I know, right? Two posts in two days. Who do I think I am….Mark? But I got super lots of sleep last night and I think I’ve really kicked this cold in the booty, so before I jump into all the work I need to do today, I’m taking a moment to explain social work. Because it has a stigma – that of a frazzled, burnt-out case manager taking people’s kids away or not taking kids away when they really should, and ultimately being ineffective and constantly stressed and not paid well and always under attack.
Social Workers, in reality, are alllllllll over the place – in hospitals and hospices, governments and NGOs, running nonprofit agencies, orchestrating humanitarian aid in the face of natural disasters, advocating for social justice and more effective policies, restructuring the justice system, the school system, fighting global poverty, improving public health, filling in the gaps where private agencies and public services are too overburdened or underfinanced to serve people.
Social Work is not about “helping” people, per se. It’s more about facilitating a person’s ability to make positive changes in his or her life. And maybe that sounds like a fancy way to say “helping people,” but the notion of helping is that I have something you don’t have, and in sharing that with you or giving you resources, I have made your life better. And even with the best of intentions, “helping” still comes across as arrogant. Everyone has the capacity and power to change their lives. I can’t give you something you already have.
Social Workers go through training, internships, etc. to learn how to bring that capacity to the surface. We learn how to listen, how to separate an individual’s truth from the untruths they have learned or come to believe. And we work with the person, or the organization, or a roomful of politicians, so that they, too, can hear the truths in their own lives and the lives of those around them.
At the community level, Social Workers work with many different groups to forge relationships, working towards a common goal of meeting the needs of those in the community.
And in the process of all of this, we, the Social Workers, are changed.
“…the real question is not how can I help, but how can I serve? Serving is different from helping…helping is based on inequality. Serving is different from fixing. Fixing is a form of judgment. When I fix a person I perceive them as broken. Fixing and helping may often be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy. When you serve, you see life as whole….in service we are all connected…all suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.” – Rachel Naomi Remen
One Comment
i feel you. I majored in sociology & I want to do my masters in social work. but all people think when i tell them is that I’m going to be a social worker, with dfacs or something. [shrugs] but then again i guess many majors, or fields of study & work face stereotypes.