Social Work seeks to enhance the social functioning of all age groups, both rich and poor. When other institutions in society, such as the market, economy and the family fail at times to meet the basic needs of individual or groups of people then social services are needed and demanded. In earlier societies, the basic needs of people were fulfilled in more direct and informal ways. Pakistan is basically an agrarian society in which people used to live in rural areas depending upon agriculture and having close kinship ties with extended and joint families. In that scenario, relatives and neighbors were there to lend a helping hand to meet their economic, social and psychological needs. Problems were visible and personal, everyone knew everyone else in the community. When a need arose, it was taken for granted that those with resources would alleviate the difficulty. If, for example the need was financial, personal acquaintance with the storekeeper usually was sufficient to obtain needed goods.
Needless to say, we are now living in a quite different era. Our technology, economic base, social patterns and living styles have changed dramatically. Our commercial, industrial, political, educational and religious institutions are considerably larger and more impersonal. We tend to live in large urban communities, away from families or relatives, frequently without even establishing acquaintances with neighbors. We have become much more mobile often having few roots and limited knowledge of community in which we live. Our rapidly unplanned and undirected, changing society is a breeding ground for exacerbating former social ills and creating new problems such as eruption of our inner cities, higher rates of crime, rural urban migration, shortage of resources, population explosion and the destruction of the quality of our environment. Obviously old methods of meeting social welfare needs are no longer visible. In our today situation social welfare activities have become one of the important functions in terms of the human misery treated and the number of the people served.
The Department of Social Work not only aims to equip its students with professional skills, it seeks rather to help the student gain sound basic knowledge and practical experience in all these aspects of social work, that she/he may prove competent to give professional leadership in the varied situations demanding her/his consultation and operational skills. He/she in fact is a well-informed person, technically skilled leader, advisor and field worker, playing a significant role in shaping the new welfare patterns in Pakistan.