La comprensión de la situación problema en la práctica del Trabajo Social de Casos. Resultados de una investigación

• Published in: Cuadernos de trabajo social Vol. 30; no. 1; p. 149
• Main Authors: Cardona-Cardona, Josefa, Cuartero-Castañer, María Elena, Campos-Vidal, José Francisco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Madrid Universidad Complutense de Madrid 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Barbers; Community services; Intervention; Primary health care; Rainforests; Social workers; Training; New York; Majorca; Spain
• ISSN: 0214-0314; 1988-8295
• DOI: 10.5209/CUTS.51735

The article analyses how social workers from primary care community services approach the understanding of a problem situation constructed together with their clients. Understanding what is happening facilitates guidance of the process of change and the proposal of a type of intervention context to achieve the change: advice, monitoring, training, information, care, therapy or mediation. To address the research question, we developed an intentional non-probabilistic sample of 73.04% of the total number of social workers who were working on projects involving direct individual and family care in Mallorca. Rankings were obtained for the examined levels of importance and fulfillment of intervention criteria, the linear relationship was analysed via the Spearman correlation coefficient, and a Z compliance test was carried out for proportions. The results show the discrepancy between the intervention criteria that are considered important and their level of fulfillment. This difference indicates that understanding of the problem situation is superficial, with little practice of intervention criteria that assess meanings, strengths, attempted solutions and the systems involved. Moreover, there is insufficient trust in the application of fundamental analysis techniques and the introduction of the professional's own knowledge is not considered in depth. This situation does not allow for the construction of an appropriate intervention context for the problem situation and, consequently, will create difficulties in directing interventions in order for the change to fit clients' needs.