Importance Of Dignity In Social Work

Maintenance of Clients’ Dignity in the Practice of Social Work

The person is always a central axis in the process of social work. A person who becomes a client of the social worker is unique, his life history is unrepeatable. When a professional social worker affiliates a relationship with his client, he knows that his personality is violated, so they together have to try to restore a mutual beneficiary interaction between this person and the society. A social worker can accomplish this purpose just if his activity is conducted by highest values. In the activities of a social worker who is creating a relationship of helping the main aim is to reach personal respect for a person and his dignity. The social worker firstly has to stimulate the

The main thing in achieving the goals of social worker is to base his relationship with clients on values so he could again feel his worth and that he is needed and useful for the society. In the social work the following moral principles are of most importance: humaneness, love, empathy, equality, tolerance, respect, courage, honour and honesty. The links between these values constitute the content of dignity, they are its basic components (Virbalienė, Žydžiūnaitė, 2010). That means that if a social worker follows these values while working with a client, it is easier for him to feel his worth and restore his dignity. No other specialist has so many close links with person’s destiny as a social worker (Prakapas, 2007). So the social worker attains a big responsibility to help a person to restore his meaningful interaction with a society and to restore his suitability in the community. Hence, if a social worker’s goal is to help to restore the violated feeling of dignity, his success depends on his ability to follow the values while creating a reciprocal relationship. Theoretically this goal is not difficult to reach because it is everyone’s duty to respect others and their dignity in spite of his activity nor choices of values, as every person is

Considering that, the situation is difficult, as the object of social help is personality that is understood as a unique and solid system which is dynamic in itself. So the social worker in the process of social help encounters himself with the challenge to help a person to primarily restore his worthiness which would let him to solve his problems and not, conversely, resign and live with them. Yet the social work actually still impresses with its aspirations more than with concrete and tangible achievements or prestige (Kavaliauskienė, 2005). The objective of a social worker is noble, but often he confronts himself with unsolvable tasks. This situation raises because of the twofold orientation of social work: on one hand, it is directed towards a person, but on the other hand, to the society; that is, the direction goes towards a whole and towards its part – the community and the individual – by trying to reach their interaction and consistency. This mutual consistency can be restored only during the process of reciprocal interaction. The violated members of the society usually oppose the moral conduct, refuse the restoration of their social worthiness (by completing their duties, pursuing their generous objectives, etc.) and