ABSTRACT
Social work and all other areas of the human services are inherently value laden. The core professional concerns focus on aspects of life about which people hold very strong values and opinions. These include child-rearing and child-care; the development of children and young people; other aspects of family relationships including those between partners or couples; the social care of people with health problems including both physical and mental health; support for those people with disabilities who need assistance; the social dimensions of problems faced by older people; and issues and challenges faced by specific groups within the community, such as refugees, as well as wider questions concerning the development of policies and institutions that address these various aspects of personal and social life. Professions such as social work have also played an important role in the definition of social needs and the creation of policies and practices that address these (Addams, 2002 [1907]; Payne, 2005). In many parts of the world the various ways in which social work has developed as a profession is also a reflection of the structural (macro-level) understanding of social well-being, such that social development and community work are also regarded as important areas of practice, alongside the more intrapersonal and interpersonal focus of counselling, casework, couple and family therapy, social service administration and so on (Hugman, 2009). In other places social development and community work are considered as separate professional fields (Butcher et al., 2007).
