Here's the way it REALLY is... 

When I was in college, I can distinctly recall a professor looking at the class and picking out the few men in class.  Then, she said:  The men in here will go into the Social work Profession and will become the supervisors of the women that may have been in the same class, quickly and will have better opportunities.  This turned out to be exactly true.  In reality, men who choose the social work area can have less qualifications than females and can be the worst student in the class with the least overall experience and lowest grade point average, but by virtue of being male, still have an unprecedented advantage.  There is still a great amount of discrimination in this field, despite the fact that the filed of social work is mostly female.  No changes ever seemed to occur to even this up. 

Social Workers also, in many cases do almost the same things as police, although they do not arrest people and do not carry guns, but still go into the same kinds of environments and situations as police.  Yet, in our society, police are given esteem, and social workers are not.  Many people have the mistaken notion that social workers want to take away their children.  This is not true, except in very extreme situations, where the child is being abused and/or neglected, and the ultimate goal is ALWAYS reunification with the family for the child.  Because of the kind of people and their orientation, that social workers have to deal with, many of these people are spite oriented to begin with, and will take out abuse on the Social Worker who happened to interface with them for years and years, even after the social worker is no longer employed in that capacity or with that agency.  If a victim social worker happens to get a job with a corrupt agency, they are totally on their own when it comes to dealing with these 'clients' , because the agency will not back up any of their social workers in any way. 

In the mental health area, clients have more rights than the caseworker, and can file a complaint and start trouble, just because they do not like the way a person looks, acts, or because of something said to them, and in some of these cases where people are mentally ill or drug dependant to begin with and have no desire to change, they see any kind of intervention in their lives as a direct threat.  Again, along with this kind of thing happening, many of these people who are mentally ill to begin with, trace and track the victim for years and years as part of their mental illness and out of spite.  Because these people are clients, they have certain protections afforded them, but the same protection is not afforded to the social worker.  In Ohio, people who are mentally ill are afforded 'special protection' in the eyes of the law, so can basically do just about anything that they want, with little or nothing happening, although this is finally changing. 

In addition to this, many of the police that social workers are supposed to work hand in hand with are corrupt, and do not want to be assistive.  In fact, many of the social workers in these dangerous field situations will either not attend to the situation as they should, or refuse to involve the police, because of the way they are treated by the police.  In one case I can recall of being employed in a rural county in Ohio, the "client" was a high school student living with her mother and step mother who claimed that she was being sexually abused by her stepfather, but needed police assistance in moving out.  When I called the police for assistance, I understand that not only did they "draw straws" to see who would have to be the "victim" to have to respond to this, but on the scene, I was treated rudely by the police, who 'demanded' that I leave, and that they could "handle this", while this young woman was moving out of this place.  Because of abuse and/or corruption by the police, I was not 'allowed' to follow this young woman, and her belongings to her new apartment, which was an independent living apartment paid for by the county.  I suspect that some of these police act like this on a regular basis. 

I also do not think that many people realize that social workers, who are primarily female as a group, have to have at least four years of college for a basic level degree (bachelor's level), and then must take a test after graduation to become a licensed social worker, and must also take 30 hours of continuing education classes every two years, sometimes at their own expense, to maintain this social work license.  In addition, we have to be 'pretty good writers' to be able to graduate, because much of the degree in social work entails writing paper after paper, and essay after essay.  This enables social workers to be excellent at case recording, which police and social workers are both supposed to do.  Police have no continuing education requirements, are usually not sensitive to people, and overall always have good benefits and much higher paychecks, but police are usually male, with very few females working in the capacity where they interface with 'clients' regularly in the field as police.  I do not think it is even a requirement in many police departments for cops to have ANY education beyond high school, and then pass a "cop test" which includes the knowledge base that any high school graduate should have upon graduation, plus cops have to take "munnitions training", to learn how to handle and fire a gun.  Once they are in, they are IN, usually for life.  If anything happens in the field, cops always stick together and their police department usuallly investigates questionable incidents or complaints, but in most cases, unless the cop has a history of corruption, the police are always right.  

Because of all of the problems with no apparent or proposed solutions in the social work field, many social workers 'drop out' and never return.  Then, instead of these problems that caused this 'dropout' to be investigated, other people have always said this is because of a high 'burnout' rate, due to the large  amount of time, and committment involved in this profession.  I am sorry, but Social workers go into their profession for the exact same reason that cops or people from other helping professions go into their fields: the desire to help people, the desire to 'make a difference', and the desire affect a little piece of the world for the better.  Most social workers are very committed to their profession, and would never have left the profession at all, unless abused out of it, by crooks of one kind or another.  I also went down to NASW (National Association of Social Workers) as part of a field pacement, with a filed instructor, and noticed that some of the people who were supposed to be working there were ' on vacation', 'at lunch'. and 'etc' and that instead of investigating problems that exist in individual cases, they pass out paperwork about the organization, as a political thing, get many phone calls about licensure requirements, and other things is that category, but do little, if any investigation of camplaints by social workers, although this is suppsed to be the 'backbone' of the Social Work profession.  This NASW office that I visited was not in some hick town, but was in Columbus, the state capital of Ohio.  This was 'supposed to be' the main office of NASW in Ohio.    

As I have said before, I have no idea what is happening in other states, but this is the sad state of things in regard to the Social Work profession in Ohio. 

 

PS:  In Ohio Social Workers and Women have little value period.  The crroks like to prey on profesionally oriented women who are planning a future.  Since the protitutes are "cute"and usually linked to "The Limited Companies" which is based in Columbus they seem to be protected and are rarely the victims in this thing because "The Limited Companies"did not want to be linked to this kind of thing in the media at all.  When the incident involving the problem people occurred I was working in the field as a Social Worker after four years of college.  More about the Social Work problems can be seen in the lack of salaries given to these people and the lack of opportunities that exist.  Four years of college in the field of Social Work field allow the person - usually female to make the same about of money as a secretarial employee, but is much higher risk.  To me - I thing this happened because I was "only a Social Worker" and white - working an a black area - not the D.E.A. (Drug Enforcement Agency) - who seems to rate much higher - and a white woman - not a black cop there.  This particular area was also drug infested so there were many undercover cops and others there to be assistive but they seemd to instead not be around when this occurred.  Many citizens were though as witnesses to what actually occurred.  Then the lawyer who I hired to represent my best interests - Plymale and Associates in Columbus,Ohio- seemed to have little interest in this case.  As a result of this event we chose to relocate to the Wooster Ohio area because my hiusband was from here and this was supposed to be a smaller,safer community. After this move - to resolve others of the responsibility they were supposed to take but chose not to in Columbus - I was called a "cop"and a "narc" in Wooster, Ohio by people who were trying to convince others that I was here in the police capacity so that I would become an avoided isolate and a victim again - but in this community this time.