The General Method of Social Work Practice: McMahon’s Generalist Perspective Maria Joan O’Neil McMahon died of cancer on October 26 1996. For her, social work represented a calling of service to others and provided a sense of meaning and fulfillment in life’s purpose.
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The General Method of Social Work Practice: McMahon’s Generalist Perspective Maria Joan O’Neil McMahon died of cancer on October 26 1996. For her, social.
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The General Method of Social Work Practice:
McMahon’s Generalist Perspective
Maria Joan O’Neil McMahon died of cancer on October 26 1996. For her, social work represented a calling of service to others and provided a sense of meaning and fulfillment in life’s purpose.
She evidenced her commitment to social justice and the enhancement of human life through both social action and direct social work practice.
• Throughout her career as a social work educator, Dr. McMahon demonstrated sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of students and served as a model of professional excellence through her teaching, community service and scholarship.
• Neither can you underestimate your role as a student in learning and how collectively we can create “a viable and caring community mutually invested in each others academic and professional, needs. I will be coming back to this now and again.
• It is very fitting that at least once a year social workers take a little distance from the pressures, demands, policies and procedures to reflect and recommit ourselves to what in fact we are all about
• So even with your pressures, your stresses and your often difficult jobs what keeps you going and what keeps so many other noble, seasoned, wonderful people in public sector jobs has been the fact that there is meaning and purpose to what these jobs are about and the fact that they and you have a commitment –
The definition of service is to meet the needs of others or to repair or provide maintenance for others.” Within the public social service system, there is the need for a decisive choice or declaration of adherence to the ideal and a definite course of action in serving, in meeting the needs of others and in repairing or providing maintenance for others.
Do we as a society realize that when we decrease opportunities for people, pullback on our programs and services for those in need, there is a corresponding increase in crime,
Our poor and our needy have a real problem called poverty and it is a multifaceted problem that involves the health system, the education system, the social service system, transportation, housing,
There is no simple answer to poverty. You are not to blame and our service system is
not to blame because poor people are dependent on you. The sad thing is that there are not
enough resources to give you the basics of what the poor need or the opportunities to go beyond
that bare subsistence.
To truly serve today, we have to grow in our knowledge and skills, to become more sophisticated ourselves in doing justice to what social work is all about. Just as one of the things we have also learned is that there’s a need for teamwork, holistic understanding and commitment. Everybody is called to care.
• Where do we begin?
• We begin with a sense of unity. Shared commitment. Others are needed.
• Commitment and caring are what bring us together.
We are the people who keep knocking, who don’t go away….who will be
What keeps us going is the recognition that we have meaning and purpose in our lives.
Yes we have our goals and we have our dreams and we have our past experiences. But most of all, what keeps us going is the belief in human life and our commitment to
• My supreme challenge to you is that you become “spiritually intoxicated” with the high entailed in “real” genuine, authentic learning and of being “teachers” to one another.