Social Worker, Georgia Southern University

>> Batch 8541: My Name is Abbey Johnson and I'm currently a professor at Georgia Southern, but I was a social worker in the field of mental health and the field of grief and bereavement. So, the job of social work is multifaceted but ultimately the job of social work is to tend to your client's needs; you have clients and of course in mental health is one area of clients and like say Hospice is another are of clients and when I worked, well in all of them you still have to do these certain activities. You still have to these certain performances are expected of you like your intake interview and, you know, getting to know the client making them feel comfortable, there are procedures on how to make the client feel comfortable and then of course like empathy is a huge, huge aspect of it and empathy of course if putting yourself in the shoes of the other, so you know, your heart really has to go out to these clients whether that be in a, you know, a mental health facility or that be, you know, coping, helping someone cope through loss, so it's a very emotional job, but it's a very like political job in which the policies are very important and you have restrictions on what you can do and how close you can get to the clients and so it's a lot of making sure that you complete the synopsis of whatever went on with you and the client; it's a lot of writing in that you want to be detailed so that the next person who, you know, assists the client has all the details and that's one of those policy parts, that's one of those professional aspects of it. So a typical day would be meet with client and once again you have to, not have to, you need to make them feel comfortable, you have very little information going into meeting the client so it's a lot of active listening and therefore you get as much information as possible within about 20 minutes and you schedule your next appointment, maybe mention some aspects you want to cover with the client. Ultimately, you're going to have this clinical plan for them to succeed in whatever their goals are and that goes into like the next week's meeting, but it's kind of a continuation of this all day. The idea of social workers in society is that they are overworked, their case loads are many and plentiful and they are, so it's a lot of back-to-back, you know, and once again putting on your game face and being able to make them feel comfortable and be active listeners and empathetic and so, you know, you're looking at maybe 40 cases a week, so every day you're going to meet, you know, 5 or so cases and a great deal of those making sure that you record all that accurate information so that the clinical team knows how to better assist the client.