The Role Orientation And Function Performance Of Social Workers

The government is strengthening social workers team construction, vigorously developing and setting up social worker post. In this process, how social workers play their roles? Which factors influence their performance? Based on the case study of SQ Social Work Service Agency, this paper discribes and discusses the performance of professional social workers and its influence factors from two levels as follows: cognitive level, that is role orientation, and behavior level, that is function performance.Firstly, this paper discusses the role orientation of social workers. The role orientation of social workers of SQ Social Work Service Agency can be summarized as:server, supporter, resources coordinator, policy influence person, relationship maintainer, social work development enabler. Most social workers piont out, they feel confused about role orientation, mainly demonstrates in the two aspects:first, they are not very clear about what roles social workers should play in native environment; second, the external objective environmental factors affect their role orientation, and make them feel character confusion. At the same time, they think it is hard to mobilize resources and influence policy. The subjective influence factors of role orientation of social workers mainly include their theory attainment and their practice experience. The objective influence factors of role orientation of social workers are employing institutions, agency and clients.Then, the author describe and analyze the function performance of social workers and and its influencing factors. The social workers of SQ Social Work Services Agency mainly play the following functions:caring, supporting, organizing activities, consulting, education/training, endorsing, communicating/resolving conflicts, coordinating resources, managing/administrating, assisting the work of employing institutions, preaching and influence policy, supervising, promoting social work development. On the function performance, currently there are mixed pattern: professional service and administrative work coexist, active and passive coexist, and profession and lack of profession coexist. Overall, because of the limits of the subjective and objective factors, there is a gap between role orientation and function performance of social workers. Many factors of social workers themselves influence social workers'function, this paper mainly describes three relatively direct subjective factors:role orientation, theory attainment, and practice ability. Responsibility of the post, resources and support, compensation and benefits are objective factors.Finally, this paper further explore the influence impact factors of social workers' role orientation and function performance. In the social workers'opinion, social workers themselves play important roles in their role orientation and function performance. However, the deep impact factor is the education system of social work in China. Multiple objective factors comprehensively affect social workers'role orientation and function performance, but the root cause lies in the low social awareness of social work.