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The Nexus of Life Skills and Social Work Practice


Affiliations
1 School of Social Work, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, India
2 NCERT, New Delhi, India
     

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Life skills refer to a large group of psychosocial and interpersonal skills that promotes mental well being which leads to healthy and productive life. Life skills help to actualise potential competencies into desirable behaviours. Life skill is in existence from the very beginning of human race, and academically identified through various disciplines like social work and psychology. Life skill education emerged as a universal notion and a topic of wide discussion in recent years. WHO promoted and popularised life skills with diverse objectives, like prevention of substance abuse, bullying, AIDS, drug abuse and promoting positive mental health. The core components of life skill was recognized and incorporated long back in the social work literature. But these skills were not been termed as ‘life skills’ but as core social work concepts which is evident in its methods, techniques and practice. The specific ten core life skills proposed by WHO are being practiced by the social workers in different contexts in varying degrees. This paper is an effort to revive the importance of life skills in social work practice and read the life skills in social work perspective.

Keywords

Life Skills, Social Work, Mental Health, WHO.
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  • The Nexus of Life Skills and Social Work Practice

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Authors

Aneesh Kurian
School of Social Work, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, India
Tintu Kurian
NCERT, New Delhi, India

Abstract


Life skills refer to a large group of psychosocial and interpersonal skills that promotes mental well being which leads to healthy and productive life. Life skills help to actualise potential competencies into desirable behaviours. Life skill is in existence from the very beginning of human race, and academically identified through various disciplines like social work and psychology. Life skill education emerged as a universal notion and a topic of wide discussion in recent years. WHO promoted and popularised life skills with diverse objectives, like prevention of substance abuse, bullying, AIDS, drug abuse and promoting positive mental health. The core components of life skill was recognized and incorporated long back in the social work literature. But these skills were not been termed as ‘life skills’ but as core social work concepts which is evident in its methods, techniques and practice. The specific ten core life skills proposed by WHO are being practiced by the social workers in different contexts in varying degrees. This paper is an effort to revive the importance of life skills in social work practice and read the life skills in social work perspective.

Keywords


Life Skills, Social Work, Mental Health, WHO.

References