SOCIAL WORK PROFESSION: PRESENT STATUS AND FUTURE STRATEGIES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO KARNATAKA STATE

Social Work is a helping profession where a skilled and trained professional Social Worker help the individual, group, and the community to solve the problems. The goal of professional social work is to solve problems and bring about change. As a result, social workers influence society and the lives of the individuals, families, and communities they serve. There are few laggings in this profession and there is need for certain changes. Change is a concerted effort by the theorists, practitioners, NGOs, Social Work trainees, Academicians, Clients and all the other stakeholders. Survival of the profession and development of the profession both are very important. While we think about upgrading the theory, practice and profession, respecting cultural diversity and bringing uniformity in the profession both are very important since Karnataka has 30 districts and each district has a uniform culture and the problems are also different. Creating a strong base requires sharing of knowledge and indigenisation of the practice with an effort to build the literature. Let’s work on all these issues to strengthen the profession. This article investigates present scenario of Social Work profession and tries to know the future strategies with illustration of some situations. The literature in the field is very low compared to other streams. Admissions also becoming very thin. The quality of students is also not to such extent. We need to increase the strength of the stream. Unless we develop, it will be difficult for the stream to survive.