Course material

1. Organisational Practice in Social Work
Organizational Practice in Social Work – Assessment 2Assessment Task 2: worth 40%,
length 1800 words.Scenario:You are one of several social workers working in a hypothetical
state-government community health centre in a city (population 95 000) in central New
South Wales. The centre provides multi-disciplinary services (including nursing, home care,
occupational therapy, psychology and physiotherapy) to a wide range of clients, including
people with drug and alcohol problems, people with mental health needs and people with
disabilities (including assessment of children with suspected development delay) .Some
recent cases presented by allied health staff at case conferences have indirectly involved
children. You and your social work colleagues are concerned that child welfare issues are
not being fully considered. (One of the cases was where a parent?s depression was
identified as impacting on her ability to care for her daughter. It had been agreed with
Human Services: Community Services (DoCS) that she would receive counselling from
thepsychologist, however when she repeatedly did not turn up for sessions, DoCS was not
informed.) Your impression is that there is not a good understanding of child and family
welfare issues and ways of dealing with them amongst many of your non-social work
colleagues.The social workers meet to discuss this issue. Amongst other things they are
concerned about how the centre will respond to proposed state government changes which
will mean responsibility for child protection will be shared by health and human services
staff in all government agencies, not just DoCs. Going on past experience the social workers
are worried that the Local Health District management will simply impose a structure and
processes for dealing with child welfare issues. They are concerned that the new
arrangements may not be the best for children and families and also that implementation
could be problematic because staff may not be appropriately trained.The social workers
consider a range of strategies to address the problem. They think it is important that there
be a multi-disciplinary staff working party to plan and implement new arrangements. One
essential task would be to conduct a file audit of all cases over the past two years to identify
those where clients had children, or where children and young people were themselves
clients, to map the child and family welfare issues and how they were responded to by staff
(including liaison with DoCS and other support services in the community).Tasks:Write an
assignment, responding to the scenario above and drawing on relevant literature. The
assignment is broadly about organizational change, although within this there is a choice of
addressing a specific aspect of organizational practice that can be used to facilitate change.
Although it is recognized that there may be some overlap, please select one aspect to focus

2. on.You should include an introduction and a conclusion to the paper and ensure that the
following questions are addressed:? What are some possible challenges facing the social
workers in pursing their change agenda?? Focus on one of the following aspects of
organizational practice, apply it to the scenario and discuss how it could be used to assist
the social workers? efforts:? Overcoming obstacles and resistance to change, OR?
Leadership, OR? Interagency and/or interdisciplinary collaboration.This assignment
addresses all three course learning outcomes in that it asks students to consider the issue of
organizational change, particularly the application in practice of theory and knowledge
about facilitating organizational change, in an hypothetical human services
organization.Assignments should have numbered pages, be one and a half spaced and in at
least11 point font. Assignments should be properly referenced and in text citations must be
included. Assignments, which do not comply, will not be marked. Assignments more than
10% over the maximum word count will be penalized.Marking criteria:? Understanding of
theory and knowledge about issues of change in organizations? Relevance to the given
scenario? Development of arguments? Written expression? Referencing