An interesting perspective on the job of social worker can be found in Hilary Searing’s blog The Barefoot Social Worker, written from a radical and libertarian perspective.

She comments in her post So You Want to be a Social Worker?

Politicians, policy-makers and many middle class professionals are confused about the social work role. They seem ambivalent about the social worker’s use of authority and presume that all social work is simply ‘social care’, which is misleading. They choose to depict social work as a helping profession and as the answer to many social problems – including those that are an inherent part of the socio-economic system and require political action. Working class people, on the other hand, know that the provision of social services is closely linked with systems for monitoring, surveillance and control and are in no doubt about the social control function of social work.

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Social work is not an easy job but there are many rewards for those who never lose touch with what is important – to understand and respect the life experience of clients and never forget the social and political context in which their problems arise. At the heart of social work is the task of alleviating the stress of clients living in poverty and in impoverished communities, where divisions arising out of class, ethnicity and religion are sometimes entrenched. Poverty and inequality are often at the root of many social problems and social work must recognise the part that class plays in perpetuating these problems.

She also poses the question – what has gone wrong with Child Protection?

Read the post here

She concludes:

My argument is that there needs to be a clearer focus on the acute end of the spectrum of children’s services. There is plenty of positive work going on but it does not get the support it deserves. The work is both challenging and rewarding and the existence of stable and supportive teams is crucial to the development of good practice. We desperately need strong, imaginative and constructive social work if Children’s Services are to improve their reliability in making the best possible decisions about seemingly intractable situations.