Welcome to the first blog of the Social Work Diaries!
I have wanted to blog for quite some time but being technologically shy and always concerned about confidentiality I have put it off. However, I feel that with the experience I have it could be of benefit to other social workers who might be confused or at a cross roads.
Compared to many others in the field, I am newer to social work but it does not mean I have not experienced my share of frustrations, disappointments or successes. Like many others starting out after school, my primary experience has been in child welfare. And unless you have worked in that area it is very difficult to understand what we go through every day. However that could also be said of many other social work areas such as medical, geriatric, education, counselling, corrections and so on. Let's be honest, this is not an easy profession. Many of our family members and friends warned us that social work does not have a good reputation, that it involves less pay than we deserve and it can be dangerous both physically and mentally. Yet, we persevered though our doubts and uncertainty and we enrolled in either a bachelor's or master's degree in social work. Some of us had experience working with systems as clients or volunteers while others chose this field by instinct. Overall, we felt a need to help others.
I myself had limited knowledge of what a social worker does before I entered this field. But over the last several years I have gotten a serious crash course in dealing with angry clients, advocating for services for clients, dealing with the mountains of paperwork which must be completed NOW and being burnt out at the end of the day whereby I would most certainly fall asleep at the computer.
Whenever I meet a new social worker entering the field I continue to see the following things: coming in early, working through breaks and/or lunches, staying late, not requesting and sometimes not receiving compensation for overtime and having to work weekends. Perhaps the hardest revelation for new social workers is having to accept management decisions that go against better judgement and the safety of the child/community. Those have always been some of the hardest decisions for me. Also, you may not have approval to give the client services that he or she seriously deserves. Youths get lost as there is no where to put them except in foster homes that are not trained to deal with their issues, or else they live in hotels or in supported independent living environments. The issues are endless I suppose.
That is why I created this blog, to create a forum to discuss concerns in a safe and judgement free environment, to vent without the fear of any repercussion and to share our accomplishments as they should be cherished and held fast during the dark times. As author of this blog I will also try my best to share any research, trends or issues I discover that might be relevant to the world weary social worker, or the newbie just embarking on their career.
Thanks for reading!
