Study On The Strategy Of Social Work’s Intervention In Rural Mutual Caring

The changes in economic and the population structure lead to the weakening of family support for the elderly people.The family care which is the current mainstream mode of providing care for the elderly people has been challenged.The institutional caring,according to the traditional idea is not filial on the other hand,and on the other hand is too expensive which excludes the rural elderly people.This provides an opportunity for the emergence and development of mutual support for the aging population.Hubei and other places introduce social work into mutual caring and combine the idea of "helping others to help themselves" with the mode of rural mutual caring under the impetus of local civil affairs.The intervention of social work started quite long time ago but is still quite undeveloped.In order to make social work better for mutual caring,we must find a suitable method for its complement.I studied social work practice in village C for a year and analyzed the skills of social work’s intervention in mutual caring and summarized the role of social workers by adopting the method of case study.1 found that social workers who intervene in mutual caring can take the following roles:therapists,trainers,educators,resource linker and assistant.Furthermore,by comparing the motivations of the three particular areas’ project,I found that the social work intervention fail to realize the essence of mutual caring in these four aspects:First,the insufficient assessment of the clients’ need.Second,the inaccurate design of social work service in mutual caring.Third,of the incapability of social worker.Fourth,the ambiguity of social worker’s position in mutual caring.Therefore I suggested four solutions to the problems listed above.First,the way to assess the client’s demand should be standardized and the importance of needs assessments should be strengthen.Second,the design of project should emphasize local characteristics and combine project and field background.Third,we need to improve the professional capacity of social worker’s service and standardize social work practice model.Fourth,role of social workers in mutual caring should be clearly defined.They should be educators,trainers,assistant and resources linker and to fulfill their duties as social workers in mutual caring based on the previous analysis,I make a professional reflection on the social work’s professional services and the particular area project in the mutual pension for the elderly people.