What is Social Work?

Social Work is not an obvious job. If you ask people what a chef, a nurse, a teacher, or a fight-firer do, they will be able to tell you without much pause for thought. But if you ask them what a social worker does they are likely to find it difficult to come up with an answer.

If you are looking at this site then I assume that you either are a social worker, or else you are looking to become a social worker. If it is the first, then you probably, I hope, have a pretty good idea what you do, but do you know what it is about what you do that makes it social work?

Consider for a moment these four social workers.

Grace Okafor – Grace works in a busy child protection team. When she is on duty she takes calls from members of the public and other professionals who are worried about the safety of a child. She also makes initial inquiries into the children referred. When she is not on duty she assesses the risks to children on her caseload and works with families and other professionals to develop plans to manage those risks successfully. She is often involved in inter-agency meetings, and sometimes has to apply for Court Orders where the level of risk to children is considered unacceptably high.

Steve Smith – Steve works as a Care Manager. He assesses the needs of and manages the care budgets for adults with special needs. As part of that he has to liaise with service users, and their families and carers, as well as ensuring that his service meets all the regulatory requires in relation to Social Care so that the service can maintain quality standards and comply with health and safety standards. He also recruits and supervises staff, and delivers training.

Bismar Kalpar – Bismar works in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. She carries out initial assessments on children and young people who appear to have mental health needs. Her specialist role within the team is to work with children who are in the care system and have mental health needs. She helps run a group for carers. She also provides specialist therapeutic services for young people who self-harm, which involve both group work and 1:1 work.

Jan Nowak – Jan works in a Community Mental Health Team. He works with people who are experiencing crises in the mental health and who also use illegal substances (drugs). He works closely with local services, such as GP’s, Housing, and the police, to ensure that the people he works with can look after themselves and are not posing a risk to themselves or others. He often works closely with psychiatric nurses and psychiatrists, as the majority of the people he works with have been prescribed medication to help them manage their mental health challenges.

Having read the four descriptions, what is it that they all do that marks out their job as being ‘social work’?

In this section of the website we will seek to address that question, beginning by looking at the definition of social work.

Created by M. Allenby. Last updated by M. Allenby on 22.8.16