Between justice and injustice, luxury and hunger, between excessive expectations and small benefits, where professionalism and respect for codes of ethics are not respected, but belittled, and reluctance is equated with an increased workload, a social worker works.
A social worker knows all about crises in society, about unemployment, about the life and survival of citizens in their local community, about mental health and paying to find out that you are healthy.
A social worker does not represent power and does not pass laws according to which everyone in society will be better off. S/he is asked what needs to be defined by law in order to preserve social peace, but is never really heard. S/he is a filter between government and the people, and between people and government. The government expects the law to be enforced, whether it is actually enforceable or not. They also expect money to be evenly distributed among those who need it (and so much more), and if possible, to save money, because it is not the time to spend too much.
The people expect to be helped, if not yesterday, then at least today. They want the the social worker to improve family relations, to employ the unemployed, to make the poor richer, to provide shelter for the homeless, and for the homeless never to be homeless again. They expect alcoholics and drug addicts will be cured, that every family will be saved from traumatic experiences after divorce, even if they did not take care of each other for decades beforehand. They expect new parents for orphans, and help for those parents who never knew or wanted to be parents. All of this by yesterday, or at least, today.
Social workers are witnesses to the most serious crimes committed against children and young people, including sexual and physical abuse. As such, and without the status of an official, they become witnesses in court, where they are tried at the hands of the abuser and his five lawyers, because the desire for innocence is priceless. Together, before the eyes of the judiciary, they are trying a social worker who did not abuse, who carried out the procedure and reacted urgently in order to protect the victim and prosecute the abuser as soon as possible. The abuser judges her/him in front of everyone. Well, that's a social worker. And the abuser is, in most cases, a person from the immediate vicinity of the victim... a father, uncle, godfather...Yes, a person from the local community in which we all live.
There are no laws, regulations or books that know how to define the best interest of a child; that responsibility belongs with professionals who assess the best interest of individual children, because any child can find themselves in different situations of risk. An assessment that is good today might not be good or in the best interest of the child tomorrow. So where is the social worker?! What is the weight of decision-making on one back? What is the responsibility on one man or woman? How much burden does a social worker carry during their working hours, let alone the weight they carry home, and through their professional life?
Who protects social workers, who find themselves in risky situations every day, and who cannot know at the start of the day what risks lie ahead? Where is the supervision, that can ease this burden? You will need us tomorrow, save us today!
Or...
How many people in our local community know exactly what a social worker does? Very few. How many people who turn to the Center for Social Work expect that the problem they come with will be solved? All of them.
We are not magicians, we are social workers. We do not live your life, you live it yourself. We cannot solve your problems, we can support you to find a way to solve them yourself. We are not responsible for your destinies, you are responsible for yourself.
Little is known about the work of a social worker and yet so much is expected.
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