The article discusses the context of the professionalization of social work in Poland. It focuses on the specialisation in clinical social work. As clinical social work is understood work with the Other based on direct contact, dialogue, therapeutical relation and more generally — on an interdisciplinary understanding of human being and society. Such contextual factors of is emergence are presented in the article as: free market, civil society, self-organization of social workers, their professional powers and specific specialisations within social work. A clinical orientation is discussed against the backdrop of other orientations in social work, that is: an instrumental, functional and critical orientations.