In the academic year of 1989-90 a groups of Social works students plane to have a association and was finally registered under Societies Registration Act in 1992-93. Gradually,new members joined in from all parts of the state and the association expanded throughout Odisha.

As an independent registered society, OPSWA gave structure to its organizational and functional activities to realize the goals & objects as enshrined in the Memorandum of Association (MoA).

In the year 1993-94, new officer bearers were elected in a meeting held at Nehru Institute of Youth Affairs, Bhubaneswar. This meeting also saw some important decisions being made in presence of all the members. The official bank account of OPSWA at Canara Bank was opened. For the first time, a membership fee was announced in order to fund the basic activities of OPSWA. Along with this, a state level seminar “Roles of Professional Social Worker's was organized.

Further, representatives of OPSWA also had a meeting with the then Hon’ble Chief Minister of Odisha Shri. Biju Pattnaik and submitted a memorandum to include Social Work & MSW as a subject for different job announcements in the development and welfare sector. As a result, MSW was included as a subject of qualification against job announcements for the Information & Public Relation (I&PR) department and WALMI Project (Govt. of Odisha). For the first time in the history of Odisha three MSW students got appointed in a state government job under WALMI Project. This was a major milestone for OPSWA. This remarkable success encouraged the Association to work with a renewed vigour and zeal. Subsequently MSW got recognized as a professional programme by many other government departments and also in the NGOs.

OPSWA established national and international connection with universities such as Mennonite University, Dept. of Social work, USA in 1998, Social work Department University of MAINE,USA in 2001 and National Association of Social workers(NASW) USA in 1998. Counselling as a topic was highly accepted by these universities, they suggested to issue licenses with unique registration ID to the passing-out students of MSW to practice counselling as a profession.

In subsequent years, the members of OPSWA met with Deputy Director, NIPCCD, an active office bearer of the National level Association of Professional Social Work and initiated deliberations to create an enabling environment at Government level for job opportunities in professional Social Work.

In the year 2018-19, a new Executive Body was elected to take charge of the Association for a period of 3 years. The General Body in its meeting on 30/06/2019 at the Red Cross Bhawan, Bhubaneswar decided that necessary amendments were essential in the bye-laws of the Association to make the MoA more relevant as per changing times and to effect organizational & structural changes through the bye-laws. Necessary amendments were drafted and approved by the General Body considering the present needs and context. The concept of Annual and Life membership was also introduced and fees were collected from the members according to their respective mode of membership. This meeting marked a major reform for OPSWA.

In the same year, OPSWA successfully organized a state level seminar on Corporate Social Responsibility. Various other programmes and activities were organized from time to time in the form of webinars, web-based discussions on the National Education Policy 2020, Campaign for establishment of a National Council of Social Work and Education (NCSW) and other relevant topics for the awareness of members and the larger community of social work students, faculty and practitioners. OPSWA also initiated an exercise of “Perspective Planning” for accelerating its movement to be achieve professional status in the state of Odisha and the country as a whole.

Immediate plans of the association includeorganizing a series of training programmes and workshops for the benefit of social work students and practitioners for their constant upgradation in terms of knowledge and development sector skills.