Discuss the differences between the diagnostic and functional approach to social case work practice in 500 words
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Explanation:
Diagnostic school, based on scientific (psychic) determinism, believed that the client is the product of his past, that he is ill and needs treatment. The client is diagnosed and subjected to treatment. ... In contrast to diagnostic, functionalism emphasises present experience and its power to release growth potential.
Its development can be regarded as a reaction to the diagnostic school of social work which was heavily influenced by the Freudian concepts of personality and treatment in the 1920s and for many years thereafter. diagnostic school, based on scientific (psychic) determinism, believed that the client is the product of his past, that he is ill and needs treatment. The client is diagnosed and subjected to treatment. The presenting problem is regarded as merely an expression of deeper psycho-pathological condition. The therapist (caseworker) assumes sole responsibility for treating the client. In this approach, the client is helped to readjust to his past events which are affecting his current functioning. This view of psycho-analysis and its effect on casework practice continued till 1950s when neo-Freudians changed the concept of man from ‘the created’ to the creator self. Functionalists considered human activity as purposive and deliberate and not only as the result of pushes by internal and external forces. Human personality is considered as always in the “process of becoming”, constantly working towards realisation of all its capacities. A human being is regarded as fashioner of his own fate, and capable of creating and using inner and outer experiences to shape his own ends. In contrast to diagnostic, functionalism emphasises present experience and its power to release growth potential. Treatment used in diagnostic was replaced by the concept of service and helping process in which the relationship (a dynamic interaction between the helper and client) is given pivotal position. When diagnostic school holds the caseworker responsible for setting and carrying out treatment goals, the functionalists view clients as capable of using the present situation, the helping relationship, actualising innate capacities, and resolving problems. As opposed to diagnostic, functionalist helps the clients only in one phase or fragment (part) of the total problem because of the assumption that change in anyone hurting area of his life could bring in a ‘salutary effect’ on the total psychological equilibrium of the client.
Human problems are caused by destructive use of relationship, therefore, the interaction between the helper and client is used for positive change through the experience, gained in the casework relationship, of a positive, productive and constructive way of utilising the self in the helping process. It gives focus and contents to the helping interaction. It is because of the use of the agency function that social work is called an ‘institutionalised profession’. Unlike diagnosticians, functionalists believe that agency provides “reality boundaries within which the ex-client can test and discover his ability to work out his problem and make a satisfying adjustment or readjustment to the wider realities”. “The worker sets up the conditions as found in his agency function and procedure; the client… tries to accept, to reject, to attempt to control, or to modify that function until he finally comes to terms with it enough to define or discover what he wants, if anything, from this situation” (Taft, 1937). Man, according to functionalist, has an innate striving (push) towards growth of an integrated self. The juncture at which a client approaches the helper is the time of growth and as such it provides basic conditions and ingredients necessary for mobilisation towards self-help. The first separation a child weathers is birth, i.e., separation from mother’s body. If child’s relations, particularly with mother, have been positive and constructive, the ‘will’ has learned to accept the inevitability of separation and to accept reality limitations as its own. The helping relationship is the growth-releasing situation in which the client has full freedom of choice and self-determination. Functionalists help the client .to face, understand, accept and deal constructively with the chosen realities of his own situation, i.e., his self-capacities and the facts of his social situation.
The usual model of casework in practice is an eclectic model which has been enriched by both the functional and diagnostic schools of thinking