What's the Difference?

What’s the difference?

“So are you a counselor or a therapist?”
“I’m a Social Worker”
“Oh you volunteer, you have a big heart…”
“Oh no, actually I’m paid”
One of the oft posed question when I tell people that I am a social worker (after clarifying that I am not a volunteer, and that I am paid for my services), is what exactly do social workers do? My common answer, which has been rehearsed over the years, after much revision and contemplation, has been summarized as such:
“Oh mainly we do casework management and counselling, basically helping clients-in-need negotiate the demands of the environment. “
“Oh…so you are a counselor!”
“Hmm… Not technically, but we do aspects of counseling and therapy in our work I guess..”
“So what’s the difference?”
This would be the point that I am usually stumped for answers; for the difficulty to put an exact definition on the expansive range of services the profession encompasses is immense. Delicate is the issue of clarifying the differences, for the fear of offending the different factions that make up the helping profession.
Indeed this onerous task of identifying the unique traits of social work has proved the most challenging hurdle towards professionalization of the profession. Doctors, Teachers, Architects, Engineers, all have a specific set of roles and responsibilities that are synonymous with the profession. You can easily assign a verb to each of these professions to facilitate simple understanding when speaking to your 4 year old son:
“Mom, what does a Doctor/Teacher/Architect/Engineer do?”
“A doctor HEALS, a teacher TEACHES, Architects DESIGN, and Engineers BUILD”,
“Well, what about a social worker?”
“Hmmm…. A social worker HELPS I guess..”
“Oh kind of like a volunteer?”

My personal life is riddled with occasions where I undertake great pains to define my profession, a task I have set upon myself for the sake of raising the professional standards of Social Work.
Where else can I be counseling a family where the 12 year old daughter is acting out due to the parents impending divorce at 11 in the morning; and then be at the back of a lorry fetching furniture for my client who has just relocated to a new home? You could be planning a research article on the challenges faced by low income families in one week, and be out in the streets conducting outreach in the other. Social work is a profession you will never be bored in.

It brings us back to the original question, so what makes social workers different from the other helping professions? The general idea that seems to be going on is that Social Workers have that element of case management. To put it simply, is that we get down and dirty with the client, stepping in together with the client to collaborate together, and negotiate the resources with the client. We are the ones who assess that the client has difficulty going down to immigrations to negotiate his or her residential status, and then accompany her to negotiate and mediate her case. We physically conduct home visits to teach the family life skills in managing the care of their children, on top of the working with the family pertaining to their emotional stresses and difficulties in juggling so many tasks and responsibilities at a young age.

We are defined to be working more for the economically disadvantaged, providing services they need, but would not be able to afford in the normative demand-supply model. Counsellors only conduct counseling sessions in the office, and only for cases which just need counseling aspects only, namely emotional, marital and child behavioural issues. Therapists are then one step ahead, highly skilled in psychotherapy techniques, and charge exorbitant prices for their services, catering to the high income market. Psychologists then just analyse how the mind works, but the psychologist can also be a counselor or a psychotherapist. These divisions and definitions fuel the ire of our passion, each profession fighting to be better and more established and recognized over the other. I recall the meeting of two agencies, where social workers and counselors were discussing their helping models when working with their targeted clientele. One could sense the immense tension when discussions were raised regarding the effectiveness of the models utilized.

For a time, I was also pulled into this fiery brand of passion, promoting Social Work avidly against the other professions. This began in university, all the way to my second year in my organization, where a heated argument began with me and a counselor from another agency, where I was busy proselytizing the need for her to do “Social Work” aspects of conducting intensive home visits to better understand the client’s situation at home, before insinuating that the client was unmotivated to work. As I lay in my bed that night, I realized the folly of my argument, in bringing in the differences of our respective professions, where this situation could have instead have been resolved amicably through a discussion of our interests FOR THE CLIENT. In defending our different professions, we not only widened the gulf of collaboration, but also, in our selfish way, put our own personal interests over the client.

For me, the client comes first, professional interests second. After all, we are all helping professionals, and that is how I would like to defend my own Professionalism. Counseling and therapy is part of the package of providing help for the client. If it is assessed that a client may need aspects of case management to negotiate her resources, then it is the responsibility of the professional, be it the counselor, therapist, or social worker, that the client has access to that element of help. The helping professional may do it herself, but may also refer to other professionals, if limited by the scope of her respective organization. It does not matter, as long as the client is helped. Respect and willingness for collaboration is imperative in such a multidisciplinary realm of “Providing Help”.

“So what’s the difference?”

“Well I’m not sure, but tell you what: What matters is that we all strive to make a difference in the lives of our clients. We have our own unique ways, but ultimately we hope to invoke positive change in our clients’ lives.”