Social Working

This post is in response to a nice commenter's questions about being a social worker- what is it like, what do I do, and so on. I have posted a bit about my job before here, here, and here.

I decided to be a social worker after serving in the Peace Corps in West Africa from 2001-2003. I loved working with the women and their kids as well as being a community organizer. After returning to the US and becoming accustomed to choices of 500 types of toothpaste in the store, I took a while to decide on choices graduate school, still clinging to ideas of being an artist or a writer but then also looking into school counseling, psychology and social work. I decided on getting a master's in social work because it is a very versatile degree and gives many options for work. Social workers can do community organizing, political work, individual counseling, school social work, etc.
Social workers work in hospitals, schools, offices, all over, MAYBE EVEN IN YOUR HOUSE. Oh, wait... sorry, didn't mean to scare you.

I've had several jobs in this field and at this time and can't imagine doing anything else. When I was still in school and lived in Alabama, I worked for a family resource center and ran a summer program for kids with academic and behavioral issues. I taught life skills classes and did home visits to keep their families involved. I loved that work but felt I wanted to work outside of the school setting(teachers are bossy, really it is true) and realized I was very interested in child mental health. So that is what brought me to what I do now.

I work for a non profit in a residential treatment center, where kids in the foster care system live temporarily for treatment. I could make more money working for the state but I'm not interested in the huge caseloads and limited contact with clients. I prefer working for a non profit agency where I feel really supported by co-workers and work for a program whose cause I believe in 100%. We have a whole team of people working with the kids, including floor staff who help with day to day things with the kids, to case managers who direct the therapeutic treatment, to management folks who keep the whole ship running. The work is tough, perhaps one of the toughest jobs out there. The Peace Corps asserts that it is the "toughest job you'll ever love" and actually I think my current job might be even tougher. It is easy to become upset when I consider how hard some of us work and yet we're paid very little and pretty unappreciated. Additionally, there are HUGE systemic issues and it can be quite frustrating to work within such a broken system. There are a lot of reasons why this is a high burn out field.

I started in the program as an intern two years ago and after I finished school I worked full time as a case manager for about 16 months. I recently was promoted to supervise the program so I'm the big boss now. That means I oversee everything, provide supervision to various people, and am the clinical eye on the day to day interactions with the kids. It is an awesome job. I love the team I work with, the kids are amazing and I never have a boring day.

My spiritual life has deepened considerably since I started to do this work. Considering a spiritual context for the sad things witnessed really helps me a lot.
Also, it helps me to have a different perspective on the energy we all put into assisting kids but we often don't have any perceivable outcomes. Social work, in a lot of ways, is a calling and it is also 'seed planting' work, meaning much of what we do is just planting seeds for people and perhaps years down the road that seed will grow, perhaps someone will remember something we said or did for them and it will inspire some type of change for them. Or maybe it never will. We don't really know either way, so our own intention is very important and ego really is not.

I hope this answers some of the questions about what it is that I do do. Ha ha... doo doo.