Integrated Practice of Social Work Methods: Prospects of Social Work Intervention through Community Palliative Care

The profession social work is known for its applicability in diverse fields. The innovativeness in field of practice made this profession to be accepted as the need of the hour. It has uniqueness in its areas of intervention, which extends from individual context to family, groups, community and organization. Social work is very keen in both problem solving and capacity building. The traditional approach of helping the needy changed a lot and began to utilize the human potentialities for the social enhancement. The practice of social work has a marked difference in country to country context. In a country like India we are based on a method approach, where the application will be done through different methods of intervention. Most of the areas of intervention are employing one or more methods, in some agencies utilizing more than two methods and be a model of integrated approach. In health sector, Palliative cares are the emerging model of integrated practice. Especially in the state of Kerala, palliative care is a significant voluntary health movement characterized by the integrated practice of social work methods and it's aimed at the holistic development of the target people. Comparatively this is a new area for social work practice which involves the utilization of social work methods, tools and techniques collaboratively. This paper analyzes the perspective of social work in integrating its six different methods in application on community palliative care and what extent it helps the beneficiaries as a holistic practice.