Social Work Observation

On September 21, 2015, I met with Ms. Katie, a student in the MSW program at NCSU, to conduct an interview. We met at Starbucks in Cary, in the crossroads shopping center. Ms. Katie’s responses helped me learn and think about social workers in the child welfare social field. As a prospective social worker, my questions were formed based thoughts that I have concerning my responsibilities in the social work field.. Before going into further details, I first asked Ms. Katie to tell me about herself. She started with sharing her experience working in the child welfare for almost 16 years and how she she has enjoyed the experience. The field helped her gain more knowledge than what she has expected. In the past, she has done

Katie’s experience working with staff in her agency had been described as normal. However, the different type of issues exist within Ms. Katie’s agency mostly surrounded among coworkers, such as misunderstanding of tasks. Ms. Katie stated that there are people that come in at work to do their job as social workers and they are those that come for money only. In social work, it is important to consider that money should not be the priority. One’s work and interest of the wellbeing of clients should always be prioritized. In her case, she tries her best to stay away from people’s businesses and focus on her mission as a social worker, which is making difference in clients’ lives. What she hopes to achieve in this job is that by the time she reaches 52 years old, she wants to feel that she had marked families’ and children’s lives in a positive

Katie is, first of all, I am happy to know that I am in the right major. I could relate to her experience as an undergraduate student, where she did not know what she wanted to do with her life. I struggled with the same thing before starting college. Even though I have had personal life experiences that could motivate me into choosing the social work major, I still was not sure if I was a good fit to the field. Now that I am in the child welfare class, I understand that child welfare is an understanding foundation of the system that exist around social work as a whole as well as child welfare. Another ah ah moment comes from knowing the work expectations in social work, such as paperworks and burnout, that people faced. I believe there is a reason why social work jobs require paperworks. I believe a therapy for me in this job would be viewing social work as a call from God, which is being helpful as I can to others as others would be helpful to me. When it comes to ethical dilemma, as Ms. Katie mentioned, the issue comes from people’s interpretation about the policy. This is true because I have come to learn this in my social work classes that every time we have a discussion about an agency policy or the social work code of ethics, each person has his or her own personal reaction about it. Even with agencies, policies are interpreted differently based on the mission statement of the agency. My only concern is to know