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Social Worker And Social Work Essay

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When starting this course, I had a limited definition of what social work is. My view of social work was based off of movies that portrayed social workers as individuals who only worked with children. In these movies, the social worker was known as the Child Protective Agent and was called in when a child or children were being mistreated. After taking this course, I now know that my idea of a social worker, although right, was only the tip of an iceberg. The social worker does not only work with children, they work within a large social system that includes diverse individuals and communities, to promote change and provide valuable resources. They do this work, while also practicing the values and ethics put in developed by social workers. To be a social worker means having compassion and the ability to make a change in the world through human rights and social justice.
As a social worker one has to look at not only how to help an individual who is in need, but also has to look at ways that they could help better that community. This type of social work is known as the social systems perspective. Dubois and Miley (2014) state, “the social systems perspective is a useful theoretical model for considering the effects of social and economic justice issues and human rights concerns on the transactions between persons and their environments” (p. 60). An example of this perspective is if a father loses his job and his family finds themselves in a financial situation to where

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