Fields of Social Work Practice
Major fields
- Health/medical social work - descended from the hospital "almoner"; roles: psychosocial assessment, discharge planning, counselling in dialysis, oncology and TB, insurance linkage.
- Mental health - psychiatric social work: case history, family psychoeducation, rehabilitation, home visits; District Mental Health Programme, Kerala's mental health policy, tele-consultation.
- Education - school social work: attendance and dropout, bullying, exam stress, RTE 2009 entitlements, parent–teacher mediation.
- Family welfare - marital and family counselling, family courts (established 1984), maintenance and protection orders.
- Child welfare - ICDS (1975), Juvenile Justice Act 2015 with Child Welfare Committees and Juvenile Justice Boards, adoption regulation.
- Community development - Community Development Programme 1952, panchayati raj, self-help groups, Kudumbashree.
Worked example
A daily-wage patient on maintenance dialysis repeatedly misses sessions. Reasoning: identify the barrier - travel cost, lost wages, or misunderstanding of the regimen. Interventions: Medical Social Worker links to PM-JAY/State scheme, arranges a nearer centre, coordinates transport, counsels the family, and records a discharge-adjacent care plan. Medical knowledge alone cannot solve a resource problem.
Traps
Treating medical social work as arranging free medicines only; confusing a family court with a counselling centre; forgetting that school social work includes systemic change, not just individual children.