Social Workers: Who Needs Them?

Social Workers: Who Needs Them Infographic discusses the different populations served by the Social Work profession.

Social Workers: Who Needs Them Infographic

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Falling Through the Cracks: Why Social Work is Important? The range of ailments and bad situations in which social workers help is astounding. With over 600,000 in the US today, there’s more need for even more social workers than ever.

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What do they do?

Support communities in need including those dealing with:

Poverty
Discrimination
Abuse
Addiction
Physical illness
Divorce
Loss
Unemployment
Educational problems
Disability
Mental illness

What is Houselessness?

Houselessness is lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence or when a primary residence is a temporary place for people about to be institutionalized. For some, it is any place not meant for regular sleeping and accommodation by humans or, a supervised, temporary shelter. Over 600,000 Americans are houseless (formerly homeless). Around 65% live in emergency shelters or transitional housing and 35% live in unsheltered locations.

Child Abuse

Every ten seconds, someone reports child abuse. Furthermore, 4.5 American children die every day because of maltreatment. Types of child abuse include the list below.

Neglect: 78.3%
Physical Abuse: 18.3%
Sexual Abuse: 9.3%
Psychological maltreatment: 8.5%
Medical Neglect: 2.3%
Other/unknown: 10.8%

With help, we can avoid bad outcomes. Children experiencing child abuse and neglect are 9x more likely to become involved in criminal activities. Approximately 14% of men in prison and 36% of women in prison report childhood abuse.

Abused children are 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy and engage in sexual risk-taking. Furthermore, 2/3 of people in drug treatment facilities experienced abuse or neglect as children. With 1/3 of abuse or neglect reported adolescents having a substance use disorder by the age of 18.

Are you up to the challenge?

The numbers are massive, and it’s not for everyone. The required education for social work is either a bachelor’s, master’s, or Doctorate depending on the position. But without good social workers, whole sections of our nation are goners.