Introduction

Social work is all about people. It is about how people relate to each other. To be a good social worker you must be more that a good technician. You must also be able to do more that know theories for why things happen and how to make things different. You need to be able to relate to people in ways that will help them to face their life-challenges and to enhance their well-being, and to do so in ways that promote social justice and are based on respect for people’s human rights.

Through 20 years experience as a social worker, and through studying the research into what works in the helping professions, I have developed this model to explain what needs to happen in order for a social worker to be effective in helping people to help themselves. The work of Scott Miller and Michael Lambert in the USA and Hilton Davis in the UK is showing the same pattern. What makes a difference is less about what people do, or the theories they use to justify what they do, it is in how they do it, and in particular the way they think about and relate to those they seek to help.

This model is called the Practice Pyramid.

Overview

Before going any further it is important to note that this pyramid is not a hierarchy, with what is on top being the most important. It is a pyramid – meaning that the higher levels are only going to work if you have built the lower levels in a solid way. When in doubt, focus on getting the lower levels right before moving up.

  1 – Values and Beliefs

These provide the base to the pyramid. If your values and beliefs are fundamentally incompatible with those of social work, then it is unlikely that you will be an effective social worker. You may be able to pressure others into doing what you want; you may meet the targets set for your job, but you will not be an effective social worker without values and beliefs that fit with the values of the profession.

2 – Qualities and Attributes

What really matters next is how you display those values and beliefs. It is fine to state that you believe all people are equal and that people’s needs matter, but unless you display that by having qualities such as warmth, compassion, curiosity, and respect it will do you little good.

3 – Relationships

This approach to social work advocated in this module rests on developing specific types of relationships. These are one that are as equal and mutually respectful as possible. Although it is impossible to remove power imbalances completely from the social worker-service-user relationship, the aim is for them to be as non-hierarchical as possible, in which your role is to aid explore options, not tell people what to do.

4 – Theories and Knowledge

It is important for professionals who help others solve their problems to understand why they do what they do. This means understanding both the legal and policy contexts in which their work, and the theories and models that underpin techniques and tools they use.

5 – Skills, Tools, and Techniques

This is the most visible, but least important part of the process. It is possible to use tools and techniques quite poorly, but if the rest of the pyramid is strong you can still get good results. However, if the rest of the pyramid is weak, if you don’t understand why you are using the tools, if you don’t have a working relationship, if you lack the personal qualities to get it to work, and if you have poor values and beliefs, then even the best used techniques are likely to fail.

Putting it together

These five building blocks can be put together like this.

So the key message is work from the ground up. Get your values and beliefs right, develop your personal qualities, strive for good working relationships, understand why you need to do what you are doing, and develop a wide range of skills, tools and techniques.

Having looked at the key features that underpin good social work practice, it is important to turn to explore your own theories, the ways you already make sense of why people do what they do and why people face the challenges they face.

This can be found on the next page.

Last updated by M. Allenby on 22.8.16