Every occurrence in an individual’s personal, sexual, emotional, psychological, and physical life is of great significance as far as one’s quality of life is concerned. Hence, for an individual to live a quality life, all these aspects of life must be satisfied. However, because of the numerous social, health, and economic challenges that face present families, the majority of the society’s life support systems have failed to help individuals achieve their desired goals and meet most of the challenges. The failure to meet desired goals, provide family needs, formulate viable solutions to any societal problems, and account for all occurrences in the society has left most individuals frustrated; hence, the tendency of most individuals involving themselves in deviance.
Therefore, to help these individuals or societies to make decisions that can transform their apathy into energy, their failures into success, and their hopelessness into constructive opportunities, society needs to have social workers. Social work is a knowledge-based profession, whose main goal is to improve people’s lives by helping them to adapt to any life situation or challenge. Common problems that families have to endure include sickness, lack of basic needs, for example, food, healthcare, and shelter, domestic conflicts and abuses, and other life frustrations such as lack of employment. As a result of the adverse nature of effects that can result from any of these problems, it is the function of social workers to help individuals or societies to deal with these problems. Further, sometimes to avert likelihoods of these like problems occurring, social workers are sometimes involved in research initiatives, which in most cases are aimed at developing and implementing policies aimed at managing the delivery of essential support services to societies.
To perform their duties to the desired standards, social workers must follow certain set principles and ethics, which govern their practice. Further, to qualify as a social worker one has to have specific attributes, the primary one being the desire to help and work with different people or societies. A social worker should also have a helping spirit, as their primary role involves transforming the quality of people’s lives. Other important attributes which social workers should possess include the ability to develop and maintain healthy relationships with people, good negotiation skills, and patience.
Since my childhood, I have always longed to join a career that will place me in a position of interacting and helping people and societies directly, more so the young and homeless children. Throughout my life, I have seen numerous vulnerable families, more so children go through hard times with no one to offer them support. Imagine of young homeless and hungry children somewhere in the streets with no one to offer them any help; imagine of an abused child who is suffering silently, because no one cares; imagine of a breaking family with no one to reconcile it. These reasons and the experience I got when I worked at the North Mississippi Regional Centre for 1 year and 9 months, with mentally ill patients have greatly motivated and contributed to setting right my career goals. I strongly believe through being a social worker, I will be able to help the vulnerable in society. My career goal as a Social Worker is to help children and families to deal with problems, which they encounter daily. I intend to offer social and psychological help to families with domestic problems, abused children and spouses, and children and families with different disabilities and health problems. Further, my profession as a Social worker would be to help and place children in loving homes and be an advocate of individuals or families that are unable to receive adequate resources necessary for survival.
Another primary reason that has me to further my education in Social Work is that I have grown with a first-hand experience of what it feels like to grow without parents. I did not have my parents in my household while growing up. My grandmother raised me since I was three- weeks old. As the only mother that I have grown up with, my grandmother took on the role of my mother and truly blessed me with an immersive childhood experience. Many children in society do not get the opportunity to be with their biological family and most of them are not as fortunate as I was. I yearn to see children with stable households while growing up, regardless of whether they are staying with their biological parent’s families or foster parents.
Although my education receives the priority, I normally utilize all the leisure time at my disposal to serve the community. I have volunteered in numerous organizations such as the Girl’s and boys club, Respite for Alzheimer’s caregivers, Graceland nursing home, Department of human services, and I intend to continue with this. Although it is a daunting task to balance studies and other outside responsibilities, I intend to get the required guidance from my supervisors and professors, which I intend to couple with well-organized schedules to meet all my required responsibilities. To be able to support my education, I am searching for some scholarships and part-time jobs in near organizations, as this is one of the primary ways of ensuring that my studies run smoothly.