The Challenge to Social Workers

The biggest challenge to Social Workers is the need to create community wherever we find ourselves. We might be working with people on a one-on-one basis, in which case the challenge is to help this person become a satisfied member of whatever community he/she chooses. We might be working with communities as a whole, in which case the challenge is to help that community feel satisfied with itself (especially in comparison to other communities). Either way, Social Workers get involved when there is a social problem in the community -and there is work to be done to help people feel satisfied.

The difficulty in Social Work is that many people are naturally a part of some community and feel burdened by some responsibility that they assume as a member of that community. Thus -many people are dissatisfied because of how they see themselves in relation to their community, or else are dissatisfied because of how they see their community in relation to other communities (that their community is burdened by other communities).

In this sense, competition amongst people creates a sense of separation from each other. It is this sense of competition that divides people into communities, in which we must form bonds with similarly burdened people who share in our dissatisfaction with other communities.

It is because of the sense of dissatisfaction that comes from separation that many Social Workers are resistant to the cause of separation -competition. The inherent problem with this is that a lack of competition leads to a lack of productivity and efficiency. Thus -Social Workers are often filled with the good intentions of uniting people with communities and communities with each other -but unable to efficiently do it.

The Nature of Social Work is such that the value that drives us also inhibits us. The key to all of this being to embrace a sense of healthy competition amongst ourselves and to approach each other and the populations we serve with the understanding that there is value in competition -but no value in the ultimate sense of superiority and domination that results from competition.