Social work is crucially important for millions of people around the world. You might not appreciate the industry fully until you suddenly find yourself in need of help, but it is a busy, vibrant field with wonderful people working to achieve the same goal: to help other people thrive. If you’ve ever known someone struggling to make ends meet, for example, you might already be familiar with the wonders that social workers can do. With their wealth of knowledge and access to resources, for people with many different backgrounds, social work matters. Given just how important it is to people around the country, it probably comes as no surprise that social workers can use all of the help they can get when it comes to ensuring their clients receive the best advice and care.
Collaboration is the backbone of social work, with the most successful professionals able to pull together interdisciplinary teams with their client’s best interests in mind. This article will explore the importance of honing resilience as a social worker by understanding when to call for backup.
Resilience in social work
Providing compassionate care to clients who are struggling is admirable work, and your efforts as a social worker touch millions. Every person you help spreads that love to their friends and family, too, meaning that throughout your career, you might reach thousands of people. In addition to the success and triumph that comes along with helping someone, however, might come more difficult experiences. Because they work with people who have experienced the best and darkest aspects of humanity, social workers must be able to bounce back from difficult experiences at work.
The ability to move beyond challenging events and situations is called resiliency. In social work, resiliency pertains directly to difficult experiences in the workplace, whether they are experienced with clients in person or are relayed to the social worker after the fact. Without it, social workers might suffer from compassion fatigue or burnout. Luckily, it is possible to hone resiliency to strengthen compassion satisfaction, which arises when you have the opportunity to help someone in need.
One of the main ways social workers can build resiliency is through collaboration with other professionals. By working directly with other people who are also doing their best to help clients, social workers have the chance to commiserate while also ensuring that their patients receive the best care possible.
Why is collaboration in social work important?
Social work isn’t a career that exists in a vacuum. While social workers do everything they can to help their clients, the reality is that social workers alone often can’t address all of the issues their clients are facing. On the contrary, it requires close collaboration with interdisciplinary teams with the rich and diverse expertise clients need to truly thrive.
Clients who need acute or ongoing medical care, for example, need someone to represent their best interests to other professionals. Social workers take that role. When they work with medical professionals, social workers serve as patient advocates who ensure that their clients not only receive the care they need but also that the members of their care team understand the unique social challenges each patient might be experiencing. Social justice issues can impede care and recovery when they go unaddressed, so the ability to keep the care team in the loop on social challenges directly impacts the care that patients receive.
In addition to making sure that their clients have access to every resource possible, the collaboration also allows social workers the chance to delegate some work and focus on the things that they can most effectively impact. Handing off responsibilities that require some expert attention not only frees up some time for social workers but also gives them access to other professionals who are facing the same challenges they are. This, in turn, helps them build support networks that can help them accept difficult experiences and move past them.
The ability to collaborate effectively and work in a team is critical to social work. Whether you are providing direct care or are working toward broader goals like passing public health legislation, you must be able to not only rely on other people but also be the kind of person other team members can rely upon. There are several benefits to successful collaborations in social work.
Benefits of collaboration
We’ve discussed a few of the broader reasons that collaboration in social work matters, but we haven’t explored some of the more specific benefits it offers. Here are four of the ways that collaboration helps not only the social worker but their clients as well:
Greater knowledge
The first benefit to look at is greater knowledge. As we’ve touched on a time or two in this article already, social workers are not experts on everything. While they go to school to have the widest knowledge available, there will always be situations that extend beyond their purview. Maybe you’re confident in your ability to help your clients secure funding for medical care but are less sure about how to interact with insurance and what requirements might need to be met. Reaching out to professionals in the insurance industry can help you not only provide comprehensive care to your clients but also permanently expand your knowledge in the area, making the next case you encounter similar issues easier to move through. In general, the more knowledge you have to offer your clients, the better.
Shared responsibility
Shared responsibility is the second benefit we’ll look at. Social work is hard, and sometimes, it is difficult to shoulder all of the responsibilities on your own. Collaboration is an important and effective tool that helps professionals spread responsibility enough to ensure that all necessary tasks are being completed as quickly and effectively as possible. The opportunity to rely on others in this way further protects social workers from burning out due to stress, and clients ultimately reap the benefits from collaboration in the form of an extended support system.
Greater resources
As much as working with professionals in other fields can expand your knowledge and understanding of specific issues, it can also dramatically increase the number and type of resources you have at your disposal. Pooling resources with your client’s care team can lead to reduced costs to the client without sacrificing any aspect of their aid. Whether you are securing money for rent or a medical procedure, professionals outside of social work might have the perfect tools to meet your needs.
Fewer professional barriers
Anyone who has ever tried to work through bureaucracy understands that the process is anything but simple. Collaborating with other professionals typically grants access to the support networks and relationships that the team members have. Moving through the medical system can be tricky, for example, but much less so if you’re working with a professional with inside knowledge and an innate understanding of the process.
Collaborations between social workers and community teams
Social workers interact with an incredibly diverse array of people as they help their clients. The kind of team members they require depends greatly on the social worker’s specific expertise and method of social work. Here are some of the most common collaborations in social work.
School social work
School social workers often have large teams designed to provide comprehensive care for their students. These teams often include:
- Parents or guardians
- School administrators
- Teachers
- Community members
- Health professionals
Note that this is not an exhaustive list but rather one that details some of the most common additions to school social work teams. The goal when creating a school social work team is to address all areas of a child’s life in order to help them face a bright and successful future. From mental health struggles to family breakdowns and poverty, social workers in the education system are often part of highly dynamic and expansive teams.
Healthcare social work
We’ve mentioned healthcare social work briefly, so we won’t spend too much time diving into it, but some of the most common members of a social work team in this area include family members, home caregivers, nurses, physician specialists and primary caregivers.
Social workers do their best to create effective teams to help their clients succeed both in the short term and long term.
Geriatric social work
Social workers who work exclusively with adults often work with seniors in situations that vary widely from one person to another. Some of the most common additions to adult social work care teams include attorneys, housing agencies, senior centers, caregiver agencies, and union retirement groups.
With a dynamic team of professionals in the areas above, adults in need of social work help stand a good chance of recovering and returning to their “normal” lives.
Police social work
You might not imagine law enforcement as an area with social workers, but there is a dedicated social work team behind many agencies. Care teams in this area tend to include occupations such as firefighters, police, hospital staff, paramedics, and family behavioral and mental health counselors.
Police social workers typically work with families and individuals who interact with police, from welfare checks to emergencies.
Military social work
Another industry you might be surprised to find has a dedicated social work community is the military. Members of the military and their families often use social work both while living on base and transitioning to civilian living. Care teams in military social work include:
- Family members
- Physicians
- Mental health counselors
- Housing agencies
- Physical therapists
Social workers in the military work with both enlisted members and their families to help provide relief in many different kinds of situations.
Child welfare social work
Child welfare is probably the most commonly recognized area of social work in the country. Social workers in this area specialize in keeping children as healthy and safe as possible. Potential care team members include caregivers, teachers, adoption and foster care agencies, judges and community leaders.
From helping children rescued from abusive houses find loving homes to securing healthcare for children in loving families, social workers in the child welfare sphere are crucial to the well-being and happiness of children across the United States.
How can you help?
Do you want to help people who are in desperate need of aid? As a social worker, you have the opportunity to care for people in all manner of different situations and provide them with the care they both need and deserve. With that in mind, let’s briefly talk about how to become an LCSW and LMSW in Georgia. The first step is finding the right educational program for your goals in the area you want to practice. Schools like Florida State University, for example, offer students in Georgia pathways to become licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs) and licensed master social workers (LMSWs) by providing them with education in many different areas of social work. These programs have 100% online coursework, meaning it can fit flexibly around your busy lifestyle. Once you’ve found the right school, rely on your institution’s resources to help network and gain expertise that will help you work where and how you want to.
Collaboration is crucial
Social workers are crucially important, and collaboration is a foundational element of successful social work. From medical care teams to teachers and parents, social workers must be able to work with a wide variety of professionals to provide their clients with the best care possible. If you’re interested in helping other people succeed in their goals, social work might be the right profession for you.
