Social work community services provided by community development and social work centers: A comparative study of the perception and self -reporting of social work -educated and non -social work -educated professionals in Saudi Arabia.

摘要

This research explores the social work community services provided by community development and social work centers in Saudi Arabia. It is a comparative study of the perception and self-reporting of social work-educated professionals (n = 19) and non-social work-educated professionals (n = 87) in Saudi Arabia working at community development and social work centers. This population study focuses on the five regions in Saudi Arabia: Central, Western, Eastern, Northern, and Southern regions. The researcher distributed an on-location self administration questionnaire to each of the 106 employed staff members (Central = 30, Western = 37, Eastern = 15, Northern = 14 and Southern = 10) who practice social work in 24 centers (7 social work centers and 17 community development centers) to examine their perceptions about social work and community development. There were only 19 staff members who had a social work degree, while 87 had a non-social work degree. The researcher achieved a 100% return rate. The most interesting finding of this study is that social work-educated and nonsocial work-educated staff members were similar in terms of their practice of social work skills and activities, and there was no significant difference between their models of social work intervention, primary methods to gather information, and their identification of community needs approach.