Reflections on Social Work and Community Development - Essay Example

Professor Mark started the interview by inquiring what type of actual situation we were going to talk about, My speed was retarded since I just expected to talk about social work in general because I believed that the concept will share a lot of similarities across the different situations. He did agree that there are many commonalities when dealing with different situations, but there are a few critical differences, however, he proceeded and accepted to talk about the ideas in general.

Throughout the interview, he kept referring to different documents published on social work; I thought that given his status he would be able to talk continuously all through the interview. In response, he stated that social work presents different situations that may require one to deviate from the standard guidelines of operation and modify a way of responding experimented before, and in fact, there is no strict code of operation, and decisions made are situation dependent.

According to Mark, the trick towards successful social work is the ability to maintain focus all through the operation while being considerate to the prevailing conditions. He believes that humanitarians always find this balance difficult to achieve since they have orders to obey and aims to achieve, going out of your ways and forging new tactics to achieve a goal may therefore be difficult. He kept saying that all the decisions made should always be in favor of the client. As opposed to scientific and engineering fields, social work relies more on persuasive appeal and emotional comfort expressed at the correct instance.

Another aspect of the interview that I would like to note is that Mark kept saying that giving help to the community is not quarter as difficult as people may perceive it, it is about self-devotion and virtually putting yourself into the shoes of your clients. It is more like learning to be another person while keeping your interest secure from corruption. He said that people should not be scared by what it takes to give the community a helping hand since it is not as hard as people believe it is.