These 5 essential traits of successful Social Workers combined with an excellent education will ensure a great career in social work! What are the Traits of an organization social workers? Social Work is a selfless profession because Social Workers habitually put the needs of their clients before their own.
Although the median income for Social Workers is approximately $53,000 per year, people do not enter this profession for the promises of riches. Instead, social workers desire to make a positive contribution to society and help people lead quality lives. To be successful in this profession, a person must commit to enriching other people’s lives. Many successful social workers possess similar traits.
What Makes a Successful Social Worker?
Social workers learn and perfect many skills through years of education and practice. Therefore, the social worker skills resume should include a professional attitude and certain qualities and traits. However, these five traits listed below can make an excellent social worker!
1. Non-Judgmental
Social Workers must always act in the best interest of their clients regardless of their belief systems. For that reason, they must develop the capacity to suspend personal judgment in client-related situations. However, social Workers also know that their profession is about helping other people to thrive.
2. Ethical
There are ethical guidelines that Social Workers must adhere to when servicing clients. Furthermore, Social Workers must conduct themselves professionally consistent with actions set forth by their state licensing board.
3. Empathy
Social Workers must be able to feel empathy for their clients. Empathy enables Social Workers to place themselves in their client’s position mentally. So, this character trait provides compassion that social workers need to service their clients effectively.
4. Patience
After handling crises daily, it becomes easy to lose patience with clients and also their problems. So, Social Workers must strengthen their resolve to be patient with difficult people and situations. Additionally, Social Workers with this trait can prevent frustration and burn-out associated with the profession.
5. Flexibility
In many instances, Social Workers are on call. However, a crisis may occur at any moment that needs immediate attention. Therefore, flexibility and the willingness to work after hours are essential to provide help in emergencies successfully.
What is Social Work?
Social work is described by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) as “a helping profession.” This is because the mission of social work as a whole is to enhance the well-being of people and to help them meet their basic and complex needs. Social workers focus mostly on people who are oppressed, poor, and the most vulnerable people.
The field of social work includes many different duties. Social workers assess the physical and mental health of clients, provide child protective services, and ensure the safety and well-being of people in need. They also work to support victims of abuse and neglect. Those areas can include domestic violence and child abuse.
Micro Social Work
The area of micro-social work encompasses social workers who connect directly with their clients. For example, a micro-social worker would be a person who works in a place such as a children’s Services Agency.
Social workers in this area of the field will work directly with children and their families. Many times, these children have been abused or neglected and must be removed from the home environment. In these cases, the social worker will also work with foster parents or relative placements for the child while working with other professionals to secure the proper resources for the child as well as their family. The social worker will develop a case plan with the goal being family reunification if at all possible.
Macro Social Work
The macro-social work area encompasses social workers who address issues such as discrimination, human rights violations, oppression, and other problems within society. In this area of the field, social workers will be working directly with larger groups of people. This can include communities, neighborhoods, or even the whole country if they are dealing with a major political issue to combat something, such as oppression.
What are the Roles of Social Workers?
Social workers can take on a variety of different roles, depending on the area of social work they decide to focus upon. Social workers in general assist individuals, families, and entire groups to prevent, cope or resolve problems that they are having in their everyday lives. Clinical social workers can even diagnose and treat mental, emotional, and behavioral problems.
What are the Job Duties of Social Workers?
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, some of the duties of social workers include:
- Identify people and communities that are in need of help.
- Work in social justice
- Help various organizations with clients cultural backgrounds
- Assess the needs of clients as well as their situations, strengths, support networks, and help them goals
- Assist and step in with organizations experiencing compassion fatigue thru self awareness
- Assist clients in adjusting to the changes and challenges they are facing in their lives. Some of these can include illness, unemployment, or divorce.
- Social workers are tasked with researching community resources that can help their clients while also advocating for them. Some of those resources can include child care, proper health care, or even food stamp programs. It is the goal of the social worker to improve their client’s overall well-being.
- Respond to crisis situations, such as child abuse and neglect or mental health care emergencies.
- Monitor client situations and follow up with them to ensure there is continuous improvement occurring.
- Create a case plan for their clients and then maintain the case files and records for the court and the agency they work for.
- Assist with educational programs and teaching essential skills learned in a social work degree and other educational programs to further social work careers
What Skills Does a Social Worker Need?
There are many skills that a social worker needs to possess, especially when working with his or her clients. Below are some of these skills.
Empathy
The ability to be able to identify with and understand other people’s experiences and points of view is referred to as empathy. According to the National Association of Social Workers, empathy is defined as the act of perceiving, experiencing, understanding, and responding to the emotional state and ideas of other people. Basically, it is the skill of being able to step into the shoes of another person to fully understand what they are going through.
Communication
Social workers need to have very good verbal and non-verbal communication skills. They have to be able to communicate very clearly with a variety of different people on a daily basis. Social workers are tasked with advocating for their clients, so they need to be able to understand the needs of their clients. Social workers also need to be able to pick up on nonverbal cues but also be able to interpret the body language of their clients.
Organization
It is imperative that social workers be very organized since they do have busy schedules and a variety of different responsibilities on a daily basis. They must manage and support numerous clients that are in their caseload while also keeping very good documentation in place. Social workers may have to bill different places first for services for their clients and must be able to create case plans, and reports, and collaborate with other agencies.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking skills are extremely important in the social work field. Critical thinking is the ability to be able to analyze information that has been gathered from an unbiased point of view.
Active Listening
Social workers need to be able to understand their clients very well, which is the reason active listening is an important skill that social workers need to possess. They need to be able to understand and identify their clients’ needs and be able to ask the correct questions and implement techniques that will help them gain trust with their clients.
Advocacy
One of the main roles of a social worker is to advocate for their clients. This means that they must have very good advocacy skills in place for social work. This involves collaborating with other social work agencies and social work professionals to be able to get their clients the assistance they need to improve their lives and resolve issues.
Interpersonal Skills
The ability to set boundaries in complex cases, social perceptiveness, successfully managing social cues, ability to make informed decisions, ability to establish trust, and self care are all essential skills in social work.
What Does it Take to Be a Good Social Worker?
It takes a lot of skills and knowledge to be a very good social worker. For instance, a social worker needs to have a good understanding of social justice. This is due to the fact that social workers will be assisting a variety of different clients. Those clients may be people who have served time in prison for a crime, people of color, the LGBTQ community, or others who have been marginalized by society.
Social workers must be very objective in dealing with their clients and creating care plans to help the clients achieve their goals. Social workers must have empathy for the people they work with so that they can put themselves in their client’s shoes and get them what they need to be successful.
Good social workers take care of themselves. This means they need to have plenty of self-care skills so that they are in good shape to be there for their clients. Social workers also need to be professional in working with other agencies, professionals, and their clients.
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