Social Work Career Information

Social workers are professionals who help individuals, families, groups, organizations or communities enhance or restore their ability to function in a complex society. The social worker is an essential link between individuals and/or families and the resources available to them. They help people obtain services, provide counseling, and help communities to provide or improve social and health services. In other words, they help people help themselves.

Social work is a profession with a wide range of career options. For example:

• Social workers in hospitals help patients and their families consider alternatives in living arrangements for patients after discharge.
• Social workers in industry counsel and/or refer employees to appropriate services, such as treatment for substance abuse.
• Social workers help find foster homes and adoptive homes for children whose parents are unable to care for them.
• Social workers identify community needs and help plan how to meet those needs.
• Social workers meet with groups of patients dealing with emotional problems to help them function successfully in the community.
• Social workers work with children who have been abused or neglected and their families to assure the protection of children.
• Social workers in domestic violence programs help family members make decisions, coordinate services, and advocate for victims’ rights.
• Social workers in homeless shelters help individuals and families gain self-sufficiency.
• Social workers in schools help children and their families with problems that interfere with academic success.
• Social workers offer support and comfort to people experiencing crises in the family, losses, and other threats to stability of the family.
• Social workers coordinate services to help families stay together or help the elderly stay in their own homes as long as possible.
• Social workers play many roles in the work they do: care managers, facilitators, planners, enabler, teachers, caregivers, mediators, advocates, social activists.
• Social workers help veterans deal with reintergration issues such as PTSD, financial needs, and family resources.

Social work is a profession, and as such requires professional education and preparation. A social worker must be a principled person who adheres to the values of the profession and has broad knowledge of human behavior and the social environment, of social policy and services, of research and its significance, of human diversity, of social and economic justice, and of appropriate practice methods. Social work students, as part of their educational experience, intern in a social service agency under the direction of a skilled practitioner. This experience allows them to work with clients while receiving intense personal supervision. 

In West Virginia, social workers must be licensed by the state. The BSW degree makes one immediately eligible to apply for the Social Work License in West Virginia.