Tracy Brown Hamilton - Social Workers: A Practical Career Guide

Tracy Brown Hamilton is a writer, editor, and journalist based in the Netherlands. She has written several books on topics ranging from careers to media, economics to pop culture. She lives with her husband and three children.

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A re you interested in a career that allows you the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges people and communities face and to have a part in solving them? Are you a good listener and reliable confidant? Are you nonjudgmental with a genuine interest in helping people overcome their struggles and live happier, healthier lives with the resources they need to support them?

Are you interested in how social systems work and in community in general? Do you care about social issues, such as education, employment, substance abuse, and the like? Having a career as a social worker means being in a position to help people and communities achieve safety and well-being. It is a challenging and rewarding field to pursue.

Choosing a career is a difficult task, but as we discuss in more detail in , there are many methods and means of support to help you refine your career goal and hone in on a profession that will be satisfying and will fit you and your natural characteristics and interests the best.

Of course, the first step is understanding what a particular fieldin this case social workactually encompasses and informing yourself about the future outlook of the profession. That is the emphasis of this chapter, which looks at defining the field in general and then more specific terms, as well as examining the past and predicted future of the field.

As with any career, there are pros and cons. In balancing the good points and less attractive points of a career, you must ask yourself whether, in the end, the positive outweighs any negatives you may discover. This chapter will also help you decide whether a career in social work is actually the right choice for you. And if you decide it is, the next chapter will offer further suggestions for how to prepare your career path, including questions to ask yourself and resources to help you determine more specifically what kind of career related to social work suits you the very best.

As mentioned in the introduction, social workers perform their jobs in various environments. You find social workers in schools, in treatment facilities, in prisons, in private practices, and in hospitals, for example. Social workers also work with various groups of people or types of clientele, which can include individuals or families facing different difficulties for different reasons. The types of services required vary with each case.

Although there are a number of types of social workerit is a broad field, so you have many avenues and specialties of focus to choose fromthis book will primarily focus on the following:

• child and family social workers,
• school social workers,
• health-care social workers, and
• mental health and substance abuse social workers.

The following explains in more detail some of the specific types of social workers that exist and the types of problems they work to solve and clients with whom they work.

Child welfare social workers work to solve conflicts and problems that arise in families and households with young children. This type of social worker serves as an advocate for children, meaning it is their priority and central role to represent and speak for the child or children and to ensure that the needs of the child or children are met and that the environment in which they live is a safe and loving one. The child social worker is there to help the child and to protect them from any harm caused by abuse or neglect.