WHEN SOCIAL ISSUES THEN BECOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Various methods of professional social work such as interpersonal practice, community organising, human service management, social policy and evaluation, and various levels of social intervention that focus on individuals, families and communities and organisations focus on social problems.

The process is to identify an issue, select it, learn about its challenges and struggles of the matter at hand and attempt to develop strategies to prevent and cope with that particular social issue. Each social issue is dealt with in its specific area of practice, as mentioned above. Additionally, social problems are not only conceptualised with demonstrating social science knowledge and research, but a practitioner’s multicultural sensitivity plays a pivotal role.
The above sentiments may drive one to ponder how a social issue deserves the status of being labelled a social problem? Scholars who have studied social problems by borrowing from diverse disciplines like health and sociology have come up with interesting ways of analysing a social problem.

Likewise, researchers Rubington and Weinberg 2010 stipulate that a social problem is any condition or behaviour that has negative consequences for a large number of people and is generally recognised by ‘many’ that it needs to be addressed. They argue that there is an objective and subjective component in every social problem. The objective part is that the problem affects a lot of people adversely and the subjective part is that the social problem is perceived by many to be negative in a given society. Please note that these components are often debated by many scholars.

As social constructionist view raises an interesting question: When is a social problem a social problem? As a contemporary issue, may I be allowed to use women’s sexual violation as a good example of this latter situation. The author believes that during the 1970s epoch, although men were sometimes arrested and persecuted for rape or sexual offences, sexual violence was otherwise ignored by legal policy makers and received very little attention in media, classrooms and many people believed it was something that just happened within families. Moreover, it is public knowledge that women during this period were rarely found in public arenas like colleges, thus less information was known about the inequality they suffered. So, does it mean sexual abuse was not a social problem because little attention was given to it as compared to today?

This type of debate takes me back to my high school days of this age-old question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, is a sound made? Not easy to answer, right? In line with the social constructionism: Perception matters at least as much as reality, and sometimes more so!
Anyhow, this article is attempting to discuss some of the difficulties in defining a social problem and the fact that various parties in a given society often try to influence public perceptions of social problems. Once a certain group succeeds in turning a condition or behaviour to a social problem, it usually persuades the government to take some action to address the problem.

Conclusively, there is no universally accepted definition of a social problem. Social workers attempt to deal with social problems by correcting injustices like inequality, promoting social justice by using their professional values, ethics and standards. Their practice calls for key competencies, knowledge and skills in order to be effective in dealing with all types of social problems.
A key takeaway in this article is that a social problem becomes an issue when people are aware that it exists as it causes societal disharmony and maljustment.Every problem is relative and linked with one or more aspects of one’s life. Some social scientists classify social problems using characteristic like: bio-psychological e.g. poverty and unemployment, juvenile delinquency and the economy. Others use social, physical and biological heritage. Lastly, industrialisation, immobility and weak social institutions contribute to social problems in most societies.

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