A Research On Functional Evaluation Of Social Work Involved In The Field Of Social Assistance

The field of social assistance is not only the birth place of social work, but also the most important place where social work served. The "Decision" , which was adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee of Communist Party, made it clear that creating reasonable structure and qualified personnel ranks of social work is an urgent demand of building a socialist harmonious society. In November 2006, the State Council held the Twelfth of National Civil administration Conference. It deployed the work of constructing social work personnel of civil administration system in detail, and put forward clearly that we should according to the requirements of "Building a large social work personnel" which was adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee of Communist Party, setting posts of social work in the field of social assistance designedly, to absorb the social work personnel by multi-channel, so as to improve the professional social service level in the field of civil administration. In February 2007, Ministry of Civil Affairs issued "Notice on developing pilot work of constructing a team of qualified social workers enacted by Ministry of Civil Affairs" . It put forwarded that: "Each city should based on practical make the pilot program as soon as possible, and step up to execute it. Since then, the pilot sites of building social work personnel spring up all over the country .This study according to the requirement of "Notice on summarizing evaluation work of developing pilot work to construct a talent team of social workers enacted by Ministry of Civil Affairs" (The 288th Public letter of 2008) , based on system theory of social work, and apply normative empirical sociological research methods. The study selected Shenzhen, Changsha and Guiyang which cities in eastern, central and western region respectively as the objects of our research, and then setting up a systematic and objective evaluation index system. By conducting a sampling survey, the study evaluate the process and function of intervention of social work in such fields as basic living assistance, natural disaster assistance, sudden events of public crisis and in the field of legal aid, education salvation and medical aid, based on which to find out the "bottleneck" factors which hindered the function display, summing up the successful experience in pilot areas, and trying to find out the existing problems so as to offer consultative policy recommendations in order to promote nationwide.The findings indicated that: the developing steps of social work involved in the field of social assistance is so quick that it almost covered the whole field of social assistance; the effect of the intervention of which social work carried out in the field of social assistance is obvious, and the assistance service modes including " overlay " and " embedded" of social work have changed from negative to positive gradually; the function display of social work carried out in the field of social assistance is affected significantly by the specialization degree of social workers, the investment of Government and society degree of recognizing. In the process of strengthen the constructing of social work personnel, We should strengthen the recognizing degree of social work, to improve the level of specialization of social work, to accelerate the pace of professionalism of it and integrate social work and social assistance omni-bearing in order to help social work play a more active role in the field of social assistance, thereby to escort the building of a harmonious socialist society.