Social work directly relates to many problems that tend to direct affect the society itself, and the individuals that form it. Even though some consider society, as a complicated network of individuals, social issues tend to have more weight in this regard. This is why social work has been generated to become a primary source of identifying these issues, and devising effective solutions to diminish their effect on the society to the maximum.

Social work is a task that involves a number of people participating and trying to resolve any societal problem at variety of levels. This is relative to approaches like psychological or behavioral theory, sociology, politically, economically, and alike. Such approaches are in fact used to draw on many effective solutions in the course of social working. They also make it evident that people can be helped out in different ways, like personally, socially, and others, so that they have the courage to overcome any adversities. In this regard, some pertinent social work theories can be seen, as they are known to have contributed quite a lot in this continuum.

The social cognitive theory is one of the most pertinent social work theories that deals with social issues while focuses on individual, as a subjective being. Hence, the individual psychology is the focus of this approach, and studies as to how an individual and his/her behavior, both tend to affect each other on a parallel scale. However, in case of any augmenting problems, counseling sessions are always at the rescue, generating positive notions in the environment.

Societies are generally based on a hierarchical system. Hence, what we generally come across is unequal distribution of power, and wealth. However, social conflict theory tends to counter such issues by bringing about improvement in such compartmentalized sections by trying to organize events where everyone can be looked upon as one whole. Social equality stands as the ultimate motive behind the social conflict theory to diminish any issues that may affect the individual's relation with the society.

There is the feminist theory that particularly aims at feminism, and counters issues related to women in the society. This is known as the feminist social work theory. Since women at large are marginalized, and deprived of their basic rights, this theory is dedicated to bring about a revolutionary change for women by working for their rights, so they can have hope, confidence, and power, and so that gender discrimination should not have any influence on their life.