Social work is much more than just visiting people in their homes for a chat and a cup of tea. Often, as a social worker, you will have to deal with difficult and unpleasant situations; removing a child from the family home, dealing with a drunk client or having to call in the police to deal with someone that you have spent months building up a relationship with. These are all hard decisions to make, which is why all social workers have to take an honours degree in the subject before they can commence work.
Clients and organisations
Often social work can be something of a juggling act, between the needs of your clients, the ordinary people, and the demands of organisations like the NHS, schools or even the police. As a social worker, it is part of your job to ensure that channels of communication are opened between your client and the authorities, so that the best possible outcome for them and their family can be assured. Good people skills are essential in social work, as is patience and the willingness to listen to other people’s points of view, no matter how much you may disagree.
Day as a social worker
As a social worker, your principal role is to speak to your client and the authorities who are dealing with them to work out a care plan that will hopefully improve their lives now and in the future. These care plans can sometimes be very simple – such as having a difficult child diagnosed with ADHD – but sometimes they can be very difficult and emotional decisions to make; removing children from the family home, for example, when one or other of the parents is abusing or neglecting them. If you choose a career in social work you will have several cases ongoing at the same time, some that only need minor attention and some that will take up a lot of your time, including calls out-of-hours. Part of the skill of being a social worker is managing this workload so that you can give the correct amount of attention to each case, and not let one get lost.
Two social work roles
There are two distinct types of social work; one dealing with adults and the other dealing with young people. Within these two groups there are hundreds of different situations and problems that you might have to deal with, but most social workers choose to either work with adult clients or young people. It is then possible to specialise within those groups as your career progresses, so you might choose to work with the elderly or with young offenders, depending on your skills and experience. Before you start a career in social work, it might be best to think about these two groups and decide which one, adults or young people, you would prefer to specialise in.
