Can you be a Social Worker in any Job?

Welcome back to the Social Work Café blog.

Episode 09 was a lot of fun to put together and share with you.

Karise McNamee, our guest, is an extraordinary social worker, academic, you name it, she has done it!

Perhaps most importantly, Karise is a meme nut like me!

Our conversation focused on Karise’s exciting social work career, both inside and outside of the human services industry.

I was keen to have a conversation about whether you can be a social worker in any job because it comes up from time to time in the classroom.

For example, I have the great pleasure of teaching an advanced theory subject for the Master of Advanced Social Work Practice.

It is usually the first subject postgraduate students undertake for that programme.

Some of the students in this subject have been in the field for several decades, and others start studying not long after initial qualification.

Every session, there is at least one student who contacts me to talk about their practice background.

They will tell me that they are unsure of how to critically reflect upon their use of theory because they haven’t worked in the human services industry for years (they are looking to return to the industry).

I usually ask them to think about the possibility that their social work identity was actually present in those jobs, but perhaps not noticeable at the time.

It is always such an interesting conversation to have.

Some students remain unsure, and others have “light bulb” moments about how they were actually using their social work knowledge and skills all along!

In episode 10, I have that kind of conversation with Karise.

She shares fascinating details about her various jobs, both before and after qualifying as a social worker.

Her work for the e-safety commissioner around child sexual abuse on the dark web gave me chills.

(Click here to listen to Karise speak more about that work.)

After graduating as a qualified social worker, Karise took that expertise into a child protection role.

I love how Karise describes being able to bring the expertise from her prior role (before graduating) into the child protection space.

She demonstrates how we do not come to social work as blank slates; we all have rich personal and professional backgrounds that enhance our future social work practice.

#StopDoubtingYourself

Karise then made a really interesting shift to the Department of Education.

This is where we talk about how Karise was employed in a role outside of the human services industry.

Karise spoke beautifully about the relevance of her social work identity and skills in that role.

Her active listening skills, in particular, set her apart as someone who could really hold an empathetic space with victims without compromising the objective requirements of her investigative role.

It sounds like we could all learn a thing or two about communication from Karise.

Karise also goes on to explain how her skills were also applied at the team and organisational levels by noticing and responding to the vicarious trauma she was observing around her.

These are fantastic examples of how a multidimensional social work skillset is transferable to any possible job AND how such skills are increasingly in demand outside of the human services industry (revisit EP02 with Cindy Smith).

Karise dishes out fabulous advice during our conversation.

I love how she approaches any new potential job with the question, “Will this role allow me to be a social worker?”

I can see how that will help you find a job that fits your professional identity. 

If I ever need a reality check about social work, I will give Karise a call and listen to this episode again.

She reminds us that social work “is all about being with people.”

It is also about being a disruptor, in the sense of challenging and changing the status quo.

Karise captures this in her definition:

Social work is about effecting positive change in the world.

 Karise unpacks this sentence further by emphasising that the change we seek involves addressing “unbalanced structures” and “shining a light on injustice.”

After we stopped recording, Karise made some fabulous follow-up comments about how she would describe social work with one word: courage. 

As disruptors, we need to be courageous to do our work.

I think that also resonates with themes from other guests, especially Patrick Lloyd when we spoke about social workers in public libraries (episode 06).

I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did.

Be sure to stay tuned for the next one.

I will be speaking with a friend of Karise about workplace self-care, which is very timely considering all of the themes we covered in this episode.

Stay courageous social work!

Dr. B

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