Abstract: According to the survey of H City in Hubei Province, social work institutions can be divided into professional ones and community-based ones. For the former, they are plagued by weak demand perception, vague location of clients and low social recognition, leading to a lack of ability to discover trapped people as well as organization and mobilization capacity in crisis. For the latter ones, there are limitations in social recognition, convergence between their tasks and community party-mass services, and no ability to meet residents’ high level and differentiated needs. Professional ones can address lagging demand perception and low social recognition by building an acquaintance community while community-oriented ones should enhance professionalism and planning. Besides, the relevant government departments should facilitate the supply-side reform of social work institutions when boosting the establishment of a crisis database to learn from experience and lessons.

Key words: social work institution, classification of social work institutions, governance competence, public crisis response