In the Service of the Others

Social work in the year 2000 exists amid increasing poverty, homelessness, cuts in government spending, drug misuse, AIDS and family violence. The professional social worker is now often seen as a faceless bureaucrat backed by committees, an administrator allocating limited resources on the basis of computerized checklists and needs assessments, where "community" no longer exists and social work's "moral mission" is forgotten. This work is a reconsideration of the life and scholarship of Father Felix Biestek, with reference to its relevance 40 years on. Biestek's 1957 book "The Casework Relationship" emphasized the need to treat people as individuals and the importance of the client-social worker relationship as a means to other ends. Central to his perspective was the fact that people have to be helped to help themselves and that the individual is to be perceived and helped, within the familial, social and economic context in which they live.
This context is increasingly complex and harmful, and to help alleviate the impact of such problems - and go some way to reducing them in the first place - the social worker must be committed and highly motivated, able to form working relationships with those they serve and aware of the harsh economic realities of the world around them. At its essence, Biestek's life and work demonstrates the humane values of social work and the approach and techniques of a practice that puts the client's needs first.