Why Social Work

It took me a long time to make an academic career choice. From having a passion for volunteering to selecting social work as my career, I have been influenced by my personal experience in China, and the immigration experience here in the United States.

Setting a boundary is an important core value in the field of social work. According to the Social Work Code of Ethics, “social workers should provide and represent themselves as competent only within the boundaries of their education, training, license, certification, consultation received, supervised experience, or other relevant professional experience” (Code of Ethics of the NASW). Professional helpers are generally compassionate people, but they also need to recognize the value of setting limits. This was the case when I worked as an adjunct instructor, which included providing individual tutoring. Sara Towns (name changed), a student and distant cousin, evoked the possible clouding of boundaries. For new social workers, this kind of reflection may be helpful as they define their roles. Through a series of professional and personal experiences with Sara, I learned that boundaries must be maintained to foster a positive relationship and prevent potential conflicts.

In this paper, I will be discussing of an organization that caters social services and contributes to the social work field. In addition, I will go in details where the organization is financed from and what is the mission of the organization. Moreover, I will discuss of the structure that the organizations conduct to accomplished their missions and explain the organization 's different services provided under their organizations umbrella. Furthermore, I will discuss of the organization accountability to their services, overall impact, and the power in organization. Lastly, I will explanatory the workers role in the organizations and discuss of my overall experience referring to my future social work profession.

Social work is a profession that is centred around people - from babies through to older people. The BASW Code of Ethics defines social work using the international definition of social work.

When I think about what social work means to me I think of a life of service, humanity, social justice, human dignity and worth, integrity and competence. You are stating that you have and desire to improve the lives of people less fortunate and/or unable to advocate for themselves. You understand the value of every human life, regardless of their background or belief. This is a profession that is above reproach where integrity and ethics are most important. That means something to me.

Social Work to me is a very rewarding job and career to go into without actually getting a reward, but being okay with that because it’s all about giving in Social Work. I get great feeling of warmth when I get the opportunity to help someone in need, so I’ve always believed that this was my calling. Social work is the only major I can even see myself going into, every job I’d like to do leads to it. It not only takes an open hearted, kind person but it also takes someone who knows that perfection is not the key. The key is being open minded because the world is so diverse. I’ve learned everyone handles crisis situations and life events in different ways, never assume everyone handles it the same way you do. There is a lot of things that take effect into how people handle situations including: Culture, Race, and Family. So being in Social Work you should always stay open minded, alert, and almost ready for anything. One thing for sure about Social Work is you should never go into it for the money, because you will wind up disappointed. Soon to be Social Workers are reminded by outsiders every day that it’s not a good income job, and it’s heartbreaking, or they assume you just can’t handle it. I believe it takes a special person to want to be a Social Worker, but I also believe it takes a lot of work. With all the assignments we have throughout the semester we will become more knowledgeable with Social Work. The volunteer placement I believe will give us a real life experience of what we will be dealing with, and the online Social Work scavenger hunt will help us become more aware of all the outside resources we have all around us. I believe the self-reflection exercises will really help us keep the information in mind

I would ask questions about the social part of the job. I wouldn’t say that socializing is a strength of mine, but i still do better than most people. The reason is because when working in groups, I tend to have trouble unless I’m the leader. I'm not a control freak or anything. If anything, people usually say I’m a good leader.Most of the time, when I depend on other people, things never go my way. So now, when I work in a group, most of the time I'm either alone or I put together my own group. I would ask what kinds of skills are needed while I'm working at that location.

Human services itself describes a multitude of possible agencies and therefore career opportunities. However one of the huge parts of human services is adoption, foster care, and assisting children in general. Being a social worker you can help make sure that children are placed in good, loving homes, where they are going to be taken care of. There has been countless people that have helped to form and shape the way that social workers help children; but by far one of the most influential people would have to have been Charles Loring Brace. Charles Loring Brace has help create the roots for how we today work as social workers and how the system functions as a whole.

“Shilah why do you want to be a social worker,” a question I have been asked repeatedly by teachers, by strangers, and by friends and family. When I first decided on social work I came in with the thought I want to help people, ‘duh,’ but what I came to realize is everyone who wants to be a social working wants to help people. What was the deeper reason to me, why social work, I could have easily been a doctor, nurse, or lawyer they all help people. After some reflection, I realized that I had wanted to be a doctor but I decided to change it why? Well the answer is simple, I wanted to be able to form connections with someone face to face and have a real and open dialog about their lives. I have found it to be very interesting how much I did

One of the main purposes of my interest in the profession of social work is to gain the knowledge and skill set to effectively help, counsel, and accordingly, provide services for all individuals so that their problems and needs are met. The profession of social work can be rigorous, yet it is a rewarding career that I am ready and willing to engage in. With the career being very diverse, it allows me to devote to my community in a number of ways from working in mental health to provide adequate therapy for individuals, to being employed with Child Protective Services to promote the well-being of children. Social Work also takes part in the role of being an advocate for the equality of all people. With this being a value to the profession,

As humans, we are forced to constantly overcome struggles and barriers that restrain us from moving forward. Every individual has his or her own way of dealing with stressful and life changing events. At times the stress may be so overwhelming that an individual might fall into an undesirable path in life. This is where the importance of the social work profession comes into play. Social workers utilize a biopsychosocial assessment to look at the individual’s past and current life experiences, which help explain the individual in detail. A biopsychosocial can be broken down into three parts, which include the physical/biological, psychological/emotional and social/cultural experiences of the individual. The physical/biological portion of the biopsychosocial conveys the individual’s demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity and marital/relationship status. The psychological/emotional portion of a biopsychosocial references to the person’s mental state as well as personality within the person. Lastly, the social/cultural portion of the biopsychosocial focuses on the environmental and cultural factors that contributes to their experiences of overall health and or illness (Cardoso, 2013). This essay will display the biopsychosocial of Ms. Tenisha Gilchrist as well as discuss the concepts of meaning, context, power, possibility and history. (Cardoso, 2013)

Social work can be viewed as an ongoing definition. Social workers wear many hats and deal with many challenges while working in the field. In my opinion, one of the toughest situations a social worker will have to deal with is child maltreatment. Child maltreatment is a behavior toward a child that is outside the norms of conduct and entails substantial risk causing physical or emotional harm. There are four different categories associated with child maltreatment; physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect.

It is my mantra that getting the opportunity to serve people in any capacity is a privilege that holds so much value and importance. To think about political leaders, extending themselves to solicit the mandate to serve, reiterates the notion that I hold about service to humanity. Everything we are doing as individuals and groups basically, are to make life better and easier for the people around us, what I term “a village community”. My parents, siblings, church, schools and other institutions have served me throughout my life, therefore I felt the onus at a younger age to also reciprocate. In effect, to broaden my understanding of people’s behaviors in order to better serve them, I studied Sociology & Social Work. The sociological knowledge provided the foundation for researching into societal problems and its effects on people; studying social work further proffered the fundamentals in identifying variety of resources that could solve these social problems. I had the opportunity to work as a peer counselor, where I helped colleague students navigate through the problems they faced on and off the college campus, especially their economic and mental health needs. After school, in Ghana, I travelled to the United States where I started off as a mental health counselor at Lahey Health Behavioral services. After working with mentally ill clients for a year, I pursued further studies in social work at Salem State University. I have been working with Lahey ever since as a

Many aspects of my identity have prepared me for work as an advocate in social work; I am a daughter of a Mexican immigrant and daughter of an incarcerated father. The social work topics that I am passionate about are women’s rights, especially women of color, and the justice system because of the events in my childhood. My personal experiences also molded my personal qualities such as critical thinking, patience, compassion, and I would argue anger, but for now, I will call it passion. For example, growing up witnessing my mother struggle economically shaped the way I think about welfare, social programs, and community resources. Even more, who is considered worthy of those resources, where the resources are located, and how many one group or individual can receive before being stigmatized as poor or stereotype as lazy.

A movie that one would watch and not immediately think “social work,” would be X-Men: First Class. At first glance, it is a simple action movie about mutants with inhuman powers, but upon further inspection, social work concepts are bound to shine through. One concept in particular that becomes a crucial plot point in the movie is ethics. Such a concept leads to a connection between the movie and the ethical principles in social work that can be seen in the characters’ interactions with the main character throughout the film.