Dual Identity And Local Service Of Rural Local Social Workers

In recent years,Hubei Province has encouraged community workers to obtain social work qualification certificates and began to implement the "all-post pass" work model to support them to carry out more social work services and achieve "one specialty,multiple abilities,and universal for all posts".Many grassroots governance personnel actively or passively responded to this request,and realized the positioning transformation from grassroots governance to social workers,or both grassroots governance and front-line social workers,that is,dual identity.The study believes the driving force of the dual identity of local social workers comes from three aspects,namely,the lagging rural economic and social development,the government’s guiding identity transformation for grassroots governance participants,and the career planning of individuals based on rational decision-making.Local social workers are familiar with rural communities and rooted in rural communities,and in the process of gradually deepening their services,their dual identities show obvious advantages in resource links,network and governance experience,and at the same time,they face multiple dilemmas,such as incompatibility between professional concepts and cultural traditions,inconsistency between government will and client will,and social workers’ professional ability and client expectations.Further research finds that under multiple tensions and dilemmas,local social workers adopt the following action strategies based on their own experience and judgment and specific situations:(1)flexibly adjust the boundaries of professional relationships,and adjust human relationships and authority relationships;(2)adopt a selective demand satisfaction strategy between government requirements and client needs;(3)prioritize meeting the goals of the former between meeting governance requirements and providing social work services.This study believes that these compromises and adaptations of local social work are jointly determined by the particularity of China’s cultural field,the excessive dependence of institutions on administrative resources,and the current restrictions on social work career development.Finally,in order to better respond to the dilemma in practice,this paper argues that it is necessary to improve the personal professionalism of rural social workers,enhance the hematopoietic capacity of institutions,and strengthen the design of top-level systems,so as to improve the effectiveness of local social work and help the implementation of rural grassroots governance and rural revitalization strategy.