Social Worker Job Description

Anyone wishing to be a social worker should have a driving compulsion to help people. A social worker job description can be summed up as a person assisting people to help themselves by helping them to deal with issues of society and life in general.

Social Work Overview

The help a social worker provides to clients may apply to their families, jobs, conduct, skills, and more. Social worker requirements may include being called on to deal with any number of issues. These will extend to people who are disabled, poor, addicted to some type of drug or alcohol.

Some workers deal with serious domestic issues such as child abuse or spousal battery. Social worker jobs may require the person to work in a general capacity, or to work in some specialized area such as family services.

If they have the appropriate training per state requirements, they may be licensed for specialty work.

Social Work In Schools

For working in schools or with families where children are involved, the social worker may work to improve the psychological condition of the family. This invloves helping them to function peacefully and normally. Social workers in these conditions are often licensed with special training. They are typically assigned to cases as a result of a court decision requiring parents and/or children to get ongoing counseling. The social worker may oversee all of these activities to ensure the court order is carried out to the letter. These are licensed clinical social workers.

Many times in schools, a social worker job description involves acting as the bridge between students, families and the school. The worker makes sure a child is getting proper care, nutrition and educational opportunities.

Required in some school social worker jobs is work with children with disabilities.  Provision of workshops on how to deal with students with less than optimum behavior is part of this position. This type social worker often works for child protective services, supervising local, state and court ordered activities for the sake of families. This is with particular concern for the welfare of the children that need help in these families.

Medical And Mental Related Social Work

A job for those working with specific client medical issues or public health includes both physical and psychological support for families. Clients of the se social workers include people dealing with Alzheimers, and terminal illnesses such as AIDS and cancer.

They also advise and support people needing help with elderly family members for care after discharge from the hospital or other care facility. These, being licensed clinical social workers, also help people with substance abuse and mental illness issues.

Occupational Social Work

Occupational social workers help provide assistance finding training and employment. They are often licensed counselors and many have some type of medical training as well.

Social Work Administration

One other type of social worker job description is that of a social work administrator, and planner. These are people who are trained in social work from the most basic to the most highly trained in clinical and occupational work.

These social workers commonly perform extensive research and either assist in or directly develop policies and procedures based on their research. These are the people who  develop the processes field workers carry out with families and patients. They also are active in identifying issues with existing policies and in fund raising or grant application.

When social workers are not in the field visiting with families or individuals, or attending court hearings, or in meetings, they can usually be found in an office setting. Those who work at it full time as their primary employment work a full work week with some time spent on weekends and evenings to meet with clients or attend events. Some, however, work part time on a voluntary basis.

The Diversity Of Social Work Careers

As you can tell from the information above, social worker careers are diverse. Workers deal with issues from mental health, to child abuse, to family services, to rehabilitation counseling.

In many cases, social workers are limited to working with individuals to provide specific counseling and help. These issues may include abuse, traumatic illness or helping someone deal with a family difficulty such as living with an addict.

Other workers may do group work counseling and dealing with numerous individuals including teaching them how to normally interact with other people in group therapy. They may work with any type situations from gang violence to job skills training or work with teenage parents.  

And yet the social work job of many people involves community work with groups dealing with everything from community funding for social projects to disaster relief.

While this article gives an overview of what the job of a social worker involves, it is impossible in one writing to describe it sufficiently. The good news is that plenty of information exists that describes many of the specific areas of social work and how to obtain the necessary skills to make a career of it.