Facilitate the development of the social service sector and the partnership among different sectors, strengthen cooperation between business and social service sectors in particular to enhance resources and shared responsibility to help those in need
Enhance charities’ resources development and fundraising capacity
Promote charity accountability and effective giving
Promote public understanding on the work of NGOs and facilitate other sectors keep
abreast of the current issues
Provide a call transferring system that connects to over hotline services in to help those in need
Promote and participate in Long-term Welfare Planning to meet future challenges
Promote service development and service quality to better serve the public
Provide common platform for cross-sectoral partnership in service review and new initiatives
Facilitate the welfare sector keep abreast of and respond to the overall needs and changes of society
Promote and encourage agencies to share and adopt good practices
Quality management & efficiency enhancement
Promote good NGO management practices and accountability through various management programs, tools and training
Enhance the information and communications technology (ICT) capability of NGOs
Explore, experiment and promote ways of deploying ICT in the sector to enhance service response and delivery
Promote evidence-based practices and learning to enhance professional service
Conduct policy analysis, research and advocacy on welfare and social policies; and analyze social development statistics and trends
Maintain regular dialogue with policy makers to influence policy making
Promote social development and civic society
Promote and support Social Enterprise in welfare and social development agenda
Promote Digital Inclusion and equitable ICT policies in information society
Foster network and exchanges with international and regional counterparts for experience sharing and practice advancement
Represent the NGO sector to participate in the international and regional social welfare and social development agenda
Facilitate the local welfare sector to keep abreast of international agenda on welfare issues
Benchmark overseas experiences and augment local knowledge
Monitor the compliance of the international conventions related to welfare and social development .
Liaises agency members to discuss and comment on policy issues
Provides platform for agencies to share on experience so as to enhance service quality in response to the needs of young people
· To promote the well being of the elderly in all aspects of their living by providing services that will enable them to remain members of the community for as long as possible
To provide residential care suited to the varying needs of the elderly
Policy research and advocacy
It is an aspect to collect data on social development, so as to understand and predict thetrend of social development, conduct scientific research on policies which have an influential impact on welfare and social development, advocate for justice and rational public and social policies, maintain regular dialogue with policy makers, monitor the implementation of policies proposed by. The events include Civil Service Summit on Urban Renewal, Seminar on Job Creation at District Level, Civic Sidewalk Issue and the Young Policy Analyst Program .
Major Work of International and Regional Networking International and Regional Networking is one of the core businesses of the Council of Social Service. The mission of the Core Business is to help the Council to achieve its strategic goals by building networks, pooling external resources, introducing different and diverse visions, and consolidating knowledge and experiences from overseas and the Mainland. Through interactive processes, the CB functions to facilitate the local welfare sector to keep abreast of and participate in the international agenda on social welfare and social development so that it can enjoy more resources for making their own rational and informed decisions for the short and long term development of social welfare and social developme
Information technology service centre
The aims of the centre include the enhancement of the ICT capacitiy of NGOs, the exploration, experiments and promotion of ways to deploy in sector and the promotion of digital inclusion and equitable policies in information society. There are six different services provided, which are Products and Services, Workplace IT Skill Training, Web Services, Secondment, System Development and Consultation Services.
Limitations Of Social Group
Man Is A Group Animal His Psychological And Biological Needs
Are Satisfying Within The Group .Mans Achivements Can Be
Increased And Developed Through Group Expirience And It Also
Develops The Capacity To Solve The Problem More Effectively
There Are Some Prcticalwise Limitations In Social Group Work
They Are
Lack Of Resources
Lack Of Knowledge
Non Participation Of Individual
Lack Of Proffessionals
Lack Of Space
Lack Of Official Support
Lack Of Support From Ngo’s
Social group work in hospitals and community
Human beings do not live alone. They grow up in families, tribes, clubs, and communities etc. Group life is, therefore, basic to any human being. A group means any collection of social beings that enter in to distinctive social relationship with one another. Group involves mutual and reciprocal ‘give and take’. The collection of those individual who are interested in the same pursuits or who favor the same policy is called a group. Therefore, another important area of social work is social group work which deals with individuals as members of group.
In social group work, the group itself is utilized by the individual, with the help of the worker, as primary means of personality growth, change and development. The worker is interested in helping to bring about individual growth and social development for the group as a whole as a result of guided group inter-action.
SOCIAL GROUP WORK IN HOSPITALS
Social group workers play a critical role in hospital settings by helping patients and families address the impact of illness and treatment. Tremendous stress often stems from hospitalizations that are sudden and, at times, related to catastrophic illness or injury. Stressors such as decreased personal control, information overload, change in functional ability and reduced financial resources, can lead to a range of emotional responses such as, anxiety, anger, and depression.
Social group workers, as part of the health care team, provide assessment and appropriate interventions to aid the patient in achieving optimum recovery/rehabilitation and quality of life. This includes maximizing the benefit the patient and family receive from their medical treatments and transitioning to risk-reduced, timely discharge. Social group workers often have specific expertise in areas such as general medicine, emergency work, pediatrics, geriatrics, oncology, neurology, psychiatry, and palliative and end-of-life care.
Services Do Social group Workers Provide
Social workers in health care commonly provide individual, couple, group and family counseling, crisis intervention, patient/family education, resource referral and advocacy, in inpatient and outpatient settings. Because social workers can provide both psychosocial care and other services to the patient and family, duplication of services is reduced. A mutually developed care plan for each patient/family is based on skillful psychosocial assessment. Consultation with medical and allied health professionals is implicit in developing and implementing treatment plans. Social work services can include all or some of the following:
Psychosocial Assessment: screen for high-risk; determine need/eligibility for services; identify strengths/coping capacities; assess informal network of support.
Counseling/Psychotherapy: assess role of emotional and social/cultural factors on health status and behavior and provide appropriate intervention; enhance coping capacities related to feelings of loss, grief and role changes; assess and intervene related to mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, anger manage Patient/Family Education: educate patients and families to facilitate understanding of hospital processes; increase understanding of illness/disability on relationships; and facilitate life transitions when health conditions require a modified lifestyle.
Resource Counseling and Discharge Planning: identify and address barriers to discharge; locate resources; identify options and available supports; facilitate referrals and applications to government/community agencies; advocate for access to resources; coordinate referrals and/or placement plans; assist patient and family to emotionally prepare for transitions; prevent readmissions for non-medical reasons.
Supportive Care to Outpatients: assist outpatients to identify and receive appropriate resources and supports, thus enabling increased compliance with treatment and preventing crisis or unnecessary hospital admission.
Social group Workers Contribute to the Overall Goals of Health Care Organizations
Social group workers have training in human behavior, group process, teamwork, communication, negotiation and research. These skills can help further the broader goals of health care organizations through the participation of social group workers in:
Risk Management: ensure effective communication, through psychosocial assessment and follow-up, with the patient and family to address potential conflicts/complaints or in response to a concern to reduce dissatisfaction
SOCIAL GROUP WORK IN COMMUNITY SETTINGS
Group work plays a vital role in the development of community. The roles of social group workers focus their attention not only on themselves, but on others especially on the community. The interest of group in community affairs is not difficult to stimulate. And in this way the group work plays a great role in community development. Each individual is made aware of the different methods to progress in one’s life individually as well as and the community too. By the combination of the individuals only becomes the community and so the group worker finds more helpful work to play a role in the development of the community. And in this way the group plays a vital role in the development of the community.
The group worker is always interested in the relationship of designated social needs of individuals to the activities which groups perform. At the outset the worker must understand how can appropriately appraise the development of the community. A number of ways are open to him. Some of ways are follows:
I. Tests
Tests for determining the social needs of the community have not been fully used by the group workers, but clearly, if group workers wish to place their clients properly in organized group and to provide the best possible group experience for them, the use of test must become more widespread. The group worker can use the findings from tests to evaluate the work of the agency, so that the agency will be better able to spend its energy in the meeting of actual instead of assumed needs.
II. Observation
The group benefits the individual. The group should provide for the individual a place in which he finds a degree of security, where he is able to express himself freely, both vocally and in activity. The group should help a person to express himself without fear that his mistakes will be dealt with too harshly. The individual may expect the guru in some ways to help him, but he must also expect to serve the group. He needs to know the extent to which the group will co-operate with him and the extent to which the group must expect co-operation from him. He becomes an integral part in the group.
III. Personal interview
The interview, however, may used to uncover such basic needs as security, response and recognition that can and should met in any groups. In many of the present day interviews only the surface interests are discovered, but as intake procedures are improved a better understanding of the basic needs of the person should be possible. The interview it may value after placement in further uncovering the requirements of the individual and also of the community.
CONCLUSION
The integrated aspect of social group work deal with the welfare of the people. Group work is the primary method of social work profession. Group process is used in leisure-time activities, bal-bhavan, holiday homes, youth hostels, hospitals, institutions, community welfare work, school social work etc.
Sociometry and its importance in Social group work
Sociometry is a quantitative method for measuring social relationships. It was developed by psychotherapist Jacob L.Moreno in his studies of the relationship between social structures and psychological well-being.
The term sociometry relates to its,Latin etymology socius meaning companion, and metrum meaning measure. Jacob Moreno defined sociometry as "the inquiry into the evolution and organization of groups and the position of individuals within them." He goes on to write "As the ...science of group organization, it attacks the problem not from the outer structure of the group, the group surface, but from the inner structure. "Sociometric explorations reveal the hidden structures that give a group its form: the alliances, the subgroups, the hidden beliefs, the forbidden agendas, the ideological agreements, the ‘stars’ of the show".
He developed sociometry within the new sciences, although its ultimate purpose is transcendence and not science. 'By making choices based on criteria, overt and energetic, Moreno hoped that individuals would be more spontaneous, and organisations and groups structures would become fresh, clear and lively'.
One of Moreno's innovations in sociometry was the development of the sociogram, a systematic method for graphically representing individuals as points/nodes and the relationships between them as lines/arcs. Moreno, who wrote extensively of his thinking, applications and findings, also founded a journal entitled Sociometry.
Within sociology, sociometry has two main branches: research sociometry, and applied sociometry. Research sociometry is action research with groups exploring the socio-emotional networks of relationships using specified criteria e.g. Who in this group do you want to sit beside you at work? Who in the group do you go to for advice on a work problem? Who in the group do you see providing satisfying leadership in the pending project? Sometimes called network explorations, research sociometry is concerned with relational patterns in small (individual and small group) and larger populations, such as organizations and neighborhoods. Applied sociometrists utilize a range of methods to assist people and groups review, expand and develop their existing psycho-social networks of relationships. Both fields of sociometry exist to produce through their application, greater spontaneity and creativity of both individuals and groups.
Moreno's Criteria for Sociometric Tests
In 'Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society: An Approach to a New Political Orientation', Moreno describes the depth to which a group needs to go for the method to be "sociometric". The term for him had a qualitative meaning and did not apply unless some group process criteria were met. One of these is that there is acknowledgment of the difference between process dynamics and the manifest content. To quote Moreno: "there is a deep discrepancy between the official and the secret behavior of members". Moreno advocates that before any "social program" can be proposed, the sociometrist has to "take into account the actual constitution of the group."
Other criteria are: the Rule of adequate motivation: "Every participant should feel about the experiment that it is in his (or her) own cause . . . that it is an opportunity for him (or her) to become an active agent in matters concerning his (or her) life situation." and the Rule of "gradual" inclusion of all extraneous criteria. Moreno speaks here of "the slow dialectic process of the sociometric experiment".
Anthropological applications of sociometry
Given that sociometry is concerned with group allegiances and cleavages, it is not surprising that sociometric methods have been used to study ethnic relationships and way individuals identify with ethnic groups. For instance, using sociometric research, Joan Criswell investigated white-black relationships in US classrooms, Gabriel Weimann researched ethnic relationships in Israel, and James Page has investigated intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic identification within the Pacific. .
Other approaches and software
Other approaches were developed in last decades, such as Social Network Analysis, or Sociomapping. Freeware as well as commercial software was developed for analysis of groups and their structure, such as Pajek, Keyhubs or InFlow. All these approaches share much of their basic principles with Sociometry. Faceboo is a social network service and website which is largely based on the sociometry of its users.
Sociology of Sociometry
Moreno developed sociometry in the early 1930s and wrote a major book on the subject, titled “Who Shall Survive?” The title indicated his belief that our survival as a species required a maturation and application of insights in the social sciences that would then catch up to the advances being made in the hard sciences. In other words, what good is it to develop sophisticated technologies capable of making ever-more-destructive weapons when we don’t have in place a widespread cultural matrix of social methods for more peacefully working out conflicts?
In 1937, Moreno began publishing a professional journal titled “Sociometry,” and many of the papers on the subject by his students appeared in this and related journals. In 1956, there was sufficient interest among sociologists so that Moreno donated the journal to the American Sociological Association, who then published it for a few decades.
For the most part, sociometry has been preserved and promoted within the psychodrama community. It seems to have been given renewed energy beginning in the later 1970s, and a knowledge of its methods and principles became one of the requirements for certification as a psychodramatist in the United States in the early 1980s.
In Australia and New Zealand, sociometry, role theory, and related approaches have been applied in consultations to businesses and organizations as a major tool in organizational development. Some of their refinements continue to be absorbed by psychodramatists and sociometrists internationally.
Alas, in the academic fields of sociology and social psychology, increasingly since around 1970, sociometry is generally ignored, often not even mentioned in major textbooks.
Further Issues in Sociometry
Rapport is that feeling of connectedness that one feels with other people. Sometimes it happens relatively rapidly, and other times it grows slowly. We should recognize also a variety of categories of negative rapport, which may also be mild: Sometimes there’s a real edge of negativity, and at other times, simply a sense that the other is just “not my kind of person.” Thus, rapport may operate on a spectrum from strongly negative to strongly positive.
One of the reasons this dynamic is being noted here is that there are a number of little-known associated dynamics that are worth knowing about, and also many as-yet unknowns that we are still exploring. Another reason is that the whole topic for many people is somewhat uncomfortable, because it deals with old complexes of sometimes surprisingly strong feelings about not being “liked” or not feeling it is all right to not particularly like another person. Nevertheless, these dynamics are present and have a significant impact in most relationships and group settings. Thus, in the belief that the most constructive behaviors are pursued with clear awareness, it is worth including in our considerations those processes that are most relevant.
A Role-Based Dynamic
People play many roles, and thinking about the various roles we play offers the best way to understand the dynamics of rapport. In general, for example, we prefer people who share certain similar or “symmetrical” key preferences or styles. On the other hand, good relations often have a few or a moderate number of “complementary” preferences or styles, which adds a bit of intriguing difference, appealing to curiosity and the enjoyment of a bit of the exotic.
A role is any complex of attitude and behavior that can be portrayed dramatically, played. Roles can operate at many levels–the way we eat and sleep, many aspects of the way we think, how we relate to others, operate in small and larger groups (family, church, work contexts), subcultures and cultures.
Interpersonal Preference
Another aspect of rapport is that it is an extension of individual tastes. Taste can arise from a variety of individual elements, including ability or experience level, language, ethnicity and cultural background, historical background or age / generation style, temperament and various interests.
We can’t fully or rationally explain most of our tastes, why we prefer this or that ethnic or specialty food over another type; or one artist more than another. Some people relate to certain historical periods, cultures, and life-styles, and again cannot be explained through any amount of analysis. What’s important is to learn to get in touch with authentic preferences.
Note also that there in authentic preferences, learning to think one likes this or that quality because it is fashionable, because one associates certain tastes with the values and norms of a desired peer group. Part of late adolescence involves re-evaluating one’s tastes, discovering personal preferences that feel more “true” than living with a sense of mere conformity.
There may be several layers involved in this process: Pre-teens begin to break away from parents and experiment with dramatic alternatives to parental values, thus reinforcing the need to feel that they are more independent. The process may repeat itself in the later teens or college years, and again several times during young, middle, and later adulthood. Each experiment clarifies tastes. (Sometimes authentic tastes are satisfied and open to new interests: “Been there, done that” moves into “What might be fun next?”
For example, in my case, as a young teen, I wanted to be more popular, and there were books about popularity. They seemed to be a mixture of grooming, simple fashion, basic rules of courtesy (that seem quaint many years later), and so forth. I didn’t feel I made much progress, though. There were many reasons for this, but the main one, in retrospect, was a misunderstanding of what popularity was all about: It wasn’t an either-or, popular or not popular situation. It all seems obvious now, but there were scores of different groups that one could become more or less associated with. A few people seemed to be everywhere, with the sports stars, in student government, and so forth. These folks were exceptions, though. Most people were mild or moderately popular within smaller or larger sub-groups.
It would have been helpful to recognize that one only needed a modest circle of acquaintances and friends, and that larger circles required unusual levels of involvement.
Practical Social Network Development
One of the most important dynamics in social psychology is the operation of the interpersonal flow of rapport, a mutual sense of connectedness. It’s universal, and a generally somewhat overlooked process, in part because, even more than sex (at least nowadays), people are quite emotionally sensitive about this topic. Yet it’s everywhere and in many cases rapport is a far more important factor than any official designation.
From childhood, we are encouraged to treat people “equally,” which blurs a distinction between general fairness and the distribution of the sense of rapport that operates in psychology, just as there is a natural variation in temperament, tastes, background, ability, and other variables. The fact is that we naturally tend to prefer some folks over others, and there are some with whom we tend to clash, though neither party has “done anything wrong.” They’re just not “our type of people,” though they may have a lively social network with whom they’re more naturally compatible.
The most obvious expression of this blindness to the factor of rapport is the way teachers and administrators lump people together according to arbitrary criteria, the order of height, first letter of the last name, order of people arriving, etc. Such an approach assumes that we’re all equal cogs in an industrial assembly line, replaceable. It’s our job to “work out” frictions, and, like the illusion that you can do anything if you try hard enough, a variation is that all conflicts can be resolved with good will and skill. The corollary is that conflicts resistant to solution are due to a lack of good will, effort, or skill– the latter evoking shame for being “clueless” or “dumb” or not clever enough.
Only a few people have had the courage to challenge the above pervasive, subtly oppressive attitudes, and say that what seems to be common sense is in fact not so. There is an alternative, of course: Let people work in teams in which the people have for the most part chosen each other! Let people room in bunkhouses and pal around as their natural inclinations lead them!
Of course, several objections immediately arise: Won’t this reinforce the development of cliques and separatism, rather than integration? And won’t some folks be left out and their feelings hurt? This last is the crux of the matter: Avoid hurting people’s feelings, and avoid having one’s own feelings getting hurt.
The paradox is that like sex, the problems of which tend to magnify with ignorance and avoidance, the problems of relationship are also worsened by avoidance. We need to look at the whole deal on relationships and being hurt, and become a little desensitized to this complex problem. Freedom requires an infrastructure that supports responsibility, not only at the political level, but even in the family, in clubs, churches, with friends, and in various informal networks.
That infrastructure involves a combination of a certain amount of self-awareness, communications skills, and problem-solving skills, and I confess that these skills are insufficiently developed in the vast majority of people today. So this paper aims at looking more frankly at the problems of rapport in relationship.
Developmental Dynamics
Let’s start off by noting that in older children, teenagers and adults, liking and being liked rests on not just a simple either-or dimension, but varies according to the roles being played. One can like another kid as a friend, but not as one with who wants to be romantic or sexual. A teammate chosen to work on a science project may be someone other than the teammate for playing baseball, and just because a kid plays first base well, that doesn’t mean you want to go camping with her.
Yet at first, younger children don’t make this distinction, and their feelings are quite sensitive about the awareness that at times, two other people seem to prefer being together more than either one with the child who thus feels vulnerable. All this begins at the age when children who play with one other kid at a time begin to relate to two kids at a time. It also partakes of the awareness of having to share the attention of a parent with a sibling–that is, around three or four years of age.
Freud attributed the patterns of jealousy to sexual fantasies, but he was only partly correct. Occasionally, patterns of early sexual stimulation, possessiveness of one parent, harshness of another parent, set up mixtures of complexes–the oedipal complex being the most prominent in psychoanalytic thought. (In all likelihood, Freud himself developed such a complex because of the mixture of factors in his own life; he was mistaken in projecting the whole package onto others as “normal.”) What is inevitable, though, is that kids who begin to play in groups of three or four will notice the flow of shifting alliances!
Sometimes A and B will play more intensely and C will be left out, but later on it may be B and C who seems closer, and then A feels left out. For the one feeling left out, jealousy, shame, hurt, bewilderment, betrayal–a variety of feelings are evoked.
Over the next few years, children are learning a variety of ways of being socialized, and one of the components of this process involve the courtesies of minimizing the frictions of obvious rejection and preference. We all seem to covertly avoid being too obvious about whom we prefer and whom we don’t–or even those we consciously reject. We don’t want to be hurt, so we don’t hurt others.
Now, in healthy development, it becomes clearer that being not preferred need not precipitate a catastrophe of humiliation. One has enough residual esteem–not just self-esteem, but also a sense that there are indeed other groups out there with whom one can be more naturally congenial, feel esteemed interpersonally. However, most people have only marginally healthy development. That seemingly high-functioning people can be marginally healthy in some roles is again best illustrated by the way people functioned sexually a century ago, when sexuality was still dominated by Victorian attitudes and otherwise well-educated people were woefully ignorant in the bedroom.
So, nowadays, it is not common for a person to feel “hurt,” “rejected,” when relationships don’t click very well. These feelings tend to be psychologically infected by false but pervasive attitudes: If one is rejected, – the other person must be somehow not friendly, mean, and it’s worth coming up with some judgmental conclusions about that person– the other person is given the benefit of the doubt, especially if s/he has higher status, in which case, being rejected “proves” that one is lacking in some way. It used to be status, and these frictions were ameliorated by “knowing your place,” but by the mid-20th century, rejections were often attributed to matters of “personality.” That is, one tended to psychologically evaluate and devalue based on ambiguous generalities. It is important to note that whether one could actually will oneself to be different was unclear–there was that other pervasive attitude that one could do or be anything with sufficient effort.
CONCLUSION:
Term "sociometry" means the need in measuringthe interpersonal relations in a team. The founder of sociometry approach is a famous psychiatrist and social psychologist Jacob L. Moreno. In accordance to Moreno, the complex of interpersonal relations in a team predefines a primary social and psychological basement of the team. And the features of this basement mainly predefine the internal state of each person in the team (not only what the team is itself).
Sociometry approach is applied for diagnosing the interpersonal and intergroup relations with the purpose of their changing, improving and developing. Sociometry helps to define how the people behave in a team.
Together with formal or informal structure of communication which presents the rational and mandatory aspect of human relations, any social team contains the psychological structure of informal level. This structure is formed as a system on interpersonal relations, sympathies and antipathies. Mainly, the peculiarities of such a structure depend on preferences of the members, their psychological accepting and understanding to each other, self-rating and rating to others. As a rule, such teams contain several informal structures. They can be structures of aid-giving behavior, mutual influence, popularity, leadership, etc.
Informal structure depends on formal one as much as the members can collaborate together for the group purposes. Sociometry helps to evaluate this influence. Sociometry methods allow in looking the interpersonal relations in a view of values and charts. This can help to get the necessary information about team state.
To provide a sociometry research, any informal structure must be always reflected (whether we desire that or no) to formal one or to the structure of the business and legal relations. In this way, it will impact to the team solidarity and effectiveness. And this is really verified by practice! A general purpose of sociometry is looking for the internal psychological state and the climate in a group.