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I've been out of undergrad for a short time and have been working in the nonprofit sector. For some personal background I'm a white collar desk jockey at a big nonprofit. The money is fine, my current career track promising but not super interesting. I feel like I can coast here for quite some time truthfully but eventually I feel as though my lack of interest in climbing the ladder into management means I will someday have to poo poo or get off the pot. I got into nonprofit work because I like to serve communities, but I'm definitely in an intermediary role. I think a lot about shifting to direct social service provision, so is social work a good option? I don't actually know a lot about the field, hence this thread. A few questions to start off with: BLS says the job market is growing, but does anyone know if this is in particular areas? I'm possibly interested in school-based social work or possibly working within the healthcare system, but I don't know much about loving anything about what social workers do in either of those areas, actually, so any insight would be appreciated. Like even down to job titles, that's how little I know about social work. I understand the day in a life is different from specialization to specialization but would appreciate anecdotal discussion about that as well. I hear emotional burnout is a problem, can anyone elaborate? Do you like what you do? The median pay doesn't look super promising, though this isn't a dealbreaker for me necessarily. How do people end up moving into higher salary ranges in the field? BLS says clinical positions require an MSW. What is considered a clinical vs. non-clinical position? More school-related: What are the differences between MSW programs? What should one look for in an MSW program, generally? Is there a significant advantage in pursuing a full-time MSW as opposed to a part-time program? Also, if anyone has any personal experience with a social worker I'd like to hear about that as well, although I'm not sure BFC is the best place to ask that question in particular. TIA.
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Jan 30, 2018 07:59
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| # ? May 5, 2024 11:24 |
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Not many goon social workers I guess. I would love to hear some career social workers answer some of these questions. My partner is graduating in May with her MSW and is starting to poke around on job websites (her current placement offered her a position, but the organization is a mess). I can't offer a whole lot in terms of specifics, but I can throw out some general stuff. As you may have heard from talking to social workers or other social service professionals, having an MSW really opens up your opportunities. It's versatile and, as you see on job sites, required for a lot of higher paying positions. Also, if you're a man with an MSW, it's really easy to get a job. Bilingual? Places will line up for you. My partner definitely comes home from time to time mentally fried; she works in an outpatient clinic, so not the most tragic stuff, but dealing with it is part of the job. Of course, you won't have time to worry about "self-care" while you're in school if you're full time, so make sure you've got healthy coping habits in place. She loves what she does, and enjoys most of her clients though. However, the two organizations she's done her placements with have been huge loving circuses (most social service organizations where we are tend to be though). Dealing with insurance is a nightmare of the highest order. The pay stuff, I don't know about. You'll hear A LOT of people saying you don't get into it for the money. It gets annoying. So if you go to school full time, well, good luck holding down a job. Some people do it, but you'll be going to class full-time, in unpaid placement 16 to 20 hours a week, and studying. It's not a HARD subject, for the most part, it's just a lot, and some irritating busy work and introspection. So think about your financial stability before pursuing full-time. Note: my partner hates, hates, hates school, so this may be skewed perspective. The only things I know about MSW programs really, is that there are good and bad ones - George Mason University has kind of a bad one, Virginia Commonwealth University has a really good one. These are testimonials from former classmates. Some programs are a mess, some are run very well. On the other hand, while being selective might make your experience better, but from I've heard, as long as you're not getting it from Devry, then the school doesn't really matter. Also, there are the micro vs. macro distinctions. Many programs offer one or both tracks, some offer combined, probably don't do a combined one, as you can get a watered down experience with both tracks. Micro is like clinical, doing therapy, counseling, casework. Macro is like policy work, lobbying. A lot of this is pretty second hand; I hope this can get some discussion going. I'd love to see some talk about getting a job, the job market, etc.
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Feb 25, 2018 05:41
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I am a licensed certified social worker in Maryland! School and hospital social work are actually decent areas to work in, provided you have a master's degree. A BSW is going to get you seriously poo poo-tier positions with all of the work of the master's level and half to a third of the pay. It's actually not THAT hard to get into a decent Master's program, provided that you have a Bachelor's degree already. All you may need to do is take a few classes in behavioral health stuff at your local community college. The work you do at a physical health hospital will primarily be case management style work, setting up patients with necessary services after discharge, as well as some behavioral health assessment, such as asking people about their drinking, drug use, and other habits. This is also (obviously) a facet of behavioral health hospital social work, but there you may also have clinical duties in terms of assessment and treatment of mental illness. The work you'd do at a school would usually be interfacing with the student and their family to refer for assessments of learning disabilities and to get them support services in the school and possibly elsewhere. It involves a lot of IEP meetings and family and group dynamics. If you've decided on your specialty, search for a school that specializes in that. As a clinical social worker I made the mistake of going to a (highly rated!) school that specializes in macro social work. It wasn't super helpful. Luckily I had some GREAT internships that really made the experience worth it, despite both being unpaid. In terms of day to day life, I run my own practice. So from about 9 until noon I am in my office working on paperwork, marketing, fighting with insurance companies, and currently writing up advertising for contractors. In reality there's also a lot of loving around on the Internet. I see a maximum of six clients per day from 12pm onward, for 45-minute sessions with 15 minute breaks to get notes done in between. "Clinical stamina," defined vaguely as the amount of clients you can see before you start to make dumb mistakes, differs dramatically from person to person. I can see about 25 people per week consistently before I start to gently caress up and double book people or forget their names or get soooo loving pissed off at United Healthcare that I stop giving a poo poo about their denied claims and lose money. A huge piece of avoiding burnout as a clinical social worker (defined as someone who focuses on the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness) is having a specific niche that you really enjoy working with, and leaning into that as much as possible. Personally, I do couples counseling with the LGBTQ+ community. This rocks, I love it, couples sessions usually leave me feeling energized rather than drained, and I like the complexity of working with a community that has been historically mistreated by the mental health community. You get into higher pay in a couple of ways, most of which are gonna be pretty specific to your field and your state. Here's a brief overview of how it works in Maryland: Licensed Graduate Social Workers have MSWs and have completed the LGSW exam. They require supervision in order to work in the field from a more senior social worker. These guys will usually have the lowest pay after getting their Master's. A Licensed Certified Social Worker has had at least two and a half years of experience and a certain number of individual supervision hours, and has completed the LCSW exam. These guys make more money because they can work unsupervised in case management settings, and can become supervisors themselves. Then there's the Licensed Certified Social Worker - Clinical which means you can work unsupervised in clinical settings and can become a clinical supervisor. Supervisors are ALWAYS going to make more money, but it's a minimum of 2 years of grad school and three years of low paying work before you can get there. And during that grad school experience, as pat_b mentions, you're unlikely to be able to work at all. I lived on loans and a super part time call center job. So much of this is specific to the state you're in, your best bet to get more info is to look at your states Board Of Social Work Examiners and see what they have to say about the experience. I'm happy to answer any more questions you have!
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Mar 19, 2018 18:21
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thunderdome winner
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I'm a social worker in the bay area in California and my speciality is child welfare (aka Child Protective Services) which gets a bad rap but honestly is my passion and pays pretty good too! I'm also an "associate clinical social worker" (ASW) which in California is what they call someone post-masters who is working on becoming a clinical therapist (LCSW). I'm going to be done with my licensure this year. MSW programs are ranked, but I've found that any decent state school will do. I went to UC Berkeley because I'm a fancy idiot who likes student loans. If I could do it again I'd have gone to a cheaper state school. You get out of it what you put into it. In California you won't have a shot at becoming a hospital social worker or a school social worker without a master's. School social workers in California also require an additional credential called a PPSC that is easiest to get while interning in grad school but can be done afterwards at a cost of time and money. Generally the pay is because a chunk of social workers make bullshit minimum wage (bachelor's level non profit work) and some make good money (MSW and LCSW government, hospital, private clinical practice). The good jobs are competitive and require a competitive resume and skill set. Child welfare is the redheaded step child of social work because everyone sort of hates us because we take people's kids away. But we also do our best to preserve families and work with involuntary clients, which is a deeply challenging clinical skill. People in my agency make from 75-100k a year because it's a challenging job and they're aiming to recruit good folks for it. Social workers that work for non profits we contract with (such as therapists, case managers, behavioral specialists) might have my same credentials but make 30-50k. I tend to believe that this is a field where you will always be able to find a job, but it's hard to find the job you love that pays what you need to live. Burn out is real when you're dealing with human suffering and emotionally heavy subjects. Having a client die, for instance, isn't something most people have to deal with. Neither is heading the details of childhood sexual abuse, or witnessing the mental health symptoms following serious domestic violence or substance use. I find the MSW program to get a necessary "conditioning" step in the career process where you get to adjust to the horrors in the world while still in a supportive learning environment. Pros: - lots of jobs - a hugely wide field with lots of specialities - helping people - often very parent-friendly work places with maternity leave and flexible schedules - different levels of licensure and credentials to improve your pay scale Cons: - huge range of pay scale skewing lower - can be difficult to "switch tracks" and grow different expertise - many entry level jobs are low paid or require a master's - emotionally difficult work - best paying specialities have barriers to entry
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Mar 20, 2018 03:47
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I'm an MSW student in New York who will be graduating in two months ( ). My focus is very much on clinical work and I'm planning to do postgraduate analytic training, continuing at the institute where I'm currently doing my field work. Chernobyl Princess's description of her average day is pretty much what I'm gunning for down the road, just with a different speciality. Also I won't have to deal with insurance because all of my clients will be wealthy neurotics who come three times a week and pay out of pocket, natch.Echoing what others have said, you really do need an MSW (and to be licensed) for any decent job in the field, clinical or otherwise. Requirements for masters-level licensure and advanced clinical licensure vary by state and generally involve taking an exam, but by the time you'd have to worry about that you'll understand how it works. I'll talk about schools: social work is a really broad profession, encompassing case work, advocacy, community organizing, psychotherapy, research, public policy, etc. Schools tend to specialize somewhat, and you can wind up with a very different experience and set of skills if you go to a program with, say, a clinical focus, vs. one that is more oriented towards macro-level social issues. School reputation can also be pretty important when it comes to landing a job after you get licensed, and a sizable number people wind up getting jobs through the internships they do during their MSW, your placement at which depends on your program's relationship with local agencies. I'm at NYU, which has been a fantastic (if hideously expensive) experience -- the social work school at NYU has historically been very focused on clinical work in comparison to, say, Columbia (macro focus) or Hunter (social justice focus), and as a result NYU MSW students are definitely privileged when it comes to getting clinical internships. The agency I'm at now doesn't even accept interns from other programs. So, definitely consider the type of work you'd like to do and make sure that factors into the programs you would be applying for. Mocking Bird is speaking wisdom when she talks about social work being emotionally difficult work. Before I applied for my MSW program, I took some classes as a nonmatriculating student to get a sense of what it would be like. I had also volunteered for a year working at a suicide prevention hotline, which helped me gauge how I would respond to the kind of intense emotional experiences and crisis situations I would likely encounter in social work. Honestly, I think one of the best things someone can do in preparation for a career in social work is to begin therapy -- it's something I believe all social workers should do as a part of their own professional maintenance and self-care, and it can help you to cultivate the self-awareness and internal resources that you'll need to be an effective social worker.
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Mar 20, 2018 05:56
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Yep, if you don't think you could benefit in some way from therapy, social work isn't for you because you will be a smoldering pile of ashes by year 5. And yeah holy poo poo I'm five years post-MSW into this nonsense. Jesus Christ. This is also a profession that values a neurotic level of organization and attention to detail, an emotional even keel, and SOCIAL SKILLS. If people don't want to spend time in a room with you it will be really hard to succeed, and MSW programs can be something of a killing ground for the insane or awkward. Imagine entering a job field where people can essentially read your mind because they spend every moment of their waking working lives assessing and interpreting non verbal signals and that gives you an idea. I have a strong personality and spent two years getting absolutely battered by my mentors until I learned to regulate it.
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Mar 20, 2018 06:43
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Mocking Bird posted:Yep, if you don't think you could benefit in some way from therapy, social work isn't for you because you will be a smoldering pile of ashes by year 5. Having had some life and work experience after undergrad will serve the OP well. I've seen a lot of babby advanced standing students who got to grad school and were totally unprepared to deal with Real poo poo -- not just in terms of resilience and coping skills, but also things like how to conduct yourself in a work environment or how to communicate effectively with bosses and supervisors. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 15:03
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It's great to see this thread get some traction. Thank you goons who have responded. Mechafunkzilla mentioned that some programs have a social justice focus. What's that all about? At a glance the career path there doesn't seem super clear to me. Does this align with a macro program, i.e. research for lobbying purposes? Are career prospects vastly different for people in clinical versus people who do non-clinical degrees? Are the primary barriers to entering specialized or high-paying fields mostly the cost of certifications? I've wavered a lot on this thought process just because I know at least one person with an MSW who simply ended up in regular nonprofit work such as what I do, and also many applicants to positions in roughly my pay and skill grade at my organization had MSWs. My assumption, though, is that they just realized they didn't want to follow through with the career path. I'm still extremely interested, so the insight is greatly appreciated.
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Apr 3, 2018 06:31
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Doc Fission posted:It's great to see this thread get some traction. Thank you goons who have responded. It can be macro work, but it also includes advocacy, community organizing, working with individuals in the criminal justice system, etc. Even within clinical work, some programs will focus on things like antiracist practice, feminist practice, and postcolonial practice more than others. quote:Are career prospects vastly different for people in clinical versus people who do non-clinical degrees? The degree is just an MSW, there is no "clinical MSW". There is a post-graduate clinical license (here in NY, the LCSW) that you can to test for when you've met the requirements (usually a few years and a few thousand supervised clinical hours), which is what allows you to work in private practice and opens up some opportunities for higher-paying jobs. The majority of social workers don't get an advanced clinical license and don't need one for the work that they do. Where you get your MSW isn't going to lock you out of any career paths, the worst that'll happen is you might not feel as well-prepared by your classes and internships for the work you wind up doing. quote:Are the primary barriers to entering specialized or high-paying fields mostly the cost of certifications? Unless you mean the cost of a master's program, no, not at all. Social work is not like IT or engineering. Pay is generally driven by demand and how much money and power the populations you're working with have; geriatric social work is probably the highest paying specialty, because there are fewer social workers who want to work with older adults, and because the those services are used by people from every socioeconomic group. In general, specialized work in a hospital -- for instance, oncology social work, or working for the VA -- tends to have strong salaries and benefits, but are highly sought-after. quote:I've wavered a lot on this thought process just because I know at least one person with an MSW who simply ended up in regular nonprofit work such as what I do, and also many applicants to positions in roughly my pay and skill grade at my organization had MSWs. My assumption, though, is that they just realized they didn't want to follow through with the career path. I'm still extremely interested, so the insight is greatly appreciated. You should have some sense of what you want to do and what populations you want to work with before starting an MSW program. It should be something that's interesting to you, and that you think you'd be good at. It's the kind of career that straight up isn't going to work out if it doesn't feel like it's your calling. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 07:39
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I applied for a job today that pays $96k a year and I have five years post-MSW experience. The difference between me and the MSWs I supervise from non profits that make $40k is that I have expertise in complicated child welfare practice. Specialization coupled with skill and passion is how you make money. If you want to be a licensed therapist (it’s much the same in California, about two years of supervised clinical work and a test) you can make decent money if you are a talented networker and passionate about your practice and work with populations that have income. Those MSWs I supervise don’t necessarily need their degree to do their job at the non profits (usually therapeutic case management) but there wouldnt be a advancement ceiling for them if they came to work with me. My stepmother worked her way up the ladder without a degree but now she has almost zero job mobility because she’d have to start from the bottom again in a new position.
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Apr 3, 2018 15:34
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| # ? May 5, 2024 11:24 |
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I'm a certified peer support specialist and recovery coach. I'm guessing my job counts as "non-clinical" and I make poo poo for money comparitively, but I absolutely love my job. I thought I was a waste of human, doomed to be heavily medicated and on SSI for the rest of my life. ~3 years ago I started DBT therapy as my last effort to remain alive and maybe even get my poo poo together if I was lucky. I did two years of DBT therapy, and last year I was hired onto the DBT team that saved my life. I have a loving GED and never thought I would ever have a job, let alone be a member of a DBT team. My supervisor was someone I knew "before" when he had to come screen me for my multiple hospital visits. I just can't express how much of a trip this has been. So yeah, I make poo poo for money compared to my co-workers, but compared to SSI and having been trapped in poverty- I'm loving rich now as far as I'm concerned. I work one on one with people and run various groups and co-facilitate the DBT group (has to be led by a masters level). I'm co-occuring so I went ahead and got my certification for recovery coach so in addition to that I am on the substance use disorder team as well. I'm not confined to an office and thoroughly enjoy working with people within the community and in their homes. I thought about going back to school when I first got hired, but I changed my mind. I absolutely love being a peer. I wouldnt have it any other way. I see the ungodly amount of stress my co-workers go thru who are working on their degrees. gently caress that. I figure I can put as much work in on my side hustles and make close enough to someone with a bachelors. Burn out is a thing, but I think I have an advantage there as a peer as well. Having gone through DBT and years of therapy previous to that, I have mad skills for coping. I am blessed that many of my co-workers were once MY treatment team, so I have a bond amd level of trust at work that I doubt many people experience. Occasionally I will be triggered by something someone says, but once I realise what happened I can effectively cope with it. Self-care as most people know it is a crock of poo poo in my opinion. Self care isn't about treating myself to nice things or movies, hot baths or whatever. It's about taking proper care of myself, which isn't all that enjoyable, and doing that in a very self disciplined way. I just sort of went all over the place but if anyone has any questions about peer supports and/or recovery coaches I can do my best to answer.
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May 30, 2018 01:36
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