Tackling Challenges to Socio-Legal Practices: The Best Way Forward

socio-legal

Abstract Problems where social work and the law over-lap have consistently challenged socio-legal professionals and the challenges promise to continue. The overlap exposes important interdisciplinary issues, which are best addressed when certain conditions are met. The article describes these conditions within the context of a perspective that underlines the interaction between the two fields and structures the professional's approach to these interdisciplinary problems. Many practical challenges confront professionals who deal with problems where social work and law overlap. The challenges can be seen on several levels. First, legislation remains a conspicuous legal structure for social welfare funding (Reamer, 2007). Second, practitioners encounter client problems that are becoming increasingly "legalized" (Cavanaugh and Sarat, 2006). Third, social service clients possess even if they're unaware an array of legal rights (Hannah, et al., 2008). Finally, increasingly, professional conduct is being measured against legal requirements (Woody, 2004; Besharov, 2003). Collectively, these developments portend significant consequences for professionals working at the law-social services juncture. The literature on this subject includes diverse viewpoints, including the benefits of inter-professional collaboration (Hoffman, 2004; Needleman, 2004; Weil, 2002; Constantino, 2001), the settings that require legal skills (Craige, 2002; Schroeder, 2002), the prerequisites for implementing legal mandates (Sosin, 2009; Moss, 2004), the prospects of teaching law and legal skills to social workers (Miller, 2000; Katkin, 2004), the inquiry into who should administer the social services (Gelman, 2006), the phenomenon of legal discretion and its implications in terms of decision-making (Gaskins, 2001), the principle of confidentiality and its relation to practice (Wilson, 2009), the legal consequences for irresponsible professional conduct (Woody, 2004), and the issues that arise with particular target groups or in particular settings (Besharov, 2003; Gelman, 2006). These contributions are descriptive and helpful as such, but the practitioner needs more. Although they describe certain inter-disciplinary issues, they stop short of explicating a way to structure problem-solving. Given the potential for growth in this area, then, the question arises: How can the social work professional address multi-dimensional problems? A unifying perspective, such as the one proposed in this article, would provide a mechanism that would bring into focus the interaction between the two fields and thereby enhance the professional's approach to these interdisciplinary problems. The perspective's practical worthiness, therefore, lies in its ability to inform professional conduct and to promote an awareness of disciplinary interdependence (Woody, 2004).

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