Construction And Application Of Competency Model For Community Correction Social Workers

Since the implementation of the community correction system in our country,it has achieved rapid development.Such kind of penalty system shows an advantage in helping criminals to return to society and reducing the recidivism rate.Community correction is carried out by community correction personnel under the management of the community correction officer.Community correction social workers are the assistants of the community correction officer,who mainly carry out correction auxiliary work under the guidance of law enforcement personnel and play an indispensable part in the management team.However,previous research found some problems in work of community correction staff.Most of them are transferred from various posts,with varied majors and different levels of education attained,and have not been systematically trained in law,social work,and psychology.In their heavy and trivial work,they may have cognitive problems such as role conflicts and role ambiguity.In the long run,these problems will lead to the loss of personnel,affect the work of community correction,which will obviously have an adverse impact on the social return of criminals with community correction and reduction of the recidivism rate,and will surely impair the advantages of the social correction system.This research was conducted to investigate the competency factors of social workers in community correction by document arrangement,functional analysis,behavioral event interviews and questionnaires,to further(1)build a competency model for social workers in community correction;(2)develop a scale according to this model;(3)explore the current status of competency level of social workers in communitycorrection through this scale;(4)propose reasonable training plans,management plans and personnel recruitment standards for Judicial Bureau,which will fully demonstrate the institutional advantages of community correction.Results are as follows:(1)The competency model of social workers in community correction consists of knowledge dimension,ability dimension,personality dimension and political accomplishment dimension,specifically with a composite of seven factors(i.e.knowledge,comprehensive ability,professional ability,psychological personality,service,moral attitude,dignity and achievement).This model is similar to the competency model of civil servants,but it is also with its unique characteristics.(2)The scale named The Competency Level Test for Social Workers in Community Corrections can evaluate the current competency status of social workers in community corrections,with adequate reliability and validity.(3)Fairly high overall competence level of social workers in community correction was observed in Guizhou and Chongqing,but significant differences in competence existed among social workers in different marital status,majors,working years and ages.(4)The competency model of social workers in community correction,both in form and content,can offer more reasonable suggestions for the existing recruitment system,training system and management system.In a word,the validated competency model of social workers in community correction has four dimensions(seven factors).This model extends the theoretical knowledge of this field,and helped the development of the competency measurement for this position which can be adopted in the assessment of competence levels of social workers in community correction and also effectively promote the recruitment,training and management of social workers in community correction.