Social work

I am currently an early years practitioner, I’m looking to change careers. I’m interested in helping children and just people in general and to make a difference to their lives. I feel social work suits this well however I’ve heard more or less nothing but negative opinions and comments about the job. Can any social workers tell me what the job is like?

Hi Jade, I’m hoping to do learning disability nursing and social work (integrated practice) and have also had negative feedback about, I’ve also had social workers tell me to go for it, one had been a social worker 2 years and the other one had been one for 20 years, both worked with adults and were the care coordinator for 2 of the service users where I worked, my old senior did a masters in social work and was working in children’s services, she said it was really stressful and not much support, it was her first year so she shouldn’t have felt like that I didn’t think

Awh that’ll be fab! Good luck, I want a job where I can help people I just get scared at any jobs involving maths, and a lot of healthcare/caring jobs require national 5 maths and it gives me anxiety so I tend to avoid it at all costs. Social work is an interest as it’s helping people but like you say it’s mostly negative comments so it puts me off, I wouldn’t like to waste my time doing something that’s not going to be a good experience as a work life. I am just so stuck on what else I can do

I think you should go for it, I can’t do maths either, you need English more than anything when it comes to social work, you need to do reports and risk assessments, very little maths involved.

I’m not so sure yet, I feel it’d be quite sad especially if you worked with children. It’s hard to know if you’ll like something if you haven’t had any experience in the type of job

If you don’t like it, you don’t have to stay working with children and families,

That’s true, it’s good that there’s different ones you can go into. I’ve just heard that it’s stressful and the caseload and paper work is a lot so that’s what puts me off