ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of contemporary social work activities in order to convey what social workers do, what kinds of problems they work on, what methods and techniques they use. The methods of social work are ways of intervening in clients' situations to bring about changes in the clients or in their situations. The notion of a contract has entered social work in recent years. Unlike legal contracts, the contract arrived at between social worker and client is not enforceable in a court; neither party can have a legal penalty imposed if the other fails to live up to the agreement. The chapter provides an introduction to the work of social workers from the vantage point of the different fields of practice. Medical social work focuses on the problems of patients and their families. Community organization is a distinctive field of practice as well as a method used by all social workers.
