Over the years, many people have gotten the impression that all social workers do is sit around in an office doing paper work or that they go out and take peoples kids away and are extremely underpaid by the government. These "social work stereotypes" can be heard from young adults in my generation (the early twenties population ) all the way through my eighty year old neighbors generation.
I have faced many of these stereotypes when I began my journey to becoming a social worker. When asked what I was attending graduate school for and I replied with social work, the facial expressions ranger from sad to surprised. The reactions from my audience made it pretty clear that they had heard the rumors about social work. My neighbor even went so far as to wish me good luck in finding a job that paid well. A similar reaction was heard from my grandmother who currently still believes that I am going to school for counseling and doesn't understand what a social worker does.
The reactions from those who I told that I was going to become a social worker didn't surprise me. These ideas were many of the same ideas I had before working with social workers at my previous internship.My ideas about social workers came from my mother who lived in a home where social workers worked with her foster siblings on a monthly basis.
With that said, I believe stereotypes about social workers do exist but only if we allow them too. If we advocate and educated our audience on our cause and why we want to be social workers, they will have a better understanding of social work and its importance and possibly change these ideas over time.
Hello. Actually I am conducting a research on how does stereotyping in social work affects the enrolees of BS Social Work. hopefully you can help me. Thank you.
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