Social Work as a Profession

Running head: SOCIAL WORK AS A PROFESSION
SOCIAL WORK AS A PROFESSION
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1SOCIAL WORK AS A PROFESSION
Introduction:
There are various fields of services social where social workers work such as child
protection, community development, child and family welfare, disability, health, education,
social policy development and the workplaces (Garbarino, 2017). A social worker is a
professional who have various ways to contribute to the society and work towards making the
society a better place. In this paper I will describe social work as profession along with its
significance. The paper will discuss the importance and the anti-oppressive practice approach
along with critical theory in social work in context of Australia’s present cultural, political,
legislative and organizational aspects.
Social work:
Social workers work in various fields seeking after different contexts that are related to
people and their environment. Since the focus of social work is immensely vast they
worktowards everyday common situation to highly complex situations. The social work
practitioners deal with several types of people who are affected by the various kinds of situations
and their aspects. Many social workers develop special expertise in their specific areas such as
working with often neglected senior citizen, addressing the social needs of employees in large
companies, helping communities looking for better opportunity to improve their life, deal with
problems including abuse of alcohol, drugs and crimes, working with young people and children
who are neglected or abused. There are different ways social workers assist people in direct ways
such as by being involved in empowering, developing and changing individuals, groups, families
and communities (Hepworth et al., 2016). In the indirect ways too, social workers work by
administering people-serving organizations, conducting research that could help the profession

2SOCIAL WORK AS A PROFESSION
increase its knowledge regarding interaction between society and people and supervising or
providing consultations to other professionals. They also assist people indirectly helping people
to learn better ways of intervention into difficult circumstances or when the transactions between
people and people’s environment fails to happen (Hepworth et al., 2016). Australia has several
social issues that are the main focus of the social workers. Considering the social, political and
economic condition of Australia, the social workers have a vast range to work. There are several
areas of society that requires and is being the main focus of the social workers. Health,
education, economic inequity, human rights, employment and mental health are some of the
broad categories that have always become the prime concern of the social workers. The problems
are inter-related and therefore, they are often large for a single organization to tackle. The social
workers work on these issues with their principles and theories. It is important for the social
workers to work on these issues with the anti-oppressive and critical approach. Critical approach
helps in analyzing a problem in a deeper way and the anti-oppressive approach is to ensuring a
discrimination free behavior towards people with whom the social workers work.
History:
During the late 19th century social work emerged as a professional activity. The roots of
social works lie in early social welfare activities, charity organization movement and the
settlement house movement. New York society for the prevention of pauperism (1818), various
child saving organizations American social science association (1865) and condition for the poor
(1840) are some of the initial social welfare organization (Beddoe, 2013). There have been
several miles stones since then and it spread across the globe as a profession (Reisch& Andrews,
2014).