Introduction to Social Work Chapter 21: Prevention Farley, Smith, & Boyle

Introduction to Social WorkChapter 21: Prevention

Farley, Smith, & Boyle

Social Work Prevention and Enrichment Definition

•Prevention is concerned with keeping the vase intact, rather than trying to repair the broken pieces

Five levels of prevention in public health:

– Health promotion– Specific protection– Early diagnosis and treatment– Disability limitation– Rehabilitation

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Prevention

–Primary = health promotion and specific protection

–Secondary = early diagnosis and promote treatment

–Tertiary = disability limitation and rehabilitation

Prevention is…

• Actions taken by social workers and others to minimize and eliminate those social, psychological, or other conditions known to cause or contribute to physical and emotional illness and sometimes socioeconomic problems.

• Prevention includes establishing those conditions in society that enhance the opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to achieve positive fulfillment

Social Work Focus

• Restoration – seeks to identify, control, or eliminate factors in the interactional process that cause breakdown or impairment of social relationships

• Provision of resources – creation, enrichment, improvement, and coordination of social resources

• Prevention – early discovery, control, and elimination of conditions that could hamper effective social functioning

Quotes on Prevention

– “Public welfare must be more than a savage operation, picking up debris from the wreckage of human lives. Its emphasis must be directed increasingly toward prevention and rehabilitation”• (President John F. Kennedy – 1962 message to

Congress)

– …we must first “seek out the causes of mental illness and of mental retardation and eradicate them.”• (President John F. Kennedy – 1963 address to

Congress)

Social Work Prevention and Enrichment

• Examples of Prevention– Premarital Counseling– Preventive Mental Health– Family Counseling– Religious Leaders– Delinquency Prevention– Families in Crisis– Suicide Prevention– Social Work Practice in the Workplace– Relapse Prevention

Implications of Prevention

– Need to know in advance what we are doing, what we hope to accomplish, and then be able to measure afterward what has actually taken place

– If social workers can utilize professional knowledge and skills to prevent problems from arising on the horizon of daily living, this seems to be particularly important

– Social workers need to ferret out the principles and knowledge that will help families and communities to anticipate problems and to prevent them

Social Work Prevention and Enrichment

• Social Work Enrichment– Enrichment has a different focus, aimed

especially at the quality of life– Social work enrichment is the process of

helping people improve their relationships with others, bringing increased satisfactions and enjoyments