Continuing Education Tips

What kind of education do I need to become a social worker?

I'm 26 and have decided I want to be a social worker. The problem is I don't know what type of degree or education is required.

Public Comments

1. There is a Bachelor and Master Degree for Social Work. After you get a Master's Degree, then you go to get a License to become an LCSW.
2. I looked into this type of work as well in the past and they say you need at least an Associates in human Services and then later you could get your Bachelors in Human Services as well. Good luck!!
3. I am in school to be a Social Worker and my major is Sociology and I plan on earning a Masters in Counseling. The University of Phoenix is a great choice in schools
4. To begin with, you need to know how societies form and run and change. You must have a good knowledge of the social institutions. A good degree in any branch of Sociology will give you this knowledge. However, there are really very few who can change the society in the really expected and positive direction. Mere knowledge cannot give you that skill. What you need is wisdom. You must know how the mind happens to be a huge society in itself. Here is a tip: Beauty-Care for the Mind What's Beauty? Beauty is symmetry. Beauty is balance. Beauty is variety. Beauty is unity in all the variety. Beauty is the continuous play of change on the invisible plane of changelessness. If what is usually seen can also be heard, then it has the right to be called beautiful. If what is usually heard can also be seen, then it has the right to be called beautiful. If what is usually only thought of can also be felt, then it has the right to be called beautiful. Beauty is freedom but not anarchy. Beauty is discipline, but certainly not depend-ence. Beauty is pleasure, but not narrowness. Beauty is enjoyment, but not selfishness. When the mind is beautiful, she attracts many friends from far and near. When the mind is beautiful, she attracts happiness and peace. Sometimes even sorrows and mis-fortunes can't escape the attraction. Then they are transformed into beauty also. But how is that beauty to be achieved? It's very simple, though actually one in a thousand can achieve it. That's because it's too simple to be achieved with efforts. Actually, nothing is needed to be added to or deleted from the mind to make it beautiful. All we need is just set the structure right  that is, let each element of the mind play in its own natural place. After all, beauty is the perfection of the structure. First of all we need to know how the mind is exposed to different types of people and how it unifies the past, present, and future on one continuous plane. We must keep in mind that the beauty of the mind changes with the mind's awareness of itself. All the beauty of our environment, our activities, and our interactions is in effect the beauty of the mind. This means that this beauty can be seen, felt, smelt, and thought of. Let's see how. Seeing the Beauty of the Mind Those who are in front of me  that is, those with whom I am interacting directly  are observing my mind with their eyes. They have the opinion of me according to how they see me. And they only see me according to how I interact with them. The garments I wear reflect the color of my mind. The posture and ges-ture I adopt and use pic-ture the shadow of my mind. The language I use summarizes the content of my mind. The people and things I talk about convey the message of my mind. The priority I set in my dealings with others signifies the purpose of my mind. In a word, my mind is directly visible to the second person in my sentences. So, while interacting with others, I must take care of ... myself, not of others. But how? Very simple. Here's how: While interacting with others, imagine as if you were looking into a mirror. Thus you are looking at no other than yourself  the (probable) consequence of your own attitudes and be-liefs. Smelling the Beauty of the Mind If the mind can be seen, it can also be smelt. Those who are seeing you now will smell you after some time. Then they will forget what they saw but judge you by what they will smell. When the nose smells a flower, the eyes are closed. People trace things in their memory by the principle of smelling. So while interacting with others, be aware of what they will forget and what they will remember when the interaction is over. Hearing the Beauty of the Mind Those with whom you are not interacting but who are somehow or other involved in the web of relationships do not see you at present but they will hear about how you inter-act with others. This is how the mind is heard. People's ears are prone to errors and deviations. So always make sweet sounds, without any noise. Leave such a story behind as will become a poem. You are the hero or heroine of every story that you create. So always act in a natural way. Beauty is not simply what is seen, but the condition in which it is seen. The condition is nothing but the environment created by the mind. This environment is a product of what you are looking at - or, more specifically, what your mind is looking at, not who are looking at you. This is the only reason why we often fail to manage the way people look at us. You are responsible for how you look. When people look at you, they don't look with their eyes, but they look with their minds. That's why what they see is not your face, but how your face reflects your mind. Your emotional attachment to your knowledge and purpose determines your understanding and interpretations. These psychological outputs form your attitudes. Your mind is nothing but the totality of what your attitudes are. Therefore, in the ultimate analysis, the best beauty-care means shaping and re-shaping your attitudes. But unfortunately, this is where most people tumble onto a hard rock. It is very difficult to manage one's attitudes, though it is often very easy to earn a lot of knowledge. So let's see how we can form positive attitudes toward even the worst of negative phenomena. Our Attitude toward Good and Bad The biggest disease of our mind, I believe, is that we brand some things as good and some things as bad according to our own likes and dislikes. While good and bad pertain solely to ethical considerations, and not to our personal satisfaction or dissatis-faction, we seldom have the power to discriminate between the two issues. We like what is pleasurable to us and dislike what is painful to us. We have every right to have such likes and dis-likes. But does it mean that we should call something bad only because we do not like it or good only because we like it? It is often found to be the greatest barrier to our being happy  this wrong substitution of our personal values for ethical evaluation. The mind is beautiful and strong when it learns to discriminate between conscience and mere feel-ings. Let me repeat, therefore, that something is not bad simply because the mind does not like it or good simply because it gives me pleasure in the short-term. Let us brood on the following statements: 1. If I do not welcome hardship and some amount of inconvenience in life, then that will indicate my coward-ice. Rather, I must convince myself that I can become important only by accepting responsibilities that others are afraid to shoulder. 2. If I cannot enjoy the gifts of life, then that will also indicate my cowardice and incompetence. 3. Enjoyment is not a mere feeling creeping through the flesh and blood. Rather, it is an attitude. My attitude in-volves my knowledge, conscience, freedom, and person-ality, while my feeling is only a mechanical reflex in the nervous system. My attitude should dominate my feelings. Otherwise there will be little difference, if at all, between myself and a tailless animal. My nervous system, which I often call mind, cannot call sorrows pleasures and pleasures sorrows, but I am really free to overcome this limitation of the flesh. Our Desires and Actions We act only because we have objectives to achieve. We have those objectives because we must fulfill some needs. We have needs because ... We must stop here for the time being and start from a new point to reach the destination that we have lost. I am free to some ex-tent. At least I feel so. For example, if I want to delay the intake of my lunch by five hours, that I can do. Even I can say that I could go without doing what I am do-ing now or I could do something that I do not feel like doing now. Actually I am free to say or think anything. But am I really free to do or not to do something at its root level? Let us con-sider the fact in a novel way. I am free to delay the intake of food for some time, but am I free to delay the feeling of hunger? Most probably not. This shows that I can manage my desire to some extent but I cannot manage my basic needs. For this reason, we must have desires. If we did not have desires, we could neither survive nor fulfill the mission of life on earth. So there is no point in being up and doing to suppress or control de-sires. It only creates an undesirable agitation in the mind. Here are the real, harmonious laws of living with complete, beautiful desires. The Desire for Action It is good to have a desire to act and remain busy and active. Such desire, being the energy of all activities of the world, dif-ferentiates a human being from a robot or doll. A person with-out the desire to do something is only an inert log of wood, or even worse. The colorful kaleidoscope of life on earth is indeed the process of the expression of desires through plans and activities. If I do not have desires, I will be of no use to myself or my family or my country or the world. Actually, a person without active desires is a lazy person, selfishly busy with their slumber and meaning-less dreams. So let us invoke desire with all sincerity and declare: Let there be strong desires in my mind. The Desire for the Fruit of Action Why does desire arise in our hearts? We have said that we have desires be-cause we must fulfill some needs. But what needs do we really have? Do we know for certain what we need? I firmly believe, and am going to prove shortly, that if we really know what we need, then we will be able to perceive the meaning of life at least ten times better than now. It is not nice to go on expressing desire for this and that without know-ing what it is that we really need and why. Let us see the real needs of life. The Need for Pleasure Pleasure is the feeling of satisfaction and contentment on the physical as well as mental level. Its elements are ease, convenience, joy, a feeling of certainty, freedom from anxiety, and peace of mind. These states of the mind pervade the psychological, physiological, economic, and social dimensions of life. If we don't have sufficient pleasure, we will most probably become narrow-minded, separatist, pessimistic, inactive, and unsocial. An unsatisfied mind only thinks about itself and so is of no use to the society. So we must not avoid the legal and essential enjoyments of life. A smiling face always looks beautiful. The Need for Suffering When you buy mangoes for, say, sixty Taka (The currency of Bangladesh) a kg, how much do you really pay for the stones? Nearly one- third. But do you eat the stones? No. Likewise, the body must have diseases. Otherwise, it won't be able to feel the peace and blessing that good health may ever offer. If there were no diseases, there would be no need to follow the rules of health and self-development. Then there would also be no knowledge of good health. This means that then there would be no difference between health and ill-ness. If there were no alternatives, there would be no choice or freedom. That would be the worst of ignominies that could ever befall us. Then whatever would happen, would happen automatically without ourselves being actively involved. But the greatness of humans lies in being able to freely choose from a set of alternatives and go on learning the truth about life. Life becomes meaningless if no meaning is sought for. And nobody would seek for the hidden meaning of life if life meant mechanically moving along without the continuous involvement in the measurement of the course. What we get without planned efforts is not ours. Rather, we become the owners of the gifts of life if we achieve them by planned efforts. This is the psychology of ownership. Just as the body would become inert and mechanical, de-void of the awareness of what it is bearing inside, so the mind would also become dead and barren, detached from the stream of self-consciousness, if there were no suffering. Suffering it-self is transformed into efforts, meaning, and affluence if it is deliberately accepted and loved. Suffering comes to warn the mind saying: "Don't be satisfied with so little pleasure and so don't sit idle with it. Rather, reach out for a higher level of peace and satisfaction and enjoyment. So pass through me." Yes. This is no less true than our desire for peace. The higher the stage one wants to reach in life, the more suffering one must undergo and the more painful efforts one must undertake to over-come the barriers. The more precious something is, the more secret and difficult and well-protected place it is kept in, so that no one can reach it without paying its real price. Likewise, the most interesting gifts of life are hidden beyond the most challenging hurdles. So don't just accept sufferings in a defensive way with patience, but stretch your hands to them and wel-come them before they come too near. Conquer sufferings while it's still far away. Then you'll be able to enjoy its nectar when it lives with you. However, there are some people who don't need any suffering. They are those who don't want to go ahead and develop. The Need for Poverty There can be poverty above the so-called 'poverty line'. That's because poverty is a relative term. Anybody of us is poor as compared to a person who is rich, at least as long as we perceive so. Strange as it may sound, it is good to feel or be considered poor at a certain stage of one's life. That is because of the following facts: If I didn't overcome a stage of my life suppressed by poverty, then those who would consider themselves poor wouldn't consider me a self-made person. They would say, "You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. How can you under-stand what stuff life is made of?" If I were not poor and didn't overcome the poverty through God's grace and hard efforts, but depended on others, then I would lose my identity and self-esteem. If I were not poor at a certain stage of my life, I couldn't perceive the suffering of any oth- er poor people. In that case I couldn't have the heart to sympa-thize with them in their hard times. The consequence would be disappointing: I couldn't earn their honor and win a place of leadership among them. Only the well-trained heart with an informed brain can lead. The Need for Uncertainty and Risk There have been times when we have asked ourselves or even others, "Why can't I know what's in store for me? Why can't I know what things I'll get in my life?" This question, if an-swered properly, loses its vagueness and be-comes a source of knowledge and inspira-tion. The answer is: Suppose you're shown in, say, a dream, everything that will happen in the rest of your life till death. And, getting up from bed early next morning, you start living the life that you have not planned but that has been only reported to you in advance. How will you feel? Start-ing from the morning through the twilight, you'll see that all that is happening and that will happen in your life is nothing but what you've already known. And so there's nothing new in life, nor is there anything more to expect. You can expect at best what has already taken place in somebody else's plan, which you can only stage anew like an actor or actress. Some-body has already lived your life and you're only dying it. If it so happened then would that taste good at all? No. Life would lose all its charm without the risk and uncertainty involved in it. We can have our hidden desires and expectations only because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Living means systematically trying to make certain what is uncertain. Living means continuously trying to know what can never be known. Once something is known, living means looking for something that is not known yet. Being the dimensioned expression of the Infinite, humans can only be satisfied with what can never be fully known and still can be pursued for ever and ever and ... ever. The Need for Ignorance Ignorance is no less important than knowledge. Conversely, knowledge is no less harmful than ignorance. This I couldn't declare more seriously. If you knew when you would die- the exact time with the date and the year, then, however far away the time were, wouldn't you feel as if you were a prisoner waiting for death sentence? Would life be of any use to you? We all believe and know that we will die today or tomorrow. But we don't know when we'll die. It is because of this ignorance that we don't feel that we'll die even after knowing it. In this way life becomes beautiful. There's some feeling that we don't need to know and there's also some knowledge that we don't need to feel. If we knew why the opposite sex is so attractive to us, we would never feel attracted. That's because knowledge is a human being's ultimate goal. Once they have it, they feel little interested in the thing about which the knowledge has been earned. For humans, knowledge is more important than what is known. However, knowledge of the faculties of pleasure of the mind can itself be the source of immense bliss if that knowledge comes as a form of self-knowledge. And that's never possible until the mind has become beautiful. Post-Word Life is beautiful only when the mind is. And the mind is beautiful only when it sees beauty in every phenomenon of life. That mind is beautiful which selfishly desires to enjoy all the fruits of its deeds. The right to action without the desire for the fruit of the action is nothing but a psychic slavery. I should say to my-self: "You must enjoy every bit of the fruit of your action. If you do good deeds, you should enjoy their fruits. If you don't do that, then you'll not be able to perceive why you should do good deeds all through your life. Moreover, you'll also not feel motivated to do better deeds in the future. You should continue to enjoy the fruits of your good deeds so that you can feel tempted to dream of the better every day." On the other hand, I should also say to myself: "You should also enjoy every bit of the fruit of your bad deeds. If you don't do that, then probably others will have to undergo the suffering, since the fruit of an action can't vanish into nothing. Moreover, you should enjoy the fruit of your bad deeds because if you don't, you'll have no knowledge of what's good and what's bad and why. You must commit errors if you want to step into the realm of life that hasn't yet been trodden. How can you do that without accepting the consequences of your action? Every action of yours will give you knowledge and suc-cess and energy if you eagerly welcome its consequences. The attitude you adopt toward the fruits of your erroneous deeds expresses your personality. We should learn more quickly than the speed at which we make mistakes. Let there be beauty everywhere. .............................. Source: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781581124842&itm=4
5. You can get a 4 year degree, Bachelor of Social Work. You want to go to a school that is CSWE accredited (council on social work education) They monitor bachelor, master's and doctorate education. You can then go on to get your Masters in social work and then onto a doctorate. Depends where you live if you need to become registered as a BSW or an MSW. In the state of Florida, BSW graduates don't have to register or get licensed. In other states, they do. After you finish your Master's you become an intern and under the practice of someone licensed you are monitored. You are then able to take the licensing test to become Licensed. My recommendation....go to WWW.NASW.org this is the national association of social workers. great organization and they can probably link you with people to talk to.