While many social workers practice in health settings such as medical and psychiatric clinics, hospitals, and nursing homes, social work is not one of the health professions but an independent profession with its own history, domain of practice, professional values, unique body of knowledge, intervention approaches and code of ethics. In addition to health care settings, which are secondary practice settings for social work, other areas of practice where social work is the primary discipline include various public and private social agencies which provide a wide range of services on both the direct service level (work with clients) and indirect service level (work with non-clients and organizations of behalf of clients). Case examples on the direct service level include domestic violence, child protection, emotional disturbance, coping problems of terminally ill patients and their families. Community organizing, organizational consulting, program development, research and administration are examples of indirect service.

One form of direct service is private clinical practice where social workers provide individual assessment/diagnoses, counseling and psychotherapy, group counseling and consultation services. In Minnesota, social workers holding the highest level of licensing, that of Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW), are authorized to practice independently and are eligible to receive third party payments for their services in the same way as other mental health practitioners such as psychiatrists and psychologists. Specific kinds of cases commonly seen by private social workers include problems of personal adjustment, depressive and anxiety disorders, marital conflict and parent-child conflict problems.

While other helping professions may primarily address problems of the individual (e.g., psychiatry) on the one hand or environmental issues on the other (e.g., public health) - a distinguishing characteristics of the profession of social work is a major emphasis on the "goodness of fit" between the person and their multifaceted environments. Thus, social work is often characterized as having a "biopsychological" focus. Another distinguishing characteristic of the profession is an historical commitment to working toward the reduction of problems of prejudice, discrimination and oppression which result in deprivation of opportunity for various disadvantaged groups, including the medically disadvantaged. This often involves working on consultative and training levels toward helping social service and medical agencies to become more responsive to patient/client need. Social workers practice following the social work practice model.