When it comes to social work in counselling it is a very broad area. There are social workers offering counselling in a huge variety of different areas from helping abused children to assisting welfare recipients to find a job. In most cases the job of the social worker is going to be to help people who are having difficulties to solve their problems. This helps to improve the quality of people's lives.
There are a wide variety of different areas in which social work is done in the form of counseling. The most obvious example of this would be for people dealing with addictions. Normally when people with an addiction go and seek help it comes in the form of counseling from a social worker. This counseling will usually focus on helping people to understand the root cause of their addiction and to come up with a plan to help them recover from it. In many cases this counseling may be court mandated.
The other big area where you are likely to encounter social work in counseling is when it comes to family services. If there is doubt about the ability of a parent to take care of their children almost certainly a social worker will become involved. This will usually involve some form of counseling. The last thing the social workers want to do is take the children away from their parents so they will usually offer counseling first to help prevent this from happening. If it does become necessary to remove the children from the home the social worker will likely offer counseling to help the parents get their kids back.
Counseling by a social worker doesn't necessarily have to be because of something bad having happened. There are many times that a social worker can help people who are doing well. The obvious example of this would be a school counselor. Certainly in some cases this will involve helping students to deal with real problems. However it will also involve helping students to decide on career they are interested in following and getting into the university that they wish to attend. The job of a counselor is to help students maximize their potential.
There are many other ways that counseling will come into play with a social worker. This could include things like helping people on welfare to find a job or the homeless to find housing. In general this kind of counseling will involve working out a plan of action that can be followed so that the desired result can be achieved. Often people in these types of situations really don't know how to find a job or housing and they need somebody to guide them through the process. The counseling offered by a social worker can help them to get their lives in order so that they can be happy and productive members of society.