Appraisal of Social worker and legal practitioners’ engagement: The collaborative aggregate for social justice in Nigeria

The study was on appraisal of social worker and legal practitioners’ engagement: The collaborative aggregate for social justice in Nigeria. Over the years there has been a strained relationship existing between and amongst that has limit the positive collaborative engagement between social workers and legal practitioners. In Nigeria this two independent professions never knew of any of their complementary role. This has been more conspicuously conspicuous in social workers and legal practitioners’ routine engagement. Arising from ofngagementitioners'never knew of any complementary roleetween and amongst very.this stand point that this examined the challenges and the need for effective collaborative engagement and complementary role between social workers and legal practitioners in Nigeria directed towards optimal service delivery to not only their clients but the Nigerian society at large. In line with the issues under investigation, this paper adopted the social identity theory formulated by Henri Tajfel in 1970. This is one of the major theories on inter-relationship. The social identity theory is predicated on the assumption that an individual develops his/her self-concept on the basis of his/her attachment to a significant group. Data usage were from both primary and secondary sources. Correspondingly, we employed key participant interviews (KPI) as instruments for data collection for this study, using ten (10) sample respondents each of social workers from University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital and legal practitioners in Rivers State High Court respectively as our target participants for experience generalization. The study’s findings informed that the legal practitioners and social workers are interwoven and has similarities in certain areas of their profession. It is on this note that the study recommended amongst others that Emphasis should be placed on lack of awareness, the non-professional nature of social work in Nigeria, among others such as differences in ethics, professional training and education.