Social workers fight every day in situations that often yield few victories. Their cause is great, but their resolve needs to be greater yet.

This is what is needed in a profession where children enter complicated systems not always built with their best interests in mind.

What does it take to be a social worker who fights for the rights of children? Aside from a master’s degree, the recipe for a good child welfare social worker involves grit, passion, and an enormous amount of patience.

In this article, we will take a look at how you can determine if this route is right for you.

Desire to Do Good

You have to enter social work specifically with the goal of making a difference in your community. The work is too hard and the compensation too modest to make this career path sustainable for any other motivation.

Kids who come into contact with social workers are always in really vulnerable positions. Sometimes it might be a moment of acute stress.

A school social worker, for example, might help a first grader deal with their anxiety at one part of the day.

However, the challenges can be long-term as well. That same social worker might work tirelessly in the afternoon to get help for a homeless student. No matter how big or small the problem, social workers are filling the role of community heroes simply by doing their jobs.

Ability to Work Through Stress and Pain

Social workers also need to be willing to work through difficult situations. People on your caseload probably don’t want to be there. The people you are trying to help may treat you with hostility. Even when they don’t, there will be inevitable frustrations. There are so many moving parts involved in any situation requiring social work. Many of them have the capacity to bite you in the butt.

Emotional resilience becomes a professional requirement in this field, where progress is rarely linear and setbacks are common.

You need to be empathetic enough to retain your passion for the work, but not so sensitive that you find the work devastating. That’s a difficult balance to strike and one that even the best social workers routinely struggle with throughout their careers.

Accept the Certainty of a Losing Record

To work as a social worker is to live in an environment where the best-case scenario sees you experiencing only very modest success. For that matter, you’ll need to decide on a soft definition of what it even means to succeed.

Foster kids, for example, experience difficult long-term outcomes at a staggeringly high rate. They are less likely to go to college. More likely to have negative interactions with the police. A regrettably high percentage of them will go on to experience incarceration.

As a social worker, you need to reframe what success looks like. These kids are in very desperate circumstances, and the system itself, though well-intended, is very far from perfect. You can’t change any of that. You can still change these children’s lives simply by doing your job.

Here’s a good way to look at it: You witness hard outcomes, but you don’t cause them. Failures that do occur are a consequence of these circumstances, while any successes are often a direct extension of your work. The job will always be tough. However, if you can accept that arrangement, it might be the right career for you.

Getting the Job

We’ve identified that you are the right candidate for the job. Unless you happen to already have a master’s degree in the appropriate field, however, it might be a few years before you can start the application process.

Social workers generally begin their careers with a BSW. It’s this undergraduate degree that will allow you to work in a variety of entry-level positions, including those that involve child welfare.

At this stage in your career, you’ll work directly with children and their families, managing your own caseload. That’s meaningful work in its own right, but there are some things you should know:

• The hours can be wild. You might work evenings and weekends. You might even sometimes be on call. The people on your caseload will have their own schedules. Let’s say, for example, that your job is to supervise child visitations with their biological parents. However, Mom can only meet on Saturdays. Well. There goes your weekends. Humans have needs around the clock, which means you’ll need to accept a certain level of volatility in your schedule.
• The pay is…well. Decide for yourself. Well, wealth relative. That said no one has ever accused a social worker of being in it for the money. Salary will vary based on where you are working, but first-year social workers generally make less than $50,000.
• The responsibilities are basic. Higher-level work is generally only possible with a master’s degree. It’s at this stage that you make choices impacting not just individual children but the community of minors experiencing social work services in your area.

The good news is that getting an advanced credential is designed in every way to be user-friendly. If you already have a BSW, you can enter Advanced Standing MSW programs that typically take just one year to complete.

For those with degrees in other fields, the MSW provides a direct pathway to pivot into social work regardless of your undergraduate major.

Standard MSW programs welcome students from diverse backgrounds, like psychology, business, or even the arts. The MSW remains the essential qualification that transforms career changers into fully qualified social workers eligible for licensure.

Interested in getting started? There are so many ways to get this life-changing credential. From traditional in-person learning to fully remote coursework, or even hybrid environments, there is something out there for everyone. Find the path that makes the most sense for you.