ABSTRACT
The actual social work function is exercised at points where people may experience incipient or actual breakdown owing to undue personal or social stress. Social workers in the medical or delinquency services help people to deal more effectively with the often immobilizing anxiety, stress, anger or hostility from which they suffer, so that they are better able to use medical care if they are in hospital. The aim of social work in any given circumstances, according to the possibilities of the situation, would be: firstly, remedial, where actual cure is for one reason or another impossible; for example the personal and social rehabilitation of a badly disabled person, in co-operation with medical and vocational services. Secondly, curative; for example with an adolescent delinquent to intervene at a point where the most effective changes can be brought about in him, his family and his circumstances in order to prevent him from growing up to be a confirmed law-breaker.
