Six Ways in Which Social Workers Have Changed Our World

In 1898, Columbia University offered the first class in social work.1 Since then, social workers have become a vital part of society, helping people overcome some of life’s most difficult challenges. If you’re thinking about starting a job as a social worker, you’ll be joining a storied profession that has changed our world in many positive ways.

What Makes Social Workers Special?

A social worker is a trained professional who helps individuals, families, and communities navigate challenges, improve well-being, and access the resources they need to thrive. In short, social workers support people individually while also working to improve the systems that impact their lives. Their work often blends counseling, problem-solving, and advocacy and they are the largest group of mental health providers in the United States. In fact, there are more clinically trained social workers than psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric nurses combined.²

What Do Social Workers Do?

All types of social workers focus on helping individuals overcome difficult situations in their lives. The vast majority of those in social work practice work with individuals or small, family groups, helping people learn how to move past problems, both by strengthening themselves and by taking advantage of social services provided through government entities and nonprofits. In many ways, social workers are part counselor and part aid facilitator. Many social workers are also advocates, pushing governments to change harmful laws, supporting government assistance programs, and starting new nonprofits and/or nonprofit initiatives aimed at helping people through difficult times.

Common social work careers include medical social worker, clinical social worker, school social worker, family social worker, military social worker, and government services social worker. However, those broad categories of social work encompass a wide variety of practice areas. Social work practice can focus on:

How Have Social Workers Changed the World?

Over the last 100+ years, social workers have been involved in some of the most important social advances in the U.S. and throughout the world. Social workers have helped address and improve issues surrounding:

• Civil Rights: Social workers were on the forefront of the 1960s civil rights movement and have played active roles in securing rights for all people, regardless of race, gender, faith, or sexual orientation. Social workers understand that discrimination can dramatically impact a person or a family’s ability to thrive and that ending discrimination is an important step in ensuring all people have access to needed services and opportunities.
• Workers’ Rights: Social workers see firsthand the way employment—or the lack thereof—can create debilitating stress and other problems in people’s lives. To help mitigate the worst of these problems, social workers have been key players in reforming labor laws and implementing programs designed to help people overcome losing a job. Some of the programs social workers have helped establish include unemployment insurance, disability pay, worker’s compensation, and Social Security.
• Mental Illness: Suffering from a mental illness used to land many people in asylums, where they rarely received humane treatment. Social workers have worked to change not only how we treat the mentally ill but how we perceive mental illness, fighting for the reform of our mental healthcare system and fighting for a larger destigmatization of mental illness. The efforts of social workers have made mental health services far more humane and have ensured those services are focused on helping the mentally ill live productive lives.
• Poverty: While the world may never fully end poverty, social workers have been a driving force behind the development of programs designed to limit poverty’s most destructive effects. Social workers were instrumental in the development and implementation of programs in the New Deal and Great Society, including the introduction of Medicaid and Medicare, which expand access to healthcare and help ensure the costs of health treatments don’t derail a person’s ability to thrive.
• Child Abuse and Neglect: In the U.S., social workers play a vital role in every state’s child protective services system. Because of this, they are on the forefront of addressing issues of child abuse and neglect and have played an important role in the development and implementation of laws and procedures designed to protect children.
• Substance Abuse: Before social workers can help people overcome issues such as family conflict, crime, and educational failure, they often have to help people overcome addictions to drugs and alcohol. As such, social workers have been and continue to be strong advocates for treatment programs and public health initiatives aimed at helping people overcome addiction.

How to Become a Social Worker

One of the best ways to become the type of social worker who can help change the world is to earn a degree in social work such as a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW), a Master of Social Work (MSW), or a Doctor of Social Work (DSW). Through a BSW, MSW, or DSW program, you can gain the skills and knowledge you need to help improve the quality of life for individuals, families, and groups in underserved or at-risk populations.

Thanks to online education, attending a school of social work is now more convenient than ever before. With online social work degree programs, you can complete your studies right from home and attend class at whatever time of day works best for your schedule. This level of flexibility and convenience makes an online social work degree program an excellent choice for working adults.

Social workers help enact important social change, every day. If you want to be a part of that change, earning an MSW online can be a great first step.

Walden University is an accredited university whose online Bachelor of Social Work (BSW), Master of Social Work (MSW), and Doctor of Social Work (DSW) degree programs are accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). CSWE accreditation ensures that these programs prepare you to apply ethical principles and critical thinking to social work practice.

Walden University is an accredited institution offering a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and a Master of Social Work degree program online. Expand your career options and earn your degree in a convenient, flexible format that fits your busy life.

¹https://www.socialworkers.org/News/Facts/Social-Work-History

²https://www.socialworkers.org/News/Facts/Social-Workers

*National Association of Social Workers, Social Work Fact Sheet, on the internet at www.naswco.org/?49.

Walden University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission, www.hlcommission.org.