I am writing this article for high school students who wish to know more about the options my program offers. Social Science is a vast program, but I am going to educate them about a specific career it leads me to.
You feel like a mix of a psychologist, a police officer and a teacher because you listen to people and give them advice but also intervene in situations of crisis and teach your patients useful skills.
Social workers mostly do counseling and intervention with individuals or groups or families. They can transfer patients to other professionals depending on their needs, and they teach their patients certain skills that will improve their functioning in their interpersonal relationships as well as in society and maintain harmony. They put together an intervention plan and guide people towards an increased well-being.
Your tasks for the day, taking your whole shift are summarized by your appointments with your patients, paper work, reunions, and emails. Plus, a little extra personal education on new programs. In further details, you start with reading and answering the emails you received since yesterday, you prepare your appointments of the day by re-reading your last session’s notes and quickly look at your patient’s files, preparing an intervention plan if necessary. You do your counseling sessions and write down all of the new information, to store it in their files. You participate in reunions with your colleagues, to discuss your approaches and to keep learning about new assistance programs and services available.
They can work in the psychiatric side of a hospital, in a private clinic, in a local community services centers (CLSC), in a youth center, in a rehabilitation center or even in a school institution (such as college).
You can become a social worker by getting your high school diploma, then getting either a college degree in a Social Work technique (which in this case could lead you directly to your career) or a pre-university college degree in Social Science. Then, once you reach university level, you need to get a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, to get into an initial position. For positions which involve psychological recommendations or assessments, or for positions with more responsibility, a Master’s in Social Work is required.
In Quebec, social workers make in average $34 per hour, which is $70 720 per year. Your lowest salary for this career, in that area, is $24,73 per hour, which is $51 438 per year and the highest for it is $45,22 per hour which is $94 058 per year.
You need training regarding how you deal and handle stress, but also on new programs available to assist and support people.
The top 3 dangers of social work are burn out, environmental hazards, and potential physical assault. Burn out often occurs in this line of work because you have to manage loaded stressful situations all day long, without mentioning chronic fatigue with all the paperwork. A lot of social workers end up feeling symptoms of anxiety and depression, later on leading them to burn out. Next, in this profession, you sometimes have to visit houses that are what I call environmental hazards, often found in poor areas. It is dangerous because some of these houses have exposed wires and might expose you to mold, etc. Then, it is a secret to no one that being a social worker includes dealing with mentally unstable clients and most of the time the facility you work into has very little safety measures, resulting in the potential of physical assault. I shall add that the professional themselves are often without basic defensive training or equipment.
Zero! You need empathy to do this job, and it is one of the things robots cannot recreate and do.
Average retirement age for this job is 65 years old. Although your retirement date has an impact on the amount of pension money you receive, I will remind you that the age you retire at is always up to you, meaning that some people retire at 64 years old and others at 67 or 68 years old.
After doing my pre-university program in Social Science at Ahuntsic College and obtaining my Bachelors, then my Master’s degree in Social Work at University of Montreal, I finally got a job at Rivières-Des-Prairies Psychiatric Hospital, as a full time social worker. My current goals are to personalize my approach with my patients and to convince my boss to update our computers because they are slow.
Rationale: to inform or educate
Authority: government
Date: recently published
Accuracy: probably true
Relevance: relevant for this document
Sources: cites sources
Rationale: to inform or educate
Authority: edited reporting
Date: still relevant
Accuracy: probably true
Relevance: relevant for this document
Sources: no sources cited
Rationale: to inform or educate
Authority: edited reporting
Date: still relevant
Accuracy: probably true
Relevance: relevant for this document
Sources: no sources cited