A Study Of The Effectiveness Of Non-Professional Social Workers

The evidence is clear that the demand for social work manpower will burgeon considerably in the next few years as a consequence of increased welfare services. It seems that although the social work field has expressed the need for additional manpower and has supported institutions of undergraduate programs, it has neglected to make provisions for including non- MSW workers within most agency structures. If methods can be developed to enable less-trained personnel to perform the work currently being done by MSW\u27s, then administrators of social welfare agencies will be fulfilling in part their accountability to the collll1unity. The social work profession must prepare itself to make use of several manpower resources and use these resources more productively if it is to be given increased confidence by the community. The anxiety engendered by the introduction of non-professionals and/or non-MSWs is displaced onto a fear that service delivery will become deprofessionalized and inadequate. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The problem of this study was to determine whether social workers without a master\u27s degree were capable of functioning effectively and professionally in terms of the standards of performance for the social work profession. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of this study was not to further justify the use of non-professionals in the field of social work. What it did attempt to do was investigate the effectiveness of task performance and evaluate the quality of services rendered by non-professionals. HYPOTHESES Based on the writer\u27s beliefs and observations, the hypotheses of this study is as follows: A. Administrators and supervisors will credit non-MSWs with being capable of acceptable performance on most social work tasks. B. Non-MSW\u27s function on a professional level with respect to the application of professional values, ethics, and attitudes