Social service workers should be professionals
Would you consult a physician with a business degree? Would you want to be taught by a teacher who never went to college? Both of these professions are integral in the lives of many, and both require specific degrees. Social work should be considered in the same way.
When you visit the Department of Social Services, you come in contact with intake and eligibility workers who are not formally educated. One of the issues with this is that they weren't taught the correct way to treat clients. No other degree program will teach the skills and techniques one learns in a social work program.
For instance, at UNCG we are taught to use a strengths-based approach in helping all clients; other students don't get this training. Many people believe that it doesn't matter if the intake or eligibility workers are social workers, but it matters to me as a client and as a social worker.
After waiting for six-plus hours to apply for services at our local DSS, the person on the other side of the desk made me feel as if I were wasting her time. DSS should be responsible for hiring social workers to do a social work job.
Tiffany McCormick
Greensboro
Comments (4)
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"Would you consult a physician with a business degree"
Looking at the cost of Medical Care - rising 7% a year and expected in decade or so to consume 20% of GDP .. I thought most physicians had at least a minor in business.
"Would you want to be taught by a teacher who never went to college"?
As the book said - much of what has served me best I learned in Kindergarden - and much of what has served me professionally comes from experience gained AFTER college.
Posted on February 27, 2008 6:42 AM
George Will, on the ideological agenda of Social Work programs:
"In 1997, the National Association of Social Workers adopted a surreptitious political agenda in the form of a new code of ethics, enjoining social workers to advocate for social justice "from local to global levels." A widely used textbook -- 'Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skill' -- declares that promoting "social and economic justice" is especially imperative as a response to "the conservative trends of the past three decades." Clearly, in the social work profession's catechism, whatever social and economic justice are, they are the opposite of conservatism."
"The Council on Social Work Education, the national accreditor of social work education programs, encourages -- not that encouragement is required -- the ideological permeation of the curricula, including mandatory student advocacy. The CSWE says students must demonstrate an ability to "'understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination.'"*
*Code of Coercion
October 14, 2007
George Will,
Washington Post Writers GroupWASHINGTON
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202151.html
COMMENT: I would note parallels with "social justice" indoctrination of aspiring teachers of our government schooling monopolies.
There is another seldom-remarked parallet: applicants for graduate work in Social Work score have the lowest mean GRE scores of the 51 areas of graduate study tabulated by the Educational Testing Service, one of the very few majors to score lower than education majors.
There is something about working for government monopolies that attracts the least academically talented. Wonder what that "something" could be?
Posted on February 27, 2008 7:05 AM
"the person on the other side of the desk made me feel as if I were wasting her time"
I don't remember them teaching "being nice" in college. That's probably at least a graduate level course in the Department of Social Work.
Posted on February 27, 2008 11:47 AM
What do you expect from the department of social stupidity. They allow my son to be abused and then tell me because my pedophile ex has a 50B Order on me, that I do not know when my own child is abused. He's been abused all of his life by this pervert and it was substantiated and documented by DSS in 2000, 2005, 2006, and by my ex's own admission. Due to the corruption and the aiding and abetting of the crimes by my ex at the direction of attorney Kitty Hatfield and Joe Turner, my son is allowed to be abused on a daily basis and kept from calling the cops or a social worker since he was intentionally disabled by my ex for disability fraud paid out to Kitty Hatfield and the court's obstruction of justice using the police department to obstruct a fraud investigation. Not to worry, like the police department corruption, John Shore dumped his BS into the lap of the new director Robert Williams who is not a professional either. He allows abuse by his social workers who are not educated in abuse of what their roles as social workers are. You have to consider that most of them live off of welfare themselves and turn their heads since it would expose the problem that goes hand in hand with the state's dilemma of mental health reform. I plan to shut down the department of social stupidity in their conspiracy to aid and abet the continued abuse and motive of death of my son by my ex. For them to do their jobs for which I have addressed in my upcoming federal suit, maybe there will be some changes when their pocketbooks are cleaned out as well as their bank accounts and they sit in jail along side of the pervert they allow to get away with such sick crimes against my son. I know, I have been waiting on Mr. Williams to return a call to me since two weeks ago. His staff erases his messages that I have left for him, along with the dumb excuse that he knew nothing about this case, when in fact I sent him the file last June 18, 2007. It's hard to train people who have no intelligence but are allowed to have jobs that more capable persons should be allowed to have that live in the real world. Good luck. I plan to clean house since none of the CPS or APS workers or director have any immunity for their actions in my case. Rick Hall by far is a dumb idiot who knows nothing about human dignity or abuse and what my son is suffering due to the failure of DSS to do their job. Abused persons are allowed their privacy since the DA is also involved in the crimes against my son and the fraud aided and abetted by DSS to allow my ex to abuse my son on a daily basis. I intend to shut their doors for their lack of professionalism to those to whom they are responsible and held accountable.
Posted on February 27, 2008 10:00 PM