Declassification of professional social workers: A personnel issue facing the human services
The author discusses the issue of declassification of professional social work positions within public service agencies. The manner in which declassification is occurring, the reasons for it, and some strategies to block the trend are presented. An underlying theme of the paper is that the core issue in declassificalion of professional social work positions is the profession's inability to define clearly its domain of expertise. From a personnel standpoint this relates to issues of job analysis and evaluation and the inability of professionals to establish the fact that their contribution to a social service agency is unique, and by implication superior, to that offered by individuals possessing different qualifications and/or experience.
Unions and voluntary agencies
SOCIAL WORK In recent years social workers in both pub lic and private agencies have increasingly organized for the purpose of union repre sentation. For example, a survey of the membership of the Metropolitan Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) indicated that more than 50 percent of the respondents belonged to a union, and nearly 75 per cent approved of social workers joining unions.1
Four professions: how different, how alike
ness. For example, settings that involve techniques such as role playing, simulation, microteaching, and the like seem to offer a vital third position supplementing the dualism of classroom and practice site. In each of the four fields and in other professions as well, there has been no hurry to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. In fact, it has been part of the professional tradition that the student should acquire them in a rather leisurely fashion via slow internship and learning from peers through apprenticeship. Such training was a mixture of so cialization and modeling. There was little pressure from the consumer (or from the payer) demanding accounta bility of the task performed. There was also the sense that having service available was a privilege and not a right. Thus it was easy to maintain the traditional stretched-out model of training and education, ensconced in