If you’re thinking about a career in Social Work, but not sure if it is worth the time and investment, or perhaps you are already in an MSW program or graduated, and not sure what to expect next, stick around, because in this episode of The Mental Health Toolbox, I am about to share with you social worker career advice I wish I knew when I was starting out over fifteen years ago.
Social Work is a very rewarding, very challenging and a very diverse career path. So let’s break it down!
I will be answering some of your questions around:
- Why choose social work as a career?
- What are the career options in social work?
- Is social work a good career choice?
If you want to join these LIVE STREAMS and have your questions answered in real time, be sure to subscribe to the MHT YouTube Channel and Newsletter so you don’t miss the next one!
In this episode, I will cover social work career advice around:
- The graduate school phase
- The post-graduate phase
- The three umbrellas of Social Work: Macro, Mezzo, and Micro.
- The pros of a career in Social Work.
- The cons of a career in Social Work
- Career options
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Table of Contents
Watch The VIDEO: Social Worker Career Advice and Paths – What You Need To Know
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Listen To The EPISODE: Social Worker Career Advice and Paths – What You Need To Know
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Transcript
Hello, hello!
Happy Monday everybody.
Patrick here with the Mental
Health Toolbox.
Hey,
if you are thinking about becoming a
social worker,
there’s a couple things you
want to consider before you
jump on that wagon.
So before you go and get one
of these beauties…
So there’s some things you
might wanna consider.
And so I’m going to be
walking through some of
those considerations with you,
whether that means you are
currently a student or
considering getting an MSW in social work,
or you are already a social worker.
There’s some considerations
I wanna share with you
around some common
questions around career
paths and decisions and how
to make the most out of your degree.
Things I wish I had known
before I started out in social work.
So without further ado, let’s jump in.
Just a few housekeeping reminders.
If you have questions,
please do put on both ends,
bookend your questions with
four question marks in the comments.
It’s a lot easier for me to
find them that way if
things get a little busy in the chat.
All right.
On that being said,
thanks for joining us today
with the live.
I hope you get value from this.
And remember,
you can always reach out with questions,
topic requests using the
contact form on the website.
But more on that later.
So let’s go ahead and jump in.
Today we’re talking about
social work careers and what to expect.
So we’ll be going through
some basic questions around social work.
And I’ll be aiming to answer
the most popular ones,
such as why choose social
work as a career?
What are some of the career
options in social work?
And is social work a good
career choice in general?
So short answer, yes,
I think it’s a fantastic career.
Hence, I’m in social work.
But there’s it’s not it’s not.
created equal for everybody
in terms of what direction you take it.
Social work is a very diverse,
malleable degree and profession.
So we’re going to kind of
dive into the nuances of that together.
So hopefully you get some value from that.
And please,
if you know any other social workers,
anybody considering the
field of social work,
please do share this video with them.
It’ll be live up on YouTube
as soon as this stream finishes.
So you can always grab the
share button there and pass
it along to anybody who you
think might benefit
if they’re considering a
career in this field.
Alright, so…
Some things we’re going to
go over in this tutorial,
I guess if you want to call it that,
this little snippet of
education around my experience.
We’ll be starting off with
the graduate school phase, right,
talking a little bit about how that works,
maybe how to consider the
different schools you want to attend,
pros and cons around that.
We’ll be talking about the
postgraduate phase such as
looking for employment,
how to navigate those things,
what to expect, and
Really just broaden your
scope a little bit because
you don’t know what you
don’t know and it’ll help
us kind of think ahead and
begin with the end of mind that way.
We’re also going to be
looking at the three levels
of social work in terms of
where you might want to do
the work of social work on the macro,
meso, or micro levels.
We’ll be talking about the
pros of a career in social
work as well as the cons of
a career in social work.
And of course, career options,
because I feel like it’s
really important to understand,
and this is not something I
was aware of until I got
deeper into social work,
that there are a lot of
different avenues you can take down,
a lot of ancillary things
you can do in this career,
and how you can really kind
of make the most and create
a career by your design or
lifestyle around the
different opportunities.
So we’ll be talking about that.
All right.
So, a little bit about me,
if you don’t already know,
I’m a social worker, aka LCSW,
that stands for Licensed
Clinical Social Worker.
I also have a master’s in criminal justice,
a little bit more about
that later when we talk
about dual degree programs.
I also do contract work for
the Superior Court.
Technically it’s coined as
an expert witness.
I’ll talk more about that later,
but that’s more of the
contract type work we’ll get into.
I also have a telehealth private practice,
which is great because then
I can work from home,
have more time with the family,
less back and forth stuff.
Plus, you know,
all the benefits of telehealth.
You can see people all over, right?
I have 12 plus years in the
mental health space post-grad.
I consider myself an underdog,
meaning I had to be scrappy, you know,
to figure things out along the way.
And yeah, the importance of that.
I think most people in this space,
you know, had some hard knocks.
And that’s why we want to be
of service to others, right?
I’m a family man.
That’s a number one priority
for me Hence the telehealth
stuff like to be as home as
much as I can I’m also a
fur daddy to my doggies who
are currently sleeping on
the rug behind me and I am
an educator such as this case in point.
I love YouTube.
I love podcasting It’s something I got
More into during the
pandemic started off as a
blog podcast a little
before the pandemic it but
Definitely that was my
pandemic project was
getting into podcasting and I love it.
This is my passion I want to
do more of this more lives
So the more feedback I get
from you about what you
would like to benefit from
these lives The better the
better I can serve you and
it really helps when I know
I’m being of service.
So,
all right So let’s jump off with the
graduate school phase All right
So when we’re talking about
graduate school,
the first consideration we
want to look at is public versus private.
When we’re looking at public schools,
right, there’s usually a timeline.
And that’s one of the first
considerations is if you’re
looking to transfer to a graduate program,
just like an undergrad,
a lot of them are not open enrollment.
So there’s a timeline there.
So that’s a con, right, in terms of
the time it’s going to take
for you if you have any gap
year or that transition
period one of the pros I
would say is the cost right
public schools tend to be
more cost effective whereas
private schools tend to not
be as cost effective but
there is the usually the
luxury of access so you can
jump right in maybe and
like in such as was my case
The private school where I
went was Loma Linda
University and they were
the closest to where I lived.
So it was about convenience
and it paid off.
I had a great education
there and I’m sure most MSW
programs are great education,
but it really comes down to
looking at making sure
you’re looking at those
Pros and cons, public versus private.
Do some tours.
I would strongly encourage you, you know,
getting a personal tour in
the facility and get to
feel for the staff and the
setting and whether you’re
going to look at virtual or in-person.
Those things are important distinctions.
All right.
Also considering the
traditional versus online
hybrid programs.
I know since the pandemic,
a lot of schools have moved online.
that’s cool I think it’s
great to have more access
if you’re a busy parent for
example you have kids
online school might be a
better choice for you right
if it if it fits your
schedule there’s definitely
something to be said for
being in the classroom such
as connecting with other
graduate students having
that uh one-on-one for me
one of the best things
about being in-house with a msw program
was the ability to role-play
with my colleagues,
which was really
fundamental in preparing
for the work of social work
for doing therapy,
was to practice those
skills with my peers.
To me,
it just seems like that would be
more difficult if it’s strictly online,
but maybe in a hybrid program,
that could work.
Other things to consider
with graduate school, of course,
are your internships, right?
So you typically have a year
of internships somewhere,
and it might be easier, theoretically,
if you’re doing an
on-campus kind of setting,
because then you have more
face-to-face collaboration
with your field liaison director,
instructors.
Um, just food for thought.
That’s, uh,
something you want to
definitely check out if
you’re looking at a online
type MSW program is how do
they work in the field?
Uh, internship, right?
Um,
is that something they facilitate for
you?
Like in my case,
my school found them for me,
so I didn’t have to do the footwork,
but maybe if you’re doing
an online type program,
maybe they don’t have that
luxury and you have to kind
of go find your own
internship and report back to them.
I don’t know,
but that’s definitely
something you want to consider.
All right, so terminal degrees.
A terminal degree is a
college degree where you
only need a certain level in order to,
quote,
be at the standard for that profession.
For medical doctors, it’s the MD.
For attorneys, it’s the JD.
For social workers, it’s the master’s,
the MSW.
Or if you’re an LMFT, same thing,
master’s level.
For psychologists,
it’s the PhD or PsyD level, right?
It’s typically the terminal degree, right?
The point at which you
qualify for the work that you want to do,
right?
In the marketplace.
So if you’re thinking about
being a psychology major,
then just understand it’s a
little bit more work in
terms of investment of your time.
Because you need your PhD level,
which is usually a little more time,
a year or two, three, depending.
So whereas a typical
master’s in social work, that’s two years,
three years part time.
So those are some definite
considerations to look at.
as well as dual masters, right?
I was just talking about the internship,
the field-based work that
we do in the master’s programs.
If you’re doing a dual master’s,
chances are you will need two years,
not one year when it comes
to an internship.
In my case,
since I did criminal justice
and social work,
my first year internship
was at a K through 12 program.
school, private SDA school.
The school I went to for my
master’s was Seventh Day Adventist,
so that made sense.
They were affiliated.
But my second year
internship was more focused
on forensic social work.
And so since I had the extra internship,
I feel like it really did a
lot for my clinical skills.
And it was a much more clinical setting,
if you were,
than my first year internship was.
In fact,
I was the first social worker that
the school had as an intern.
So, in a lot of ways,
I was kind of the guinea
pig in helping to set up
their manual for future
interns and that kind of thing.
And it was cool,
but it was more of an
academic-type setting,
working with a lot of younger kids and
doing lessons and that kind of thing,
and not so much straight therapy.
Whereas my second year
internship was at a youth probation camp.
So I was working more with gang youth,
and I learned a lot about doing, you know,
heavy-duty group therapy, family therapy,
working in conjunction with
the Department of Corrections, probation.
So it was…
a much richer experience,
but I wouldn’t have had
that experience in my
second internship had I not
done the dual degree, right?
And at the time,
the school I went to
offered two dual degree programs.
It was either gerontology,
which is working with the
aging population as a
second degree or a specialty,
or it was forensic, right?
So I went forensic.
That was cool, right?
Also good to note, some,
not all programs will offer,
not all schools offer like the psychology,
PsyD, PhD.
Some of them, it’s just social work, MFT,
that kind of thing.
And so if you’re
unsure about which way you want to go,
MSW versus PsyD or PhD,
you might want to look and
see if the school offers both.
So you can kind of feel that
out if you ever decide to
tack that on after your
master’s or if you want to
maybe switch gears, if that’s an option.
In my case, Loma Linda,
they didn’t have the PsyD
program at the time that I went there,
or I might have considered it.
I have it now, but they didn’t then.
The only PhD they had was in
public administration or something,
which wasn’t on my radar.
It was something I wanted to do.
So just things to consider
when you’re looking at schools, right?
What’s the terminal degree
you’re looking at?
What are the pros and cons
to in-house versus hybrid telehealth?
Definitely, I think
what I touched on with the
hands-on practice, the role-playing,
the internship stuff,
I think that’s where the
big difference is.
And what, if any,
dual master’s programs do they offer?
Definite questions you want
to ask when you’re taking that tour,
when you’re doing your
Googling around graduate schools.
So, the focus.
I talked a little bit about
that for a second.
What is the focus of your
masters you know is it
strictly clinical are you
leaning more toward policy
because there are some
programs where you can
elect to lean one more one
way than the other whether
it’s policy administration
clinical gerontology so
kind of figure out what
focus options they have and
which one feels right to
you if you do a little bit
of investigative work there okay
And we did touch on internships.
That’s definitely something
you want to look at.
What’s their track record for internships?
What’s their process?
Does the school place you?
Do they do the work for you?
Do they give you a lot of
options or they just kind
of work with one or two
main places and they just
cycle through that?
What’s their track record?
You can always interview
existing students who have
been through the process.
You can
reach out to the field
director who handles the
internships and ask them
what their process is.
And to me,
that’s one of the most important
aspects of the MSW program
is how they handle this
aspect because that’s going
to do a lot for preparing
you for the work that
you’ll be doing after graduate school.
All right.
So once you’ve finished up your master’s,
right, postgraduate phase now,
there’s some other
considerations now we have to deal with.
It’s not just the right
school and what the school has to offer.
Now it’s like, okay,
now I have my master’s, I have my MSW,
what’s next, right?
What are my options?
What are my considerations?
And so going back to what I
was talking about,
maybe even with the focus
of your master’s, you know,
do you want to be in a
clinical or non-clinical setting, right?
For example,
some people know they want to
go into policy.
Some people like the think
tank type thing.
They know they want to work
on assembly bills and laws
and advocate for the masses.
And that’s good to know.
Some people want to go into
administration.
Some people want to work
with children’s services.
right,
and maybe they don’t have any
intention of getting their LCSW.
There’s plenty of social
workers who get their MSW,
but they don’t necessarily
focus on the clinical aspect,
and that’s a very personal decision,
and it has some pretty
significant implications
long term I’ll touch on in just a minute.
Also,
considering the private versus public
sector,
I think it’s very common for
someone who is just starting out
post-grad to take the first job they get,
or the first job they can find.
I know in my case,
as I was preparing to
graduate from Loma Linda,
that I was applying to all the counties.
I was applying to Orange County,
San Diego County, LA County,
San Bernardino, Riverside, all of them,
right?
And
you know,
LA County just happened to be the
first one to get back to me.
And, you know,
at the time it was a really
good commute from where I lived over,
you know, Riverside County to LA County.
But, you know, I figured, hey,
that’s what’s on the table.
I’m going to take the interview.
And I took it and it paid off, right?
But it’s important to know
kind of what your risk
tolerance is or your distress tolerance,
I should say,
in terms of how far you’re
willing to relocate,
how far you’re willing to
go for an interview, the implications,
the commute.
I commuted for a good year and a half
and sometimes the drive home
was three hours, you know,
and I would get up at four
in the morning to get to
work to beat traffic,
and I did that for a year
and a half before I ended up moving,
and that was a long-term commitment,
but it was an investment, knowing that,
hey, if this,
get my foot in the door somewhere, and,
you know, if I like it, I’ll, you know,
I’ll move eventually if need be,
because gas, even back then,
I was spending like 800 a month in gas,
it was a lot, but totally worth it,
And I think just kind of
looking at your options and
not just taking the first
thing available.
And by that, I mean, like,
there’s a lot of private agencies,
a lot of nonprofit profit
agencies that you can work for.
But then one of the biggest
caveats is not just your salary,
but the benefits attached as well as.
the hours right your
clinical hours going back
to what we’re talking about
here before if your goal is
to be clinical many want to
do therapy you’re working
toward your license if you
if you’re not careful you
can easily say yes to a job
out of graduate school that
is not going to make it
easy for you to get your
hours you need enough
clientele you need a big
enough caseload that you
are doing both groups and
individual therapy right in
order to check off those
hours and at best you know
it’s going to take you two
and a half years pushing
three years to get those
hours just to sit for your
board exams post-grad so
for me that would be a top
priority if I was looking
at a clinical track um
I would definitely be
looking at which of the options,
private or public,
are gonna give me enough work, busy work,
that I’m in therapy that I
will be able to hit my
hours in a reasonable amount of time.
um and because the clock is
ticking once you register
for your license the clock
is ticking for you to get
those hours and in a lot of
cases counties if you don’t
get your license on a
certain specified amount of
time you get demoted so
from therapist or whatever
case worker right it’s um
not a position you want to
be in especially um you
know with all of the things
at stake salary pension
All that stuff that’s tied
to your employer.
So do yourself a favor when
you’re looking for jobs
outside of graduate school.
Make sure that you’re saying
yes or maybe to the places
that can offer you the
clinical hours that you need off the bat.
That’ll be important.
And it doesn’t have to be
county mental health,
but county mental health…
With the whole supply and demand,
you’ll never be out of work,
and you’ll have more than
enough therapy clients to fill your load.
If you’re going to go with
the private sector,
just make sure that you
have all of those things considered,
right?
Hours, etc.
Alright, we talked about relocation.
Keep an open mind.
I’m not saying that you
typically need to go out of
state to find a job.
Like I said,
there’s enough supply and
demand in this field.
You shouldn’t have any
problems with finding work.
It’s just sometimes if
you’re looking at a county job,
for example, you may need to
commute a bit, you know,
to another county.
And that’s not to say you
can’t switch counties.
Later,
a lot of counties have reciprocity
in terms of the pension benefits, right?
So if you start with, for example,
like San Bernardino County,
and then eventually you
want to go to LA County, right?
Speaking of California.
then their pension plans, I believe,
have reciprocity.
So you don’t lose that time
with the county, right?
Because pensions are based on time served,
right?
With that employer.
So those are just things to consider.
If you start off in private,
but then something happens,
you need more hours,
or for whatever reason,
you’re not getting enough pay,
you want to go county,
which is very competitive, right?
Pay-wise.
Then you have…
you’re starting fresh, right?
You’re starting from zero in
terms of your pension time and benefits.
So that’s why I say it’s
important to kind of begin
with the end in mind in
terms of what your options are,
not just the first thing
that’s offered to you and maybe working,
starting off out the gate
with a private online
telehealth company where
you can work out of the
comfort of your home and
you have more autonomy.
and you know that’s exactly what you want,
and that’s worth maybe,
you know you’ll never want
to work in a 9-5 clinical setting,
county mental health or something,
then the pension’s a non-issue, right?
But if you’re just kind of
blindly taking the first yes to a job,
then you could end up
regretting that later.
So buyer’s remorse, right?
All right,
so we talked about beginning
there with mind.
Understand too that there’s
a big adjustment period with any job.
One of the things I see with
a lot of new grads is a lot
of insecurity.
Am I doing this right?
How can I be a better therapist?
I feel overwhelmed.
There’s a lot of things to juggle.
That’s normal, right?
All of that stuff’s normal.
Don’t freak out.
When you’re starting off as
a new therapist in any setting, well,
with any job really,
but especially in the field
of social work,
you’re spinning a lot of plates.
You have to switch gears quickly.
You might have an idea of
how your day is going to go,
but that’s always subject
to change in the mental health space,
especially when you’re
doing something like county
mental health where there’s
a lot of other things going on.
um you have a wider range in
your caseload it’s not all
maybe quote high
functioning um hmo clients
right they want to work on
some stuff you are dealing
with the homeless you’re
dealing with schizophrenic
you’re dealing with
substance abuse disorders
you’re dealing with um
people who are caught up in
the legal system you’re
dealing with people
referred by children and
family services and so you
have such a wide
range that there’s a lot of
case management and a lot
of crisis stuff sprinkled
in to the therapy.
So you will be switching hats a lot.
People are going to be
calling out of the office
and you’re going to have to
pick up an intake that you
didn’t plan on.
You’re going to have to move
some stuff around.
So adjustment,
just understand it takes six
months to a year to kind of
feel like you’ve got your
bearings on your job, your situation.
All right.
Alright,
so now let’s take a second to talk
about the three umbrellas of social work.
Not a whole lot to say here,
except that we are kind of
looking at the ways we can
fit in to the job sector as
a social worker.
and the first being macro, right?
In the macro type work that we do,
you’d be basically in the
role of an advocate, right?
This could again be policy, policy making,
lobbying for assembly bills,
working in think tanks,
or in higher administration.
So again, take LA County, California,
for example.
Most of the board of supervisors that run
the county, right, and mental health,
the decision-making,
the policy decision-making,
where the flow of the money
goes to what resources,
they’re mostly MSWs.
And that’s a very macro type role.
Their job is to kind of
direct the resources where
they need to go based on
the needs and what’s being
reported from the trenches, if you were.
Now, mezzo,
that’s more like institutions
around the neighborhood.
You might be like a mental
health liaison or a court
linkage specialist where
you’re trying to tie people
into treatment,
but you’re not providing
the services directly.
And there’s plenty of roles in this area.
So if you like to be the
kind of the connoisseur or
the middleman where you’re
kind of navigating people
where they need to go to
get linked up to treatment.
And you don’t necessarily
want to provide that
one-on-one therapy and the
intakes and that kind of thing.
But you love to be resourceful.
You love to be helpful.
You love to make sure people
are getting the help they need.
Then meso might be the right
level for you in terms of work.
And you’ll see that with
like in the hospital,
psychiatric hospitals,
that’s who the discharge planner is.
The discharge planner is
making sure that as people
are being discharged from a 5150 or hold,
that they are getting
linked up to the
appropriate community
mental health services,
outpatient mental health services,
or if they’re being
discharged to like an IMD
because they need more
long-term treatment,
they want to make sure that
all of that linkage goes smoothly.
They follow up with the
clinics and so forth and
make sure they have
the appointments and there’s no,
nobody falls in the cracks, right?
That might even be mean
linking people to shelters, you know,
if they’re homeless and so forth.
coordinators, right,
mental health coordinators.
You see lots of these positions,
especially with the county,
the larger counties and
where there’s a lot of moving parts.
Their job is to make sure
that everybody’s aware of
the resources and you can
even see this with housing navigators,
right?
Their job is to make sure
that they’re touching base
with the housing
specialists within the
clinics and they’re aware
of the resources and
the referrals that come
through for certain housing programs.
So that’s really big right
now because homelessness is
huge and mental health
happens to be one of the
go-to resources for the
homeless based on the funding.
So you’ll see a lot of
positions like navigators
for that reason.
All right, so micro social work,
that’s pretty, pretty
much the main thing you’ll
see in the mental health space.
That’s that individual therapy
type outpatient mental
health clinic stuff.
Doing the individual work,
you’re in the trenches,
you’re dealing with the
most vulnerable populations,
and this could be providing
services either inpatient,
like the psychiatric hospital,
or outpatient mental health clinics.
But that’s pretty much how
social work is broke down
in terms of service.
Does that make sense?
Cool.
All right.
So, the pros of a career in social work.
Some things that you
definitely are in our favor, right?
The first being massive opportunity,
right?
Massive opportunity in terms
of the supply and demand we
were talking about.
There’s just a countless
amount of jobs that you can
find in social work in one
facet or another,
just because there’s not enough.
There’s not enough social
workers out there doing the work.
or MFTs or SIDEs, you know,
the whole aspect of the
mental health space.
We need all the help we can get, right?
So there’s always opportunity, right?
Another thing,
not that there’s truly such
thing as job stability,
but because of that massive
opportunity and demand,
you have a lot of job stability, right?
You’ll never have to wonder, like,
am I going to be out of
work for the most part, right?
I realize that there’s always, you know,
with the economy and everything, you know,
the job market gets affected.
But when it comes to
Will I ever be unemployed?
Probably not as a social worker, right?
There’s always something you
can find to do, whether that’s remote,
working from home, part-time, full-time,
inpatient, outpatient,
at any of those levels we talked about.
There’s always something that can be done,
okay?
All right, and…
lateral shifts, right?
So not only is there massive
opportunity in the social work field,
there’s a lot of movement, right?
Even within departments, right?
Again, take LA County Mental Health,
for example, huge,
biggest mental health provider,
probably county in the United States.
a lot of movement you can make, right?
And I bring this up because
one of the biggest threats, right,
public enemy number one in
the mental health work is burnout,
compassion fatigue, right?
And if you start to feel that,
one of the best things you
can do if you can’t take a little respite,
take some break,
find ways to decrease the
stress in your workplace,
in your caseload.
If you need a Hail Mary,
you can always switch
laterally within the same employer,
right?
If it’s like county-based mental health.
And that will help kind of refresh,
reframe kind of your perspective,
your role.
Maybe, for example,
you’re working in an
outpatient directly operated clinic.
You’re providing mental health services,
but you’re starting to feel burnt out.
You’re feeling a little
compassion fatigue.
What you need is a reboot, right?
So you might decide to…
apply for a lateral shift to
like a field-based program
or maybe a program where
you don’t have a caseload like a PMRT,
be like a psychiatric
emergency response team.
And so you’re going out,
you don’t have a caseload, you go out,
you assess,
you do 5150s as necessary or
link to mental health services.
And that’s it.
You know, you don’t have a caseload.
So it’s a different kind of feel.
It’s a different kind of day, right?
Work day.
And that gives you kind of
the refresh you need so you
don’t feel burnt out anymore.
And you can always go back, right?
To doing the outpatient stuff.
if you need to the directly
operated stuff but there’s
always options as uh as
well as contract work right
so with contract work you
know sometimes you keep
doing the the day-to-day
the nine to five thing that
you’re starting to feel
burnt out on but you add on
a little contract work a
little something different
and that gives you enough
um a top sense of autonomy enough
You know,
something different that sparks
your interest again.
And even though it’s
technically more work than
you’re already doing,
it’s a different kind of work.
And then that just kind of
re-energizes the passion
for the work you’re doing
because you’re serving a
different population in a
different kind of way.
Does that make sense?
Okay,
we’ll talk more about contract side
work opportunities and options, right?
All right, so part three here,
making positive impact.
That’s a definite benefit.
That’s a pro of this work in social work.
The reason…
most people get into this
space in the first place, right?
It’s because we want to make a difference.
And like I said initially,
that’s oftentimes because
people who get into this
space have had some bumps in life, right?
And they’ve been through
some challenging times and
they’ve had someone who has
made a difference in their
life and so now we’re paying it forward,
right?
I know that’s definitely my case, right?
I want to pay forward all
the blessings that kept me
on the right track and and
my head in the right place
and help me through hard
times and um like when I
talk with my clients I’ll
say like there’s the
assumption that where you
begin in life determines
where you end up but that’s
not true that’s a myth
right I’m living proof of
it and a lot of people who
are and so the work we do
is sometimes helping people
work past their assumptions
and their own limiting
beliefs right and we do
that by way of cognitive
therapy we do that also by
way of resources and
showing them their their
other ways right to attain
the things they want and
push through a lot of that
self-doubt that self is
those self-esteem issues
that we see that coincide
with depression and anxiety
and trauma and substance abuse
And we help them reframe and
have that schema shift that
then they have that aha, right?
But that takes, you know,
a person who is wanting to be of service.
And that’s what makes social
work such a powerful thing is because
You need that core aspect to be of service,
to make a difference,
to be that guide at times
for someone who needs it.
So that’s definitely a pro, right?
You get to have some sense
of personal fulfillment in
the work that you do, right?
That’s probably at the core
of social work.
and upward mobility, right?
One of the pros of a career
in social work is there’s
plenty of opportunity to
move up in your roles and what you do,
right?
No matter really where you
start off in this work,
there’s always upward mobility.
And yes,
there’s a certain ceiling with
certain job titles,
but there’s a lot of ways
that we can climb the
ladder and other aspects, right?
Other types of roles.
So you might start off, you know,
making 60 grand or something,
64 grand with a master’s degree.
But the ceiling, like, for example,
if you work for the county,
they have a step system.
And once you hit the ceiling, you know,
you make maybe six figures
at the top step.
And once you hit the ceiling there,
you have other options.
You can go clinical supervisor.
You can maybe from there go
to clinical department head
or program head or chief if
you want to keep climbing
that ladder within the same system.
or you make a lateral shift
that has more upward mobility, right?
Maybe you hit the ceiling on this ladder,
but then you can switch
ladders and go up further.
And that would be like, for example, okay,
so I hit the ceiling on
maybe clinical social worker too,
or whatever it is.
But maybe if you switch
laterally to like the court system,
maybe the court has more
upward mobility to like mediator, right?
Or sometimes it’s referred
to as a family service court specialist,
right?
Where you’re doing mediation
for the divorce court or
something like that.
And from there,
there’s a supervisor there.
You follow me?
So there’s sometimes a
lateral shift you can make
to make more of an upward shift.
So lots of options.
You get to build meaningful relationships,
right?
I think social work is one
of those amazing
professions where we have
the opportunity to both be autonomous,
right?
Because we spend a lot of
our time one-on-one with clients,
we’re in rooms,
we are siloed to a large degree,
but then we all come together, right?
And we support each other in
the work that we do and we
bounce ideas off of each
other and we um are better
for it right we learn from
each other we support each
other and just you know
it’s easy to make some of
your best friends in this
work with other therapists
right because of the work
that you do together
because it’s deep work and
you have a shared mission
and there’s a lot of that
um that sense of ethics
that are binding you
together and the hardship
and the challenges that come with it so
Definitely,
and maybe if you’re working
strictly in telehealth,
it could be a little different,
but there’s still ways to
connect with other therapists,
even if you’re working
strictly telehealth.
All right,
and so there’s also a plethora
of career options and self-employment,
right?
We talked a little bit about
that in terms of career options.
If you would like,
I can certainly elaborate on that.
Just let me know.
Okay, but the career options, again,
inpatient, outpatient,
county mental health, private sector,
the superior court, contract work,
like I had mentioned,
like I do contract work for
the court via the PACE panel,
that is one form you can do.
I will say a lot of the
self-employment options and
contract work and that kind
of thing will come from being licensed.
I know a few slides ago I was saying,
you know,
depending on which route you’re gonna go,
if you wanna go clinical or non-clinical,
just know that’s one of the
opportunity costs with not
putting in the time to get
your license and your hours
to take your exam for your license.
is that it will limit you
long-term for some of the
other types of work you can do.
So I do encourage anyone
who’s starting off in a
social work profession,
it’s probably a good idea
to start out the gate getting your hours,
getting your license,
and then you can pretty
much do anything else that you want.
If you want to get out of direct service,
that’s fine,
but that license stays with
you and you can always
leverage it later if you
need to or want to.
via contract work, self-employment,
whatever.
You can do a lot with it,
is what I’m saying.
But you have a lot of career options.
It just…
Thinking about what’s going
to be your main bread and butter.
And then long term,
what do you want to see yourself doing?
And then work backwards.
And then also consider as you get licensed,
as you get more experienced,
other opportunities will
start to become available to you.
And if you have any
questions about some of that,
just let me know.
All right, compensation and logistics.
So these are some of the
cons we touched on.
So when it comes to compensation,
who you work for makes a big
difference in terms of
obviously what you can make
in social work.
And social work sometimes gets a bad rap,
right?
Because of all the investment.
And especially if you go to private school,
a lot of the money you put
into your master’s degree,
but it’s not always
comparable with the money you make.
Sometimes I refer it to,
like if you play Monopoly, you know,
Baltic Avenue, that purple one,
it’s kind of like one of the least,
valuable properties on the
board compared to the other ones,
but you put a hotel on it,
and it’ll give you a run for your money.
You can do more with it.
I think of the MSWs kind of that way.
It’s better than it used to be.
It’s not an engineering degree.
You’re not going to make $150,
$200 out the gate.
you know,
like with some other specialized degrees.
But the master’s is like having the hotel,
you know,
and then you get the license on
top of it.
And it’s like having the
monopoly with all having
hotels and maybe some extra houses.
And so it’s more competitive.
And so also who you work for, right?
So if you get a job with the
county right out of graduate school,
You know, they’re going to pay,
like I said, maybe 60, 70 grand.
You can always look up on
the HR site and see what
I’m talking about,
but it’ll show you the range.
But then every year you get
like an automatic raise,
an automatic raise.
And depending on where you
are and where you live in
the United States or abroad,
there’s gonna be different compensation.
In California, in LA County,
the county is very
competitive with the
private market and it’s salaried.
So if you have no-shows or whatever then
You still get paid, right?
Whereas if you were in the private sector,
you’re probably paid based
on how many sessions you complete a day.
And you get a percentage of that.
If you work for an agency,
they take a cut.
So you get even less.
versus like if you had your
own practice for example
right and so it just really
depends on the breakdown
and and uh who you’re
working for what the
agreements are um but don’t
negate either benefits
right for the county for
example if you work for a
county mental health
It may not be the highest pay,
but you’re also getting
compensated with usually
really good benefits, right?
Health benefits, pension,
things like that.
So that you should factor in
to your salary.
I heard it said once like if
you are working for
yourself right if you go
from like county work to
private work you want to
make at least one and a
half times your county
salary in order to
compensate for the benefit
package that you would have
had and so those are things
that you probably want to
think about as part of
I call it a con just because
it’s a little confusing for some people.
Like I said, the landscape is not linear,
right?
There’s a lot kind of like
choose your own adventure
kind of stuff in this field.
And so knowing what your
options are will make a big difference.
Time management.
This is one of the cons, I say,
because if you’re not used
to juggling and pivoting a
lot and switching gears quickly,
this could be a big hurdle
for you if you’re new to social work,
right?
It’s figuring out, okay,
so I’m feeling overwhelmed.
What’s going on?
And being very systematic
about the way that you’re
managing your time.
Something as simple as
keeping up with your progress notes,
or keeping up with your voicemails,
or how to prioritize.
OK,
I have 10 voicemails I need to catch up
on.
I have three intakes, 10 progress notes.
I have a meeting at 3 o’clock, and dot,
dot, dot.
And that can become overwhelming.
And so having a system in
place where you know how to
prioritize what and which order,
and triage that,
and have a system to keep up with things.
over time you develop these things.
It’s something that I’m very
passionate about is kind of
systems and managing my
time because managing your
time is managing your stress, right?
The less stressed you are
the better social worker you will be,
right?
Because you’re not going to
be preoccupied as much with
all of the stuff that’s pending, right?
So I like to have zero
things pending as much as possible.
so that I can dedicate all
of my undivided attention
to the person sitting in front of me.
We talked a little bit about burnout,
compassion fatigue.
That’s a definite con in this field,
is because burnout is a real thing.
And if we’re not careful
with the time management,
then burnout is…
on the horizon.
So these things are all
related in that sense,
as well as we talked about
one of the reasons that we
have burnout compassion
fatigue is because of the
multiple demands.
And so just like we teach
our clients as much as possible,
how do we divide and conquer?
If we don’t plan, we plan to fail,
so on and so forth.
Tired eyes, we rarely see a bright future,
and all that good stuff.
So we want to be very
careful that we are paying
attention to what’s working,
what’s not working in our day,
what’s causing us to feel overwhelmed.
For me,
it could be something as simple as
making sure that I honor my
break and I take a power nap.
in the car or on the couch
behind me or wherever I am,
that I’m making a very
conscious effort to take care of my body,
take care of myself,
and then manage what I can and know that,
okay, what can roll over can roll over,
but I can only do what I can do.
And just being very real with ourselves.
And having honest
conversations with your
peers and management and so forth.
So you know you’re not feeling alone,
right?
And everybody knows what the
state of affairs are.
And again, on a clinical level,
even what’s working, what’s not working.
So that’s how you address
some of these cons.
Just keep in mind,
these are going to be your
challenges in this field.
Definitely time management,
multiple demands, and burnout, okay?
Keep in mind, like we talked about, yes,
one of the cons is that
there’s another barrier to
upward mobility,
and that is your license.
Finishing graduate school
feels like a huge accomplishment,
and it is, but that’s checkpoint one.
Checkpoint two is get your hours.
We talked about that.
Make sure you find a good
clinic if that’s your intention,
and I suggest you do.
that where you can
accumulate your hours as
quickly as possible.
That’s going to be a minimum
two and a half,
three years so that you can
sit for that LCSW and get
that box checked off.
Once you do that,
all kinds of doors can open up for you.
But that’s,
I put that as a con just because it’s,
it’s a,
It’s an extra hurdle, right?
Whereas maybe in some other professions,
you don’t have that much of a delay,
right?
With maybe registered nursing or something,
you still have to sit for
your boards and everything.
But maybe there’s not as
much of a delay to getting
that credential as with
some other fields.
But that’s because we do important work,
you know,
and they want to make sure that
we’re on the up and up.
Okay, so obviously this is related, right,
to some of the other stuff
like burnout is that we’re
working with challenging individuals.
Working with challenging
individuals goes hand in hand, right,
with social work because
they are in a position that
is challenging them, right,
and hence we’re trying to
help them solve those challenges.
so be that the homeless be
that substance abuse be
that trauma whatever it is
you know our job is to help
clients figure out or the
public wherever we’re
serving on us even on a
macro level what are some
of the social problems that
are insidious and
repetitive and things like recidivism and
uh social inequality all
that stuff right these
social problems that’s what
social work is about but
with that just understand
that you’re gonna be
working with a lot of
challenging situations a
lot of challenging people
and so going back to that
self the antidote for that
is the self-care right and
being very mindful about
what we can control and what we can’t uh
I know it’s one of the
biggest things with new
social workers is they want
to help everybody.
They want to put on their
cape and feel like they can
make a huge difference.
And that’s important.
But what you’ll learn over
time is as a social worker,
it’s a long game.
It’s a marathon.
It’s not a sprint.
And so when you see those small wins,
when you see that progress
with somebody you’re
working on or a policy you’re working on,
whatever it is, take the wins, right?
Because it is a long game.
And progress is not linear,
just like we tell clients.
It’s important to honor the
successes and the wins, right?
Because we’re faced with so
many challenges, right?
And we’re sitting side by
side with our clients who
are dealing with these challenges.
And so it’s easy for us to
kind of sometimes lose perspective,
just like clients do, right?
The people we work with.
All right, so career options.
I want to walk through some
career options as we move through this.
Some considerations.
Consideration one, you know,
a lot of discrepancy exists,
we talked about, between path and income,
county, private, public sectors,
which leads to confusion
and missed opportunity.
Like we talked about,
you don’t know what you don’t know.
And so one of the best
things you can do is
educate yourself on your
options and opportunities.
Be that way of talking to your HR,
going onto the websites,
looking at doing some deep searches,
some deep dive searches on
websites like Glassdoor.com, Indeed,
LinkedIn, and looking at
some of those keywords
around social work mental
health coordinator and
trying to just see what’s
already in the marketplace
and try and do some compare
and contrast analysis to
figure out okay so what are
my options even if it’s you
know 10 steps ahead how
does one get there what is
that position how do you
work backwards because some
are pretty straightforward
like therapists but some
are not so straightforward
like I talked about like
that court mediator type position
So it’s important to kind of
know what are all of the options.
If you had a bird’s eye view
and a map and you can kind
of see like the outliers
and then of course the main things,
it’ll give you perspective.
All right.
Thanks, you know,
the pandemic really stunk, right,
with COVID-19.
But one of the benefits of
the pandemic is that it
opened up the world of telehealth, right,
which was kind of taboo
before the pandemic,
and then it was the only
thing and then all of a sudden,
it was about access to care
and opened up doors.
Now there’s, it’s just the norm, right,
telehealth.
So
Understand that telehealth
is completely normalized now,
and that’s a great, perfect career path,
especially if you want autonomy.
But again,
one of the prereqs to this is
probably going to be
getting your LCSW first if
you want to get into this field,
but that could be a long-term goal,
right?
All right, so clinical, right?
We talked about outpatient
versus inpatient job options, right?
If you want a county mental
health outpatient versus a
psychiatric hospital inpatient,
you can do medical social work.
Again,
medical social work might be kind of
a little uh adjacent to lcsw
type work depends but I
would still encourage you
to get the lcsw just so you
have more options long term
specialized programs such
as fsp housing etc you know
Keep an eye out for those too.
MET.
MET is like a program where
you work with a sheriff’s
department and you travel
with a sheriff or a police
officer to certain calls,
mental health related,
and you work hand in hand
with the officer to
mitigate the stress and the
conflict and help make sure
that the individual is
getting the help they need
and things aren’t being
taken out of context.
So again,
specialized programs are
something to consider and look for.
Talk a little bit about the
court legal aspect, right?
You could work within the
court as a mental health advocate,
mental health liaison.
You can work as a mental
health linkage coordinator.
You can work with the public
defender’s office and do
what are called mitigation
reports for the public
defenders on inmates for
people who are maybe on
trial for murder or other crimes.
And you’re doing like
basically a social
assessment to look at those
contributing factors,
mitigating factors that put
them in that position in the first place.
And then the public
defenders use that
information to then make a
case to the DA for like a
mental health diversion
program and things of that sort.
So
That could be just a social
worker with the public defender’s office.
That could also be, like I said,
you could work as a
mediator for the family court.
That is known in LA County
as a family service support specialist.
But in other counties, like Orange County,
that may be a very different title.
Sometimes it’s just mediator
or mediator one or mediator two.
And there’s higher criteria
for positions like that, I will say.
Mediator was my long-term
goal when I was in college,
one of my long-term goals,
but in order to qualify for
that position you typically
need to be five years post-licensed,
I believe, not just licensed.
So there’s a higher barrier
to entry for a position like that,
but they also make more, right?
They typically even make
more than clinical
supervisors in the clinical setting.
So just food for thought.
There’s a lot of different
options and different
sectors that you wouldn’t
typically think about.
And maybe they don’t talk
about in your MSW program
where you’re attending, right?
And there’s that thing I
talked about like the expert witness,
right?
Something you can do in a contract
role for the public defender
via the PACE panel with a superior court.
Again, kind of a coveted position,
so oftentimes there’s a
waitlist for those.
But that would be kind of
the same thing as a social
worker who works for the public defender,
but instead of working in-house,
you’re working as a contract worker,
right?
That’s a
Interesting aspect,
another way you can kind of contract.
There’s other things you can do too,
but that’s kind of the
court legal aspect.
We talked about like linkage
roles such as court linkage,
mental health department, court,
housing navigator, etc.
You can also do work for schools,
private schools as like an
adjunct professor.
And fun fact,
if you work for a private school,
I don’t think you need your
teaching credentials.
So you can just apply to be
like adjunct faculty role
for teaching social work or
something like that.
And then they can always
draw from you to teach a
class or semester or whatever,
field based liaison, you know, whatever,
supervisor.
depending on what the school needs.
But just, you know, food for thought.
It never hurts to get on
those lists in case they
call you or they need something.
It’s kind of like sub-teaching, I guess,
at the graduate level.
Program analysts.
I don’t know exactly what they do,
but whenever I see that title pop up,
I know they make money.
Usually within the county
systems and so forth.
Program analysts in the
mental health space, for example, look,
you know, again,
probably more at the mezzo
or macro level of how
things are moving within
the county programs, and they…
they’re trying to use their
mental health experience to
advise the program, I imagine.
But I can’t really speak to
program analysts so much
because it’s nothing I have
personally worked in,
but that’s something you
might want to look at maybe
on the HR website of the
county or wherever you are, right?
Program analysts.
But that’s another one you
typically have to work into.
And it’s a little left field
of direct work.
So there’s probably some
sidestepping you have to do,
maybe some quality
assurance positions or
something like that to get into the field,
even within the same employer of that.
QA is quality assurance.
That’s more like…
you know checking the charts
making sure all of the
requirements of the state
etc are being met of the
board of behavioral
sciences all the consent
forms are in there where
they should be and that’s
like an usually an internal
qa kind of thing in case
the agency or whoever ever
gets audited you know
making sure that treatment
is being taken managed in a
timely fashion so the insurance doesn’t
deny certain claims and that
kind of thing.
So that’s quality assurance.
If that’s your cup of tea
and you don’t want to work
directly with clients or patients,
then that’s one way to go.
We talked about community liaison,
hospital discharge planning,
medical social work, hospice,
gerontology.
So again,
all kinds of things you can
consider as a social worker.
Social services.
So this could fall under
something like a family
foster agency where you’re
kind of a middleman.
I did this actually while I
was in graduate school.
Before I graduated I was
working as a family foster
agency contract social worker.
So I would go to, I’d be assigned certain
children in their homes and
then I would go and I would
make sure that they were
being well taken care of
and this was in addition to
what the county social worker was doing.
So it was kind of like an
extra pair of eyes to make
sure the kids were okay and
I would provide counseling
as needed and do my
quarterly reports and do my home visits.
And that was a good gig as a
graduate student.
So make a note of that.
If you’re in school right
now and you’re looking for
a way to make money,
that’s something you could look at,
an FFA social worker.
And then, of course,
Department of Children and
Family Services or CPS,
whatever it’s called, where you are,
that’s definitely a way to go.
Again,
a lot of those positions don’t
require licensure,
but I would still encourage
you to consider moving
toward licensure before you
just do something direct in
social services because
time is going to pass
either way and it might be
a good idea to get your hours first,
okay?
Crisis response,
we talked a little bit about that.
MET,
working with the sheriff’s department.
Access is usually like the
24-hour crisis hotline,
whatever county has,
takes the calls and then
sends out teams like the PMRT,
which you can also work on,
which is the crisis mobile response team,
psychiatric mobile response team.
And there’s probably a
different name for every
county or whatever, but same idea.
You can work with the sheriff’s department,
the call center, or the response team.
And that’s kind of your crisis options.
And within the clinic setting,
there’s always the mental
health clinical supervisor.
Like if you’re looking to move up to that,
obviously you need to be licensed,
you need to have enough
time under your belt,
but you can always move up
to that and they tend to pay like…
you know 10 ish thousand
more than the line worker
position but then from
there you can move up to
like program manager and so
forth so again it depends
on what track you’re
looking to go toward and if
you continue from clinical
mental health clinical
supervisor you can move up
to program head clinical
director area chief etc and
then maybe director of
mental health for a county or something
or a hospital or a
psychiatric inpatient facility,
like a Tascadero or something like that,
depending on if you want to
be more on the justice side
of things or directly
mental health or IMD.
So lots of options there if
you want to get into more
of a program head,
clinical director type of position.
We talked about policy,
such as board of supervisors,
countywide director, et cetera.
And getting familiar with
the terminology is really important.
So that’s why I really
encourage you to look at
websites and HR sites like Glassdoor.com,
going to the Human
Resources website and
learning the terminology
before you start looking
for jobs so you have an
idea of what to look for.
And each county, for example,
will have a different name
for the same thing.
They’re usually called items,
but job titles, right?
If you have any interest,
I could do a walkthrough with you now,
but if not, then we’ll forego it.
I’ll give you 10 seconds to decide.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Okay, I’ll forego it.
If you change your mind, let me know.
I can show you a walkthrough
of how to kind of look
through the HR website to
find different jobs, okay?
All right.
Well,
I could not cover everything in this
episode,
but hopefully you know more than
you did before hanging out
with me today and can use
this knowledge to further
advance your career or at
least get you off on a better foot.
So I hope you enjoyed that.
Some other things to consider.
What do you want to know
more about when it comes to
this exciting field of social work?
Let me know how I can help
you overcome your challenges.
You can use the comment
section here to ask me
questions for future videos
or live streams.
You can also use the contact
form on the website.
And I’ll be sure to follow
up with those and add them
to the queue for future topics.
So before we end things,
are there any last questions?
I’ll give it a few seconds, and again,
you can go to the
mentalhealthtoolbox.com
slash contact if you have
any topic requests you’d
like me to follow up on.
You can leave a physical
comment there in the form,
or there’s also a way you can use…
an audio file, right?
You can record your voice
and just leave me a message
there through SpeakPipe on the website.
And then, yeah,
then I’ll do my best to
answer your questions.
All right.
Any last questions, comments, concerns?
All right.
Well,
I appreciate everyone who was able to
join us.
Again,
if you found this helpful or you’re
watching the replay,
please put hashtag replay
and share the video with
anyone who you think might benefit.
If you would like more videos like this,
please just let me know and
I would be happy to
prioritize this type of content.
I know I do a lot of
podcasting interview
content on this channel as well,
but it helps me if I know
what you are benefiting
from since I’m here to be of service.
All right, that being said,
I hope everyone has a fantastic day.
Thanks for watching,
and you have a fantastic week.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
admin
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