This paper explores the job of a social worker as well as its core role in the social development of a nation. It is hard to underestimate the part social services agencies play in people’s life. This paper is the reflection of the interview with a worker from SSA (Social Service Agency). It helps define assumptions concerning the primary objectives and perspectives that every social worker sets ahead of him/ herself. Mostly, this paper will concentrate on social worker’s responsibilities when working with families and children who need advocacy and support. It is an overview for those encouraged to incorporate themselves within social sphere. A reader should be able to critically evaluate the responsibilities of a social worker, gain understanding of the meaning of the social service agency and the way its activities contribute to life of disadvantaged family or child.
It is of paramount importance to remember that no family is perfect since every family or parents-children relationships come across challenges and difficulties, which are complicated enough to overcome. Accordingly, certain people and organizations are founded to help coping with that kind of issue. However, it goes beyond doubt that working with children brought up in lovely families is simpler than with disadvantaged and vulnerable infants who have experienced the lack of parents’ care and love. The Department of Child and Family Services aims at preventing and advocating those people who are not that lucky in family life and have not managed to maintain sound environment within their households. Social workers who hold their positions in the Department of Family and Child Services are the so-called protectors responsible for reducing child’s bad treatment and strengthening family ties in order for children to be raised in a safe, pleasurable and lovely environment.
In general, the Department of Family and Child Services seeks to set positive mindset and accomplishes an important mission in preserving sustainable functioning of the family relationships. It is next to impossible to keep updated with all the current hardships a modern family may face. Therefore, the social services agencies are governmental organizations, which collaborate together with the government to save and uppermost prevent any disconnections and conflicts. The disagreements may not merely result in the split of a family but also cause the breakdown of universal and fundamental basis of a society.
Correspondingly, the humankind lives in an extremely cruel and dreadful world. Probably, a couple of decades ago, people had to encounter some difficulties and puzzles yet it was not that much tragic as it is now. In addition to regular problems that children and parents should solve, the contemporary people must challenge the issues such as drug addiction, alcohol, sexual abuse and violations, various sorts of assaults and cruelties, high benchmark of pornography, prostitution, pedophilia, and different kinds of bullying. The Department of Child and Family Services aims to ensure the safe and productive life of any child being in danger. Currently, it is hard if not impossible to find the country, which can praise itself with high rates of good family relationships and child protection. The current paper seeks to investigate the position of a social worker, namely Amanda Landriff.
Educational Background and Training
Being a new person who just dropped into this kind of a job, Amanda Landriff made the decision to give the interview, which would reveal her personal experience, professionalism, job duties, and her active or passive participation in the functioning of the social service agency. She is from the New York State though she was not a highly advantaged child. Therefore, being brought up as any ordinary child, she realized the magnitude of hard work and dedication. Although her parents were simple blue-collar workers with insignificant wages, they did everything to give their daughter a good education and fundamental basis for the future growth.
Although Landriff did not live a wealthy family, she knew that more disadvantaged children with money, psychological and mental problems needed special assistance and care. Finishing school, she was directed towards the career in sociology and social services. Having seen a plenty of terrible accidents with children, social injustice and violence, she understood that was the thing she wanted to do. It is not inevitable but advisory to pursue Master’s Degree in Social Service. After the successful completion of three-year courses in the University of New York, she graduated from Simmons College School of Social Work with Honors. Regardless of the fact that the United States is one of the dominant countries in the world, it faces numerous challenges that may gradually bring down the social welfare of the whole nation and an individual in particular.
Landriff was familiar with the issues the U.S. citizens faced. To become a qualified and certified social worker, it is advisable to examine people’s problems, especially those who live in poverty and poor conditions. The country maintains rules, laws and policies to increase the capacity as well as self-confidence and self-esteem yet it does not always works well. For a good training, Landriff chose the area of Bronx and Brooklyn making her way in the couple of schools potentially dangerous, with high rate of criminal cases, drug usage, and low record of educational achievements.
License Recognition
It is well-known fact that to receive the highest level of recognition and licensing, an individual is required to gain three years of experience. Landriff decided to obtain this license while working with children who underwent horrible family abuse or violence and experienced some mental traumas and losses. She played the part of a mentor, a social worker, a guardian, and a parent. Promoting sundry training and meeting, she was to talk to children about intimate issues, which worried them. She performed a unique mission, namely to make the victims feel special and significant. Such a job demands a lot of efforts and forces to be devoted since the children might not have a family. Supposedly, Landriff’s primary responsibility was to conduct the special kind of politics that could help engage all people in active adoptive and foster parenting. During three years, as a social worker, she not only increased the overall rating of most schools in that area but also became involved in work of non-governmental organizations in that region. Those organizations were the unity of all the volunteers and indifferent people, who wished to assist anyhow. Landriff helped set the particular strategy, which consisted in clearing the nearest surrounding from all the dirt, violence and social injustice. First, it was a non-official association. Subsequently, many influential people got interested in this project and made investments into its sustainable development.
Job Activities and Personal Experience
To write about it is quite an easy task; however, to turn it into reality is a more complicated way. After obtaining her license, Landriff decided to prove that she was worth this licensure. She started cooperating with other social workers to gain a greater effect. America is a rich state; however, not everyone is aware of the real conditions people live in the areas of New York such as Bronx, Queens or Brooklyn. The issues such as destroyed schools, uneducated children, and broken homes and families were to conduct in little amount of time. Therefore, she started training parents to engage them in the educational process of their children, created community playgroups for children, and investigated the parent-child relationships in a number of households. Notwithstanding, it is important to emphasize that she was working with the unprivileged and low-income families that consider their life more of a struggle rather than simple. As a social worker, she knew that her foremost objective was the movement of a problem onto another level, namely social, or public, for other people to understand that one person can do nothing if there is no motivation and support.
Work Preferences
Within months of work, Landriff set up the special vision for her future work. She devoted the primary attention to needy families and children who cannot express their true feelings and are in need of protection and advocacy. She sought to cope with the group cases, mostly taking care of neglected kids who need adoption and families in straitened circumstances. The social worker’s job is not only talking and speaking. Daily, a social worker receives a plenty of reports, which must be approached individually. It means that the former should be always ready to help, cooperate and fix the problem regardless of obstacles. While working with new cases and new children, it is of vital importance to check their state, whether they get better and fight with effects of bad treatment.
Professional Development
What concerns foster parenting is a very intricate question. Landriff as a beginner in the sphere of social service made her decision to take a special care of this troubling item. She states that improving children’s life, the future may become brighter and happier. Nowadays, innocent children are abandoned due to either indisposition of having a child or inability to raise it in good conditions. The most relevant point is that a kid should grow in a safe and permanent surrounding. Unfortunately, some people spare no thoughts about this, and thus almost every country has a greater percentage of orphans and socially disadvantaged children annually. Landriff considered her primary objective to improve the situation at least in the US, taking part in a chain of non-profit organizations’ meetings.
Being concerned about the future of such children, she claims that privileged, high-income and prosperous organizations and corporations should join their forces to struggle against this serious problem. As a motivated and self-directed social worker, she seeks to return old values of family relations, marriage and social connections. The actual pledge seems extremely tragic. The ancient beliefs into the balanced, sound and lovely family relationships lost its relish. Parents are not able to provide discipline learning, nurture healthy relationships and foster positive child’s progress.
Conclusion
The humanity is in a great necessity for a new approach to parenting because eventually, this problem may turn into the actual tragedy, which will be infeasible to outperform and smash. Landriff is one of the many similar people who endeavor best efforts to make the situation better. She possesses admirable qualities because such a work demands efforts, dignity and endless love for people. While asking her what she gets instead, there is a simple answer, “Happier families, blessed children and the brighter future.”
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