My Journey
Begins
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor
Statistics
(BLS),
social work is one of the fastest growing careers in the United States, with
a projected
growth of 19% between the years of 2012 and 2022. With that much
growth in
any one field, there is a need to specialize in order to grow to your full
potential
in that field. With that said, there is a huge range of career opportunities
in the
field of social work and I am finding it difficult to decide where to place my
focus. This
is what led me to this blog title, and the content will be my continued
extensive
research on the different roles of a social worker in today’s society.
Ultimately,
I am hoping this blog will help me make a decision on my career path.
My name is Jessica, and my major is
obviously social work. I just started
attending
Brandman University, as a junior, in August. I transferred from College
of the
Desert. As stated before, am not sure where I want to focus my career as of
yet,
however I believe this blog will be a great tool for me to do research, and
present
what I find, and use that information to make a solid, educated evaluation
of the spectrum
of social work careers that are found in all aspects of community
life such
as: in hospitals, in schools, for county social services in Child
Protective
Services (CPS) or Adult Protective Services (APS), in mental health
facilities,
in military services or Veterans Affairs, in substance abuse programs,
disaster
relief, in prisons and courts, for Tribal Social Services, and many other
special
interests organizations. In addition to researching the careers in social
work, I
want to research the specific challenges each field addresses, such as
poverty,
discrimination, abuse, addiction, illness, divorce, disabilities, death,
unemployment,
PTSD and other mental illnesses, and educational problems, to
name a few.
My hope is, that as my blog evolves, so will the focus of my blog. For
instance, I
may find a research topic that sparks a special interest, and therefore
leads me to
a more advanced examination of that topic.
One more thing I hope to achieve
with this blog, is the ability to research
effectively
all aspects of my topics and effectively share all aspects. What do I
mean? Well,
we all have opinions and biases about different things. Additionally,
when you go
into a research topic with your biases and opinions on your sleeve,
you will
find the information you are looking for to back up your opinion. If I
wanted to
write about how peanut butter helps you lose weight, because I love
peanut
butter, I could type “peanut butter and weight loss” in my browser on my
computer
and I would get the information I was seeking, and disregarding the
information
I may have gotten if I had done an additional search for “peanut
butter and
weight gain”. When looking at social issues is especially important to
keep your
own personal biases in check and report the facts, whether you are for
or against
them. With that said, I want to develop my researching abilities, and my
ability to
deliver the information I find in the most unbiased way
possible.
Thanks for reading my blog, and
welcome to my Journey into the Field of
Social Work!
Statistics
found here
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/social-workers.htm#tab-
