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How to become a social worker
As a Social Worker, you’ll support families and individuals through difficult and traumatic periods. By combining your natural desire to help people, with your skills and knowledge, you’ll play a crucial role in safeguarding vulnerable people, keeping families together, and helping them to reach their potential.
What is a social worker?
Social workers support many different groups including children, the elderly, families, and vulnerable adults.
Your role will be to understand the issues that people face and to use your training, skills, and available resources, to identify ways to help them overcome and improve their quality of life.
It's a varied role and many social workers choose to specialise in different areas; for example, child protection, families in crisis, mental health, or young offenders. Social work can be challenging but it's also incredibly rewarding.
What qualifications do you need to be a social worker?
To become a social worker, you'll need an undergraduate or postgraduate degree in social work, that is recognised by the UK's regulatory body, Social Work England.
Undergraduate degrees – you'll need a BA (Honours) degree in social work. This is usually a 3-year full-time course, including around 200 days of supervised work placements.
Postgraduate studies – a postgraduate degree, such as an MA in social work is an option for those with an existing degree who want to move into social work. This is usually a 2-year full-time or 3-year part-time course.
What does a social worker do?
As a social worker, you'll spend time with different groups of people facing challenges that they need your help with.
You may work to ensure that children and vulnerable adults are safeguarded against harm or abuse, that elderly or people with mental health problems are able to live more independently, or that young offenders are able to re-integrate into society and their families.
Working for the social services department in a local authority, a health service trust, a charity, or an independent agency, much of your time will be spent visiting clients, assessing their needs, providing advice and helping them to access resources that will help them to overcome their issues.
Building trusted professional relationships with clients is essential. Sometimes you'll need to make difficult decisions which might not be appreciated by the people that you're trying to help – so you'll need to understand the legal frameworks that support these decision-making processes.
You'll need to be able to step away from the detail to understand the bigger picture that may be driving people's problems, such as poverty, discrimination, trauma or abuse.
Working in children's services will often mean dealing with families in crisis. You'll work to keep families together and support transition into care for children where this is not possible. You'll work with healthcare professionals, foster carers, and adoption agencies to ensure the best possible outcome for the children in your care.
Adult care is often more focussed on supporting individuals to live independently by facilitating access to appropriate housing, health care, benefits, employment, and other resources. You might support people with addictions or mental health issues, offenders, people living with HIV, Aids or other serious conditions, and the elderly or disabled.
Every client will need unique support, but many of the day-to-day tasks as social worker remain the same:
- Meeting with clients to assess their needs
- Facilitating access to resources, services, and benefits
- Documenting reports, meetings, recommendations, and outcomes
- Testifying in court in cases involving abuse or neglect
- Liaising with other professionals from social care or health care
- Understanding new techniques in social work and changes to legislation
Becoming a social worker could be for you if...
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You're persistent
Resolving complex and long-standing problems takes time If one solution doesn't work, you need to be prepared to persevere until the best solution is achieved.
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You're a vibe checker
Being switched-on to assessing a client's environment, body language and demeanour will enable you to highlight issues which may not immediately surface.
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You're a good negotiator
You'll need to be able to work with people in a constructive, positive and personable way, while sometimes being firm and persuasive.
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Organisation is your second name
Organisational skills are critical to enable you to plan your schedules effectively.
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You're level headed
Your caseload will often be disrupted by emergency situations, so you'll need to be comfortable moving from one scenario to another quickly without losing your cool.
What are the typical working hours for a social worker?
Your core working hours are likely to be 9-5 Monday-Friday, although flexibility will often be required to deal with emergencies.
You might need to be on-call and work shifts – especially in residential care environments.
Social worker salaries vary depending on the organisation that you work for and the type of social work that you undertake.
In local authority social services teams, expect to earn:
- £24,000 - £30,000 as a new starter
- £40,000 - £45,000 for senior posts
Social workers in the NHS are likely to be in Band 6, earning:
- £33,706 as a new starter
- £35,572 after two years' experience
- £40,588 after five years' experience
In private agencies, salaries are more varied but are often slightly higher than in public services.
