Social Work - What is Social Work

What is social work?

• Social Work is a dynamic, changing, and challenging profession with a vast array of career options and rich opportunities for deep personal satisfaction.
• Professional social workers are experts who help people obtain the resources they need to live with dignity.
• Social workers are also committed to making society more responsive to people's needs.
• Social work's historical mission has been helping the disadvantaged, those who have been excluded from participation in the ideal of a just and equitable society.
• Contemporary social workers also assist people from all walks of life, with all kinds of problems, in all kinds of settings--rich, poor, black or white, young or old, in hospitals, at home or at work.
• Social work is a profession for those with a spark of idealism, a belief in social justice and a natural love for working with people.
• Social work offers a person a career with the chance to work with and for people of all kinds and needs.

• Wherever there are people, there are social workers to be found.
• They are in hospitals, working everywhere from the obstetrics unit to intensive care.
• There are social workers in the schools, helping children, teachers, and parents cope with a variety of problems.
• They work in mental health clinics and in psychiatric hospitals.
• There are social workers in the public agencies, from the employment office to the social services unit.
• Every private family service agency has social workers helping with everything from counseling to finding housing or transportation.
• Social workers are deeply involved in child welfare, providing essential foster care and adoption services. They are increasingly in the work place, helping employees solve personal problems and employers resolve personnel problems.
• There are social workers in the universities, teaching and doing research.
• There are social workers helping the elderly and helping military personnel and their families.
• They are in private practice, helping people of all ages cope with problems of daily life. Social workers are administrators of large government agencies as well as heads of philanthropic organizations.
• Social workers are increasingly elected to public office, from the local town council to the state legislature and even to the U.S. Congress.
• A useful way to see the social worker's role is as "the professional in the middle." On one side are the individual families with their concerns; on the other, the community and its resources.
• The social worker goes back and forth between the two--assessing, understanding, developing relationships, counseling, coordinating, mobilizing, and initiating--helping people build their own lives and helping the community create and deliver the services and supports that many people sometimes need.