CLIENTELE and AUDIENCES

in
SOCIAL WORK
By:
ROGEL Q. PEREZ
Characteristics and Needs of Various
Types of Clientele
Working with Individuals
In case work, INDIVIDUAL is the principal client;
- Efforts of helping are focused on client;

According to De Guzman (1992) persons

inability to manage stress (result of a distressful
situation or problem) caused him or her or those
concerned with him or her seek professional help.
The social worker needs to acquire:
- basic knowledge of human behavior;
- Of the nature of stress;
- Human beings responses to it;
in order to understand the situation of the client
and eventually help them.
In case work process, the aim of the intervention:
- To facilitate the individuals social adaptation, to
restore, reshape, or reinforce his/her functioning as
a social being.
The social worker must understand:
The person is a biopsychosocial being wherein he/she is made up
of at least three (3) parts or subsystem:
- the physical
- the psychological
- the social
Each affects and is being affected by others and it is their totality as a
system that determines the persons functioning rather than the
individualized operation of each subsystem
Social worker needs to know whether the client can be helped and
how he or she can be helped.
Social casework is more client or person-centered
rather than problem focused it is the persons mode
of adaptation that will determine whether problem
can be resolved or alleviated or the difficulty removed
or reduced.

Worker needs to understand whether the persons

present behavior is a manifestation of his/her own
mode of adaptation to his/her current condition that
caused him/her stress.
Each person makes his/her own adaptation
depending on his/her capacities and motivation
to do so to gain satisfaction, avoid or dissolved
frustration, and to maintain his/her balance in
movement.
When faces a threatening situation tendency to
use his/her accustomed modes of adaptation,
and if these fail, revert to modes he/she previously
used.
Modes of Adaptation:

FIGHT means physical or verbal projection of angry

feelings on others especially when encountering
difficult circumstances, frustration, disappointment, or
even anxiety.
Ex. Wife quarrels with husband because of jealousy or
person under stress finds himself/herself shouting.
FLIGHT manifested when a person physically
moves away from the problem.
- resort to drugs, alcohol or substance makes
one forget the stressful situation.
Ex. Fathers abandoned their families for they can
no longer provide economic support.
PAIRING entails entry into a relationship with
another person who is perceived to be stronger,
stable, or who has the capacity to provide help
over his/her problem.
Ex. - Solo parents forming support group;
- barkada system;
For the caseworker
- Assessment of persons ego strengths and
defenses are essential;
- It provide insights on how the client can be
helped;
- It ensure effective and satisfying adaptation
to a stressful situation.
Examples of clients who need social workers help:
Children who are either abandoned, neglected,
orphaned, abused, or exploited;
Children in conflict with the law, street children,
children living with or affected by HIV;
Out-of-school youth;
Typology of Clients:
voluntary clients;
Involuntary clients;
those being assisted by another person or
agency.
Voluntary clients (walk-in clients) those who
opted to voluntarily seek the assistance of the
worker or services of the agency due to problems
or difficulty which they think they cannot do it on
their own.
Ex. Solo parent seeking material assistance,
displaced person asking core shelter assistance,
physically challenged person seeking medical
attention.
Involuntary clients (reach-out clients) those
individuals in need who may not even consider
asking help because they think that they are
doing fine and will survive somehow or they are
unaware of the agencies that can provide them
help/assistance.
Ex. Street children, working children,
children/youth in indigenous communities, out-of-
school youth.
Clients being assisted by another person (other
family members, relative, friend, neighbor),
group/organizations, or community
leaders/workers who are concerned about clients
situation (referred clients).
Ex. Drug dependent, abandoned child, unwed
pregnant, an elderly without a family.
Factors that may affect or influence the helping
relationship between client and worker:
1. Transference clients reactions and displacement on
the worker of the particular feelings and attitudes he/she
may have experienced earlier in life in relationship with the
members of his/her family.
- she responds to and relates to the worker
unconsciously in a manner that he/she reacts to that
familiar figure;
- client is unaware that he/she is already re-enacting
some of his/her early behavior.
2. Counter-transference workers relationship
reactions that he/she project on the client and usually
it is the worker who transfers previously experienced
feelings on the client.
- Reaction is unconscious and not reality based
Ex. Worker reacts to a male client (as the worker
reacted in the past with hostility and anger towards
his/her own father) who abandoned his wife and son
only to set up another family.
3. Reality is the realistic and objective
perception of existing condition or situation.
- It is the state of what is actual, what is, and what
is true.
Ethical considerations that govern client-worker
relationships:
1. Acceptance
2. Nonjudgmental attitude
3. Individualization
4. Purposeful expression of feelings
5. Controlled emotional involvement
6. Confidentiality
7. Self-determination
Working with Groups and Organizations
Social group work:
- (as a process and method) is rooted on the
sociological concept that a person is a social
being who has the inclination and need to
associate with other human beings;
- Group can be utilized as a target for change, as
a medium for change, and as agent for change.
As a Target for Change members in a group are clients of
an agency who have common problems, needs, and
concerns that match the agencys or workers group
service orientation.

As a Medium for Change the group is used to facilitate

the growth and development needs of some members of
the group as the need for self-expression, communication,
relationship, developing self-confidence and modifying
negative attitudes, behavior, and values.
As an Agent of Change the group is used to
effect the desired change needed outside the
group.
Philosophy of Social Group Work

The need for group experience is basic and universal.

That group of individuals can be helped to grow and
change in personality, attitudes, and values through
group experiencesthat persons no only develop in
groups but also through groups. And that groups are
dynamic, ever changing and must be accepted by
the social worker at its level of development.
Purposes of Social Group Work:
1. To enhance the social adjustment of the individual and
developing the social consciousness;
2. To provide opportunities for planned group experiences that
are needed by all people;
3. To provide experiences that are relaxing and that give
individuals a chance to create, to share and express
themselves; and
4. To help individuals in groups to take responsibility for their
own behavior, relate with others and how to become
participating members of society.
Working with Communities
The philosophy of community organizations:
- is acceptance of the right of the community to
decide what it wants;
- belief on the capacity of the people to find richer
and more satisfying ways of living if they are helped to
use the resources within themselves and their
environment which are and could be made available
for them.
Focus of Community Organization:
i. Removal of blocks to growth;
ii. Release of potentials in the individual, group and communities as a
whole;
iii. Development of the capacity of indigenous leaders to lead, to manage,
and function in their social roles;
iv. Developing the ability of different sectors in the community to function as
an integrated whole;
v. Strengthening peoples capacity to problem-solving, decision-making,
and cooperation;
vi. Full use of inner/indigenous resources before tapping external resources.
Purposes of Community Organization:
i. To solve certain problems and meet needs;
ii. To achieve selected social goals;
iii. To strengthen peoples capacity in dealing
with problems, needs, and aspirations.