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such as what private social work practitioners shall charge clients for an
hour of service is not critical, since it does not meet any of the criteria. It is
of interest to only a small group of social workers; it is somewhat trivial in
the larger scheme of things; and it can remain unresolved without having
a significant impact on the total profession. By comparison, an issue such
as whether social work practice should be empirically based is a critical
one. It is of relevance to the entire profession; it gets at the very core of
what defines professional practice; and there are certainly long-range con-
sequences if the issue remains unresolved. In the subsequent discussion,
these criteria have determined the selection of the critical issues to be ex-
amined.
SCANNING FOR CRITICAL ISSUES
At the outset it must be candidly recognized that the profession of social
work has no official or systematically agreed upon mechanism for identi-
fying its most critical issues. Rather, what appears to take place in five dif-
ferent domains are sets of activities involved in the identification process.
These activities do not necessarily operate independent of each other and
in some instances may overlap. Among some there may be a degree of in-
terdependence. The activities operating to define critical issues are first
listed and then discussed in more detail. They are
1. Pronouncements from social work pundits.
2. Trends and patterns in the social work literature.
3. Functional activities of professional organizations.
4. Statements from special professional task forces and special interest
groups.
5. The popular media--press and electronic.

Pundits

Just as cream rises to the top, there is a propensity within professions to
assign the role of major spokesperson to some members. It is unclear as to
what career path is traversed to arrive at this status, which is equivalent to
that of a pundit. The attributes possessed by pundits in the professions are
threefold. First, they occupy a platform from which it is legitimate to make
pronouncements, and it is expected that members of the profession will
pay attention. Second, they are expected to identify and highlight for other
members the most important and critical issues about which there should

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Publication Information: Book Title: Issues in Social Work: A Critical Analysis. Contributors: Roland G. Meinert - editor, John T. Pardeck - editor, William P. Sullivan - editor. Publisher: Auburn House. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1994. Page Number: 2.
    
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