4
(e) Ethical decision making. 4
(f) Relationship of social work administration with other methods of social work practice. 4
(g) Social Defence. 4
(h) Salient features of social movement. 4

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Answers
1. Write an essay on social work education through distance learning.
The essence of professional education in social work is best conceptualized as practical knowledge, the
kind of knowledge that is imparted and absorbed. The primary goals of social work education include
developing the ability to emotionally connect, understand, and help others; to learn to build an
empathic human connection with clients through coursework and practicum education; to develop the
ability to conduct comprehensive bio-psychosocial assessments; and provide relief for emotional
challenges and disorders through psychotherapy and counseling. Distance learning is a formal
educational process in which the majority of the instruction occurs when student and instructor are not
in the same place. Instruction may be synchronous or asynchronous. Distance learning may employ
correspondence study, or audio, video, or computer technologies.

The first distance learning Social work program began at the Florida State University in 2002. There are
online programs available in numerous fields including engineering, mathematics, history, business,
criminal justice, psychology, and many more. However, unlike other fields of academic study, the Social
work is a professional degree which is an entree into professional practice in mental health and health
care. As such, social workers have a responsibility for the health, safety and well-being of their clients
which require, beyond a considerable fund of information about relevant subject matters, high levels of
professional competence, judgment and ethical standards.

Many social workers are concerned that the relational skills and integrative knowledge essential in social
work practice are difficult, if not impossible, to convey in distance education formats where there is little
or no in-person dialogue between faculty and students. Social work is an essentially relational
enterprise; social work education should entail this same relational quality to achieve consistency and
quality. Given the nature of group social work, some in-person group interaction is necessary to develop
and practice group leadership skills. Certainly each dimension of human communicationverbal, vocal,
facial expressions and body languageenhances interaction in different ways. Social workers learn to

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value each of these communication channels. Further, the person-in-environment is important for social
work education. As social workers carefully observe contextual interpersonal data in home visits, family
therapy sessions, or support groups, social work faculty observe where students position themselves in
the classroom: who sits in the front and who in the back, who sits alongside whom, and who remains
aloof from other students. Faculty sensitivity to the student-in-environment models the educational
task of understanding the person-in-environment. Further, there are concerns about the ability of
online social work education programs to adequately monitor their students' progress in both academic
and field education settings. This is particularly problematic in field internships where online education
programs must quickly establish connections with field supervisors in agencies in distant communities
without longstanding relationships between agencies and professional schools. Other ethical concerns
are also implicit in online professional social work education.

For Social work education to be done through distance education, the distance learning should exhibit
well-established essentials of institutional quality. These essentials are as follows:

That education is best experienced within a community of learning where competent professionals
are actively and cooperatively involved with creating, providing, and improving the instructional
program;

That learning is dynamic and interactive, regardless of the setting in which it occurs;

That instructional programs leading to degrees having integrity are organized around substantive
and coherent curricula which define expected learning outcomes;

That institutions accept the obligation to address student needs related to, and to provide the
resources necessary for, their academic success;

That institutions are responsible for the education provided in their name;

That institutions undertake the assessment and improvement of their quality, giving particular
emphasis to student learning; and,

Those institutions voluntarily subject themselves to peer review.

Distance education can be employed across the spectrum of learning communities to provide training to
place committed individuals and to enhance traditional educational programs. While individual regional
accreditation commissions may vary in how they articulate their standards of review, they have reached
consensus on general domains of best practice in reviewing distance education programs and
institutions: Access, Learning Community, Faculty Support, Student Support, Curriculum and Instruction,

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Evaluation and Assessment, Institutional Context and Commitment, Facilities and Finance and Library
and Learning Resources. If the distance learning looks at these domains, then the social work education
will not suffer.
2. Delineate the emergence of social work in Europe.
Social work in Europe began in the 20th century in many countries. Historical backgrounds, social policy
trends, pedagogical and disciplinary relationships, and politics all have implications for the way in which
social work training has been established in different countries and for the specific manner in which the
role of social work has been interpreted. Local factors and European policy developments are also
important elements in determining how social work education is evolving in terms of structure,
curricula, and pedagogical issues and in determining what kind of role social workers will play.

The quest for a theoretical underpinning of social interventions that pointed the way towards a
professional development began early in the 20th century as a result of the secularisation of charitable
interventions and the rise of social policies as a key instrument of national politics. Two lines of
development are discernable internationally which became constitutive for subsequent methods
frameworks and hence for the professional profile of social work, whereby each line in turn became
polarised between positivist and hermeneutic tendencies. One line is associated with the title social
work which was taken over in translation in most industrialised societies. It can be traced from the
approach which informed the first social work textbook, written by Mary Richmond in 1917. The book
revealed that social work intervention should be the result of the systematic collection and analysis of
relevant social data on the clients overall situation. In Richmonds interpretation it implied a functional
social science model where dysfunction can be avoided or repaired by the careful coordination of
factors that enhance the well-being of individuals and families in their respective social contexts. For
Salomon the personal interaction forms part of the diagnostic and consequently of the intervention
process. Both approaches seek to mediate between psychological and sociological factors and apply a
degree of pragmatism rather than scientific stringency in suggesting ways of bringing about the better
integration of individuals in a given society. Psychoanalytic concepts reinforced this initially rather vague
approach scientifically and it became known as social case work.

The positivist interpretation of case work, which emphasises the adjustment of individuals to the
inevitably fixed and dominant social conditions, was always only one version side by side with a different

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version which represented a socially critical and methodically hermeneutic version. On this side
empowerment, albeit not necessarily under this term, became a key methodological principle. It created
the conditions for self-help through strengthening not just the psychological capacities of the ego but
also the basis for group and community action. The other line of development was social pedagogy,
particularly prevalent in Germany but by no means confined to that country. It implies a vision of society
that combines rationality and idealism and proposes to steer the transformation processes from
traditional to modern societies as a continuous process of educational improvement and civilisation.
Internationally, the immediate period after World War II stood for social work under the banner of
unification and internationalisation, wherever social services counted as politically acceptable and
desirable (in Communist Europe only in Yugoslavia). With the support of the UN, the profession was
given an explicit role both in the social and democratic re-construction of countries devastated by war
and Nazism and in the project of de-colonisation. Social work methods also changed under the impact of
new social movements which erupted in the 1970s in all parts of the Western world and sporadically
also in Communist countries, despite severe oppression. Their common characteristic and relevance for
the further development of social work methods was that they linked the demand for civil and human
rights with questions of group and individual identities. Social work is essentially recognised as a socially
constructed activity which cannot go beyond the subjectivity of the actors involved but has to come to
terms with the uncertainty this implies, for better or for worse. In Britain this line of development in
social work practice and training was actively encouraged by successive governments which sought to
commit the profession to an evidence based approach and turn social services ultimately into a
business. If we look around today for models that would characterize contemporary social work
methods in Europe generally we can obtain only a fuzzy and confused picture. However, at certain
critical points the relationship with or indeed the dominance of social policy frameworks in determining
the shape and direction of social work methods is becoming apparent.
3. (b) Discuss NASW code of ethics.
The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human well-being and help meet the
basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people
who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. The mission of the social work profession is rooted
in a set of core values. These core values, embraced by social workers throughout the professions
history, are the foundation of social works unique purpose and perspective. The NASW Code of Ethics is
a set of standards for the professional conduct of social workers. All NASW members must affirm their

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commitment to abide by the Code of Ethics. It is essential for schools of social work and for in-service
training for agencies. The profession has an obligation to articulate its basic values, ethical principles,
and ethical standards. The NASW Code of Ethics sets forth these values, principles, and standards to
guide social workers conduct. The Code identifies core values on which social works mission is based.
The Code summarizes broad ethical principles that reflect the professions core values and establishes a
set of specific ethical standards that should be used to guide social work practice. The Code is designed
to help social workers identify relevant considerations when professional obligations conflict or ethical
uncertainties arise. The Code provides ethical standards to which the general public can hold the social
work profession accountable. The Code socializes practitioners new to the field to social works mission,
values, ethical principles, and ethical standards. The Code articulates standards that the social work
profession itself can use to assess whether social workers have engaged in unethical conduct. NASW has
formal procedures to adjudicate ethics complaints filed against its members.
A code of ethics cannot guarantee ethical behaviour. Moreover, a code of ethics cannot resolve all
ethical issues or disputes or capture the richness and complexity involved in striving to make responsible
choices within a moral community. Rather, a code of ethics sets forth values, ethical principles, and
ethical standards to which professionals aspire and by which their actions can be judged. Social workers
ethical behaviour should result from their personal commitment to engage in ethical practice. The
NASW Code of Ethics reflects the commitment of all social workers to uphold the professions values
and to act ethically. Principles and standards must be applied by individuals of good character who
discern moral questions and, in good faith, seek to make reliable ethical judgments.

3.(d) Explain "indigenisation of social work knowledge".

Indigenisation essentially refers to the extent to which social work practice fits local contexts. Social
work practice is, in turn, shaped by the extent to which local social, political, economic, historical, and
cultural factors, as well as local voices, mould and shape social work responses. Indigenisation is a stage
of transition, of putting an imported knowledge through a process of authentication, thus making it
relevant to the local social, cultural, political and economic characteristics.

The call for the indigenisation of professional knowledge is nothing new. In the field of social
development, the appropriateness of strategies imposed upon developing countries by developed ones
has long been a topic of heated debate. Indigenisation challenges universal knowledge and the cultural
hegemony of dominant discourses globally and locally. As such it is an effort to bring out multiple voices

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and ways of knowing situated in particular socio-historical and cultural locations so as to establish a solid
foundation for meaningful cross-cultural communication in international encounters. There is no doubt
that it is a postmodern notion wherein monolithic, static definitions of local culture, and of western
social work for that matter, are being deconstructed to make way for the fluid and shifting nature of
culture and knowledge processes intensified by globalizing forces and international exchanges. In such a
world there is no such thing as a pure culture. Indigenisation is also conceived as not only as a
professional concern with the relevance and socio-cultural appropriateness of imported knowledge, but
also as a political position that asserts the intellectual and professional autonomy of social work
academics and practitioners, in particular contexts.

Indigenisation was essentially about culture

whether it be articulating local cultures and the way in which they differed from western cultures or
reclaiming culture and possibly also tradition. In this sense indigenisation can be seen as cross-cultural
practice. Given the international social work literature on cultural diversity and culturally sensitive social
work practice which privileges local cultures, universalizing trends might seem out of place in social
work for indigenisation refers to the idea that the theories, values, and philosophies that underlie
practice must be influenced by local factors including local cultures. So context bound is social work that
any universal claim regarding the nature, purpose and method of the profession must be regarded with
caution. Acceptance of the context-bound nature of social work is a universal. Hence definitions of social
work might vary at different times in history and in various regions since the form and shape social work
takes is shaped by socio-cultural contexts.
4. (b) Highlight linkage between Social Action and Social Justice.
Action is social in so far as by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by acting individual it takes
account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course. It includes all human behaviour
when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to it. By social action we mean
organized activity that seeks to improve human welfare, deepen civic culture and develop group life and
commitment to others. Such a definition entails looking at the cultivation of a just and caring communal
life. As such it involves a direct appeal to values and principles - and this will usually be grounded in
some sort of shared belief system, such as those that develop with social movements. The term 'social
justice' implies fairness and mutual obligation in society: that we are responsible for one another, and
that we should ensure that all have equal chances to succeed in life. In societies wherein life chances are
not distributed equally, this implies redistribution of opportunities, although the shape that such
redistribution should take remains contested and prone to social action.

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4.(c) Differentiate between social welfare, social work and social policy.
Social welfare, then, is perhaps best understood as an idea, that idea being one of a decent society that
provides opportunities for work and human meaning, provides reasonable security from want and
assault, promotes fairness and evaluation based on individual merit, and is economically productive and
stable. Social work is a profession that supports individuals, groups, and communities in a changing
society and creates social conditions favorable to the wellbeing of people and society. The social work
profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and
liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilizing theories of human behaviour and social systems,
social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human
rights and social justice are fundamental to social work. Social Policy, involves the study of human
wellbeing, the social relations necessary for wellbeing and the systems by which wellbeing may be
promoted. The three concepts focus on the nature of human interdependency; on the way in which
people care for and about each other; on the part the welfare state plays in shaping the nature of
caring and ensuring a platform to support and promote well being.
4.(e) List the characteristics of the generalistic perspective in social work intervention.
Generalist social workers look at issues in context and find solutions within the interactions between
people and their environments. A generalist social worker has the following objectives:

Enhance the problem solving, coping, and developmental capacities of people

Link people with systems that provide them with resources, services and opportunities

Promote the effectiveness and humane operation of systems that provide people with resources
and services

Develop and improve social policy

The characteristics of a generalist social worker are as follows:

The generalist is often the first professional to see clients as they enter the social welfare system

The worker must therefore be competent to assess their needs and to identify their strengths, stress
points and problems. Although micro-level interventions create changes in individual, familial, and
interpersonal functioning, social workers do not necessarily direct all their efforts at changing
individuals themselves.

The worker must draw on a variety of skills and methods in serving clients. The generalist approach
moves beyond the confines of individually focused practice to the expansive sphere of intervention

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at multiple system levels. In this process, all social work methodstraditional and innovativeare
utilized, singly or in combination, to meet reality needs and to alleviate stresses in ways that
enhance or strengthen the inherent capacities of client systems
4.(f) What is the present status of social work education in New Zealand?
The establishment of social work practice in New Zealand began with humanitarian efforts in the pursuit
of social justice. Social work education in New Zealand is undergoing considerable change as new
registration and education policies take effect. Within a complex environment, the major force is the
implementation of registration since the passing of legislation in 2003. Parallel to this is considerable
change in tertiary education policy. Both the Social Workers Registration Act (2003) and the New
Zealand Tertiary Education Strategy (2002) will have considerable impact on social work education.
Social work education in New Zealand combines work from psychology, sociology and law. There are
approximately 14 social work schools in New Zealand but only two, University of Canterbury and Massey
Universities, offer PhD programs in social work. In New Zealand, the Diploma of Social Work is the
recognized qualification for entry to a career in social work. The professional association for social
workers in New Zealand is the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW).
5.(a) Charity.
The practice of charity means the voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act.
Charitable giving is the act of giving money, goods or time to the unfortunate, either directly or by
means of a charitable trust or other worthy cause. Charitable giving as a religious act or duty is referred
to as almsgiving or alms. Some groups regard charity as being distributed towards other members from
within their particular group. Most forms of charity are concerned with providing basic necessities such
as food, water, clothing, healthcare and shelter, but other actions may be performed as charity: visiting
the imprisoned or the homebound, ransoming captives, educating orphans, even social movements.
Donations to causes that benefit the unfortunate indirectly, such as donations to fund cancer research,
are also charity. Institutions evolved to carry out the labor of assisting the poor, and these institutions,
called charities, provide the bulk of charitable giving today, in terms of monetary value. These
include orphanages, food banks, religious institutes dedicated to care of the poor, hospitals, etc.

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5.(b) Major characteristics of social security.
Social Security is the foundation of long-term financial support. After one meets the requirements for
eligibility of earnings for retirement, but less than that for certain protections such as disability, they
have established their right to a guaranteed benefit, which also may extend to the dependents. One can
change jobs with no penalty, unlike traditional pensions. The benefits reflect the earnings in various
places of employment during ones working life. Social Security benefits are paid under legal formulas
and dont rise or fall based on investments, the fortunes of employer, the direction of interest rates, or
other forces over which no one has no control. Social Security covers the rich, the poor, and most of all
the middle class. Social Security is a kind of social insurance for the benefit of individuals and society.
This makes it very different from a welfare program. Social security is protected against inflation.
5.(c) Philosophical assumptions of case work
These philosophical assumptions of case work are as follows:

Every human being has to be considered as a person with dignity and worth.

Human beings are interdependent and it governs their interaction in social groups.

There are common human needs for growth and development of individuals. The existence of
common needs does not negate the uniqueness of individuals. Every individual is like all other
human beings in some aspects and like no other individuals in certain aspects.

Every individual has within him/her, the potential for growth and achievement and he/she has a
right to the realization of this potential. From this it follows that people has capacity to change.

Society has an obligation to help those who do not have the means for the realization of their
potentials.

5. (g) Social Defence.

Social defense is nonviolent community resistance to aggression as an alternative to military defense. It
is based on widespread protest, persuasion, noncooperation and intervention in order to oppose
military aggression or political repression. It uses methods such as boycotts, acts of disobedience,
strikes, demonstrations and setting up alternative institutions. Social defense is also defined as
nonviolent community resistance to aggression or oppression, thereby including defence against
military aggression, defences against government oppression of local communities, and defence against
male violence against women. Social defence, in this view, should be seen as nonviolent defence of the

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vital features of societyincluding human rights, local autonomy, and participation, against all
oppressive forces.

5.(h) Salient features of social movement.

The salient features of social movements are:

Initiation of one or the kind of commonly agreed upon activity according to some formulated or
chalked out plan as per decided programme schedule.

Some kind of reference to ideas of autonomy, equity, human right, social reorganization, removal of
social evil, etc.

Various kinds of manifestations such as revolt, rebellion and employment of method likes protest,
demonstration, strike, bounds etc.

Unstable and transitory nature and non-visibility of any distinct point of beginning or termination of
social movements.

Awareness of and commitment and devotion to the common cause and some kinds of organization
for launching collective action through mobilization of like-minded people's efforts.