Department Profile

History

Late Shri Mr. Kirtibhai Patel had a flair for rural life and an inclination for the development of people in rural vicinities. He envisioned a course where scientific knowledge blended with humanistic values, cultures, and traditions to pave the way for the holistic development of rural society. Along with the then Vice Chancellor of Sardar Patel University (1997), Mr. Kirtibhai Patel laid the foundation of the Department of Social Work on 5th September 1997, thereby establishing a mission deeply rooted in social worth and community empowerment.

Since its inception, the Department has actively adopted villages on a continuous basis, collaborating with NGOs and industries for community and social development at large. The focus of the department has remained on strengthening Social Work Research and Community Extension Work. Initially, the department started with twenty students, four faculty members, two visiting faculty members, and two office staff. It now proudly includes over 280 students, six teaching staff members and five supporting staff.

The Department initially began with a degree course in Social Work but has since expanded its horizons. It introduced the following programs:

Masters in Human Resource Management (2007)
Masters in Philosophy in Social Work (2009)
Doctorate in Social Work (2006)
Bachelor of Social Work (Honours & Honours with Research) in the academic year 2024-25

The department consistently enhances the zeal and competence of its faculty by encouraging participation in training programs, workshops, and the publication of high-quality research at national and international levels. It has incorporated innovative teaching and learning practices, including supplementary field visits, guest lectures, conclaves, summits, seminars, workshops, and symposiums. Stalwarts in social science and field practitioners are regularly invited to interact with students and faculty, making the Department of Social Work a hub for academic and professional excellence.

Vision & Mission

Vision

Excels in the field of social Work education through the development and application of knowledge towards creating people cantered Society that promote and protect dignity, Equality, social justice and human right for all .

Mission

To prepare social work professionals with the knowledge, values, and skills needed to initiate and sustain change and provide visionary leadership within a framework that promotes individual dignity, respect diversity, and seeks distributive justice.
To cultivate an atmosphere of intellectual discipline that facilitates faculty and student scholarship and research that contributes the knowledge base of the profession and improves societies understands of the domestic and the global systems in which people, organizations, and communities thrive.

Goals

Goals

To develop the student’s professional identity as a social worker reflecting the knowledge of, and commitment to, the ethics and values of social work as exhibited in their relation hip with line system, colleagues and employing organization.
To promote critical thinking as students learn to explore and integrate multiple sources of knowledge including evidence- based practices and practices wisdom in identifying intervention strategies.
To cultivates student’s abilities to critically assess the influence of diversity of client system that may include oppression, privilege or marginalization.
To enhance professional commitment to supporting individual and institutional efforts to achieve social and economic justice.
To nurture skills in the application of the principles of evidence based practices to support or revised conventional practice wisdom in the development of intervention with client system.
To enhance skills in identifying, analyses and changing social polices to promote micro level changes for client system.
To promote an informed response to professional practice in context of continuous change, attending to differences in client population and social trends with the intend to promote sustainable change.
To develop practice skills needed to assess and engage client system, identifying client strengths and challenges, and reach a mutual agreement on goals for intervention.
To prepare practitioners who are cable of identifying appropriate a intervention that enhance client system’s capabilities as well as those intervention that are required the social worker to mediate and advocate for those system.
Top prepare social work professional who are able to critically analyze, monitor, and evaluate interventions.

Unique Teaching Learning strategy

Blend of systematic didactic training and rigorous pragmatic exposure.
Providing attention to weak students through extra guidance and distribution of compendium.
Regular individual and group mentoring of students through supervisory conference.
Introducing mandatory project work and field work situation.
Introducing Summer Block Placement
Dissertation work supervised at every step.
Conducting Seminar/Workshop/Convention/Conclave.
Promoting documenting and presenting skill through planned assignment and group discussion.
Conducting rural/study/NSS Camp and study tour/orientation visit.
Introducing situational analysis and case study.
Inviting guest faculty from on field practitioner/researcher/academic scholar.

Salient Features of the Department

Quality improvement through faculty development that is continuous.
Integrated research work (quantitative and qualitative)
Consultancy to Government Department/ Industry/NGO
Career Guidance and Counseling
Alumni Interaction
Update information of the applied aspect in the diverse field
Community outreach programme and social advocacy for people empowerment