GC'ers Views of Social Workers
 

Due to recent discussion sparked by Ktsnake in the thread "public housing" I am curious to hear GC'ers views on their experiences with Social Workers or "people" providing services to others in areas such as mental health, elder care, substance abuse, etc. It is interesting because in different states the qualifications to be a "Social Worker" are different. In some states people without a Master's degree (in fact not a degree at all) can call themselves a Social Worker (and scarier yet) a "therapist". Has anyone run into any negative experiences they feel are based on this fact that many people in my career field are not educated enough nor have enough experience to provide appropriate services? I think this is the only field where this happens.

I've only had great experiences, I work in a rehab hospital with mostly geriatric patients so we have social workers for case managers (they are MSW/LCSW) and are fantastic. In all my jobs, I've always worked with well educated, very professional social workers who were all a credit to their profession!

But then again, I work in one of those helping fields too so I have a ton of respect for people who dedicate their lives to helping others.

One of my best friends works as a case manager in the geriatric hospice field as well...

I have the highest respect for people in Social Work. They usually get underpaid, are shown very little respect, and enter the field because they genuinely desire to help people.

Social workers have to face the aforementioned problems. Why start a thread that would only add to the negative perception of Social Workers? They should be lifted up, not brought down. I thought that you were a SW, Winnie...

I don't know educational-wise, but personality and character-wise, I think it's one extreme or the other. I've known people who "provide services to others" to be really compassionate or really cold and fucked up. There's three people in "helping work" who has changed my life...for the better. Two teachers and a counselor. On the other hand, I can't count how many teachers who DID NOT have my best interest in mind. I've had an ex-friend who was a nurse's assistant in geriatrics that laughed at my alzheimer's grandmother when she got confused once. Here in college, I know social work, pre-med, nursing, psychology, and education majors who are extremely self-centered, rude, arrogant, and down-right mean. I guess it's the 8th wonder in the world why some mean people choose to do service-oriented jobs.

*edited* becuase I can't spell.

I am an MSW and I started the thread to get a sense of why people feel this way and to also discuss the positive experiences.

Wow, you are on the money, I have seen people in my field (as well as the others you mentioned) at one extreme or the other as well. I have also heard of people going into the field because of the negative stuff they have experienced, they want to help others, however, through transference, they end up taking out their unresolved issues on the clients. I want to clarify that not everyone who does not have a degree or a lot of experience is not a bad person in the field at all. Just a handful at times but that handful is enough to make the rest of us look bad.

Winnie,

Now the thread makes a lot more sense to me. I could not figure out why a SW would want to bring up this topic. But, now I can see its actually to get a better understanding of why people think like that.

-- T

My two older (bio) sisters are Social Workers. I have the highest respect for them both. They both work in some of the lowest economic areas in the MidWest and have even had their lives threatened just trying to help children when the parents were so high they didn't even know what was going on.

So...all in all...I have the highest respect for them.

You already know what I think.

I used to have a higher opinion of social workers until I encountered this one that made me question how somebody like her got the job.

Too subtle.

LOL

-Rudey

Who is the "her" this post is directed at and what made you question how someone like "her" got the job?

I have never encountered a social worker that I did not have respect for. It's a hard job and they are highly underpaid.
Here you can't practice as a social worker unless you have a masters degree.
We have Social Service Workers that usually deal with welfare issues and the like but are not "therapists" in any sense.

I hope it's changed since, but it used to be in my hometown that to work for CYS you just needed A degree. It didn't have to be in anything regarding children, psychology or social work...it could be a farking ceramics degree and as long as you had your clearance you were hired. Needless to say turnover was ridiculous and some of them didn't know what the @#$% they were doing.

I was told in grad school that it takes at least 7 years post MSW to become a really good therapist.

I don't doubt that at all. It'll take years in any profession to become really good at it. Practice after all does make perfect.
Especially in a therpist position. There are so many different problems one will encounter you can't expect someone to be great their first time.

I remember a situation that happened recently with a former employee of my agency. He had maybe his AA degree. He ended up getting fired for a bunch of unethical stuff. Anyways, we found out after he left from some other employees that he had his own "private practice" in his home. That is horrible I think. I think he was taking advantage of some vulnerable clients who didn't know any better to ask for his license and credentials.

While I don't think this situation is prevelant. I think it happens much more than we'd like to believe.
I remember seeing a story on W5 (Canada's Equivalent of 60 Minutes) about this Psychologist that lost his license but was still operating a practice. He was operating out of a hotel.

Nothing's really changed in this area. in fact, I had trouble finding a job because to save money a lot of agencies are hiring people with a degree in anything because they can pay them less money. They then hire one certified SW to sign off and bill for services. One of the major principles of SW practice is "to do no harm". By having unqualified people working with already disserviced clients, the system continues to bring a lot of harm onto the clients. My specialty is mental health, with adults. I wouldn't just want to go work with children because I am not trained properly in this area and I DO have a Master's in Social Work. Now when they let people with a degree in underwater basket weaving work with populations they have no clue in, I get really upset. Case in point, there was a woman who worked in my agency once. A client was hearing voices telling her to kill herself. The woman who obviously had no training and not too much common sense either (but that is another issue) told her "go down and lie in your bed, you'll feel better". If I wasn't there I shudder to think what could have happened to this client. I ended up taking her to the hospital where she remained for 3 weeks. This stuff happens all the time. When I was in grad school all the stuff was going on in NJ with the abused kids. Our reasoning behind this happening is due to lack of education and experience. I don't know who is to blame in this case, it is easy to blame it on the person working directly with the clients, but then again, is it really their fault if the overseeing agency hires them without the education or experience? Not really right?