Skills of Social Work-Fact Finding Essay Example for Free

Skills of Social Work-Fact Finding Essay There are also factual questions involving the law, such as: What exactly are the procedures for removing an elected official from office? Who owns a particular piece of land? What are the legal rights that citizens have when accused of a crime? Moreover, whenever we do fact finding as student social workers, we need to look into; 1. Demography How many people live in this area? † is clearly a major factor in determining the demand for the particular problem. Other questions concern the density (how many people per square kilometer? and the age and sex distribution. How many elderly or sick people who may be handicapped in getting this problem? What are the rates for births and deaths (if known) and how do these compare to national figures? What are the rates and patterns of migration (is it seasonal or permanent? are the people moving in from other areas? ). These comparisons are important, as we need to know how typical any particular area is. 2. Environment â€Å"What is the physical area that we are dealing with? Is this clearly marked or should-it be arbitrarily defined? What resources (especially land, soils, and vegetation) are available? What is known about climate, water, slopes, drainage? 3. Historical â€Å"There are two good reasons for knowing at least the general outline of local history recognizing the significance of important places and major persons. First, the present can only be understood in relation to the past and second, local people regard their history as important, so it is both expedient and courteous to know something about significant events. 4. Community† We are studying a community of people, the most important part of which is the relatively stable set of relationships between the people relationships between men and women, old and young, neighbours, kinsmen, in-laws, landlords and tenants, rich and poor, and so on. 5. Domestic â€Å"It should be possible to make a rough typology of households, a term which although sometimes vague, is better than family or farm. Household may usually be defined as a group of people that shares a common kitchen (or cooking place) and that recognizes one household head. The purpose of this is to establish the range and extent of inequality and variation on a particular problem. 6. Social  and  Economic â€Å"This category seeks further information on differentiation how is access to land defined and who controls/owns the land? How many are landless or near landless, how many rent land? 7. Political-Administrative â€Å"What are the formal and informal channels of authority? What are the links to the regional (and national) centers of power? What is the extent of-local participation in making decisions? What laws, regulations, and local informal, sanctions affect on the exits problems in the community. † On the other hand, it needs to look into some techniques adopted for fact finding. Which are as documentation, formal hearing, action research, demonstration projects, keeping abreast, need assessment, and programme identification on fact finding to find and know the root causes of the problems in the community. Fact finding techniques 1. Documentation Documentation is very important in order to keep the data of any particular problems of the community with exact facts of the problems, time, and year. Documentation can be done by note on paper, video record, and Microsoft words files so that even the next generation can see what were the main problems in the community and they will understand about the past events of the particular community. Doing documentation is for guide to implement action plan towards the particular problems for the development of the community. For example, documentation can be done by doing interview, home visit, looking into the historical background of the community, and by approaching to the head of the community to collect information about the community. And, the other example, if the community faces the problem of water crisis, here we need to look into â€Å"why, how, and when does it happen? † is important to know and how far it effect means its magnitude towards the community people, so, these are needed to list down to do documentation for programme implementation. 2. Formal hearing It is the important thing to know and ask how people in the community feel on particular problems, it means that it needs people concern on the particular problems which exists in the community for action plan and programme implementation. After doing documentation, it needs to ask people opinions, ideas, and solutions for problem solving process so that the people will feel that this or that is problems in the community, and they will accept particular problem as their problem in the community. Here, student social worker needs to apply the principles of people participation, start with what they know and have, and teach them by showing and learn by doing in order to get people concern and participation for problem solving process. For example, school dropout is happening in the community, but may be the community people may feel that this is not their problem, for that the student social worker needs to make them aware that this is problem in the community by showing them the disadvantages of school dropout and how do school dropout affect to the children future, and when the community people accept school dropout as their problem, the student social worker needs to make them to link with the available resources for reducing the rate of the school dropout and to stop school dropout in the community. For that, the student social worker can give awareness programme on the importance of education for children. 3. Action research The term action research means doing research with some types of action programmes for the betterment of the community. Action research is a research initiated to solve an immediate problem or a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a community of practice to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. Action research involves the process of actively participating in an organization change situation whilst conducting research. Action research can also be undertaken by larger organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices and knowledge of the environments within which they practice. As designers and stakeholders, researchers work with others to propose a new course of action to help their community improve its work practices. For example, for school dropout problem in the community, here action research talks about to seek the way or strategies to approach to solve the immediate problem. Therefore, student social worker needs to seek that way that may be it is good to approach to the head of the community as first step or it will be better to do awareness programme first, and in secondly, may be the student social worker will seek for the available resources to make them link with the resources which can handle their current needs or problem. 4. Demonstration projects The demonstration projects mean that to find out whether the certain programme will work for the particular issue or problem and how and how much effective the particular programme is in solving the problems. It needs to identify and analysis on the programme to know whether it will work or it needs to change for solving the problem in the community. It needs to demonstrate on the projects or programme which will be implemented to solve the occurring problems in the community whether it will be effective towards the problem or not, if it is not effective than it needs to change the progamme and its objectives, action plan, and goal to seek for the better programme to solve the problem. For example, in the case of school dropout, the student social worker decides to conduct awareness programme on the importance of education, but actually when the student social worker demonstrate on the programme, he realizes that it needs to do home visit and survey as the first step to find out the facts and after that he may conduct awareness programme. 5. Keeping abreast The term keeping abreast means that to keep on giving information about new development, new information regard to certain subjects. This word means that to keep on providing and giving new and up-to-date information regard with certain problem in order to have good footstep in solving the problem effectively. For example, in some cases and problems, the process of the problems are changing may be because problems are dynamic from one place to other in nature because of culture transmission, because of news etc so, that it needs to update the information to take good action for solving the problems. 6. Need assessment It is very important to seek and know the real needs of the community to have ffective programme for problem solving in the community as professional social worker. It means to implement programme in time or the in the time of need, correct time, and place, with specific objectives and programme. For example, the student social worker needs to see into the needs of the community people rather than his needs. 7. Programme identification For the last point, it is programme identification process. It me ans that it needs to indentify and analysis on the programme whether it works and full fill the needs of the people. In the process of programme identification, it focuses on to identify how much the programme will effect towards the problem, and what will be needed to solve the problems. For example, in the case of the school dropout, the student social worker needs to identify on the awareness programme that â€Å"does the awareness programme on importance of education work to reduce the rate of school dropout in the community†, if it still needs more action than, the student social worker needs to seek the way by corporation with the community people to get the better solution for that. Conclusion As student social worker, the technique of fact finding is very important in order to find the root cause of the problems in the particular community to take action plan with specific objectives and programme implementation for the betterment or progress of the community. Fact finding is an extremely important component of the communication process which presents its own special set of problems and opportunities to people working to increase the constructiveness of intractable problems conflicts in the community. Therefore, it is very important to collect the real facts of the particular problem in the community to take effective action and programme implementation for solving the problems. For fact finding group interview is very important also because a short-cut method of rapidly gathering data is to interview groups rather than individuals. This method presents problems of representativeness, since any group chosen is unlikely to represent a true cross-section of the local population, though attempts should be made to include individuals of different socio-economic status. The knowledge and experience of several individuals may serve as checks on information given by each others. And, questionnaires are a popular method of data collection. The advantages of using a questionnaire are well-known: data can be collected quickly on specific items; these data can be easily transferred into forms allowing quantified and computerized analyses; and data collection tasks can be delegated to less expensive field staff. Questionnaires also compel the adoption of some organized structure upon data collection, but will be most effective when used by someone who can support and test the questionnaire findings with personal observations and insights and knowledge. Using questionnaires is one means of recording data, but it is not the only means and it is not adequate to not cover all the information required.