FAQ

Social care workers plan and provide professional, individual or group care to clients with personal and social needs. Client groups are varied and include children and adolescents in residential care; young people in detention schools; people with intellectual or physical disabilities; people who are homeless; people with alcohol/drug dependency; families in the community; or older people. Social care workers strive to support, protect, guide and advocate on behalf of clients. Social care work is based on interpersonal relationships which require empathy, strong communication skills, self awareness and an ability to use critical reflection. Teamwork and interdisciplinary work are also important in social care practice.

The core principles underpinning social care work are similar to those of other helping professions, and they include respect for the dignity of clients; social justice; and empowerment of clients to achieve their full potential.

Social care workers are trained, inter alia, in life span development, parenting, attachment & loss, interpersonal communication and behaviour management. Their training equips them to optimise the personal and social development of those with whom they work.

In Ireland, the minimum pre-requisite qualification to practise as a Social Care Worker in the publicly funded health sector is a 3-year Level 7 degree. As undergraduates, students study a wide range of subjects, including

• psychology
• sociology and social policy
• legal studies
• principles of professional practice
• creative skills (art, drama, music).

A key element of training is involvement in a number of supervised work placements, in a variety of social care settings.

In Europe, social care work is usually referred to as social pedagogy and social care workers as social pedagogues. Social care practice differs from social work practice in that it uses shared life-space opportunities to meet the physical, social and emotional needs of clients. Social care work uses strengths-based, needs-led approaches to mediate clients’ presenting problems.

The profession will in time be subject to statutory registration by the Health and Social Care Professionals Council. The Council, which was established in March 2007 under the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005 and is currently in startup mode, will in time provide for statutory registration of twelve separate health and social care professions including Social Care Worker. Information is available on its website at: www.coru.ie.

The issue of defining social care is considered at length in Chapter one of Share, P. & Lalor, K. (Eds.) (2009). Applied Social Care. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.

A social care worker will typically work in a direct person-to-person capacity with clients. He or she will seek to provide a caring, stable environment in which various social, educational and relationship interventions can take place in the day-to-day living space of the client. The social worker’s role, on the other hand, is to manage the ‘case’, for example by arranging the residential child care placement in which a child is placed, co-ordinating case review meetings, negotiating the termination of a placement and responding to child protection concerns in a given area.

After graduating with a B.A. Social Care there are many opportunities to work in different areas of social care. These range from community care, mainstream residential care, high support and special care, intellectual disabilities (residential & community) and detention schools. The career path for social care is Social Care Worker, Social Care Leader, D/Manager to Manager. There are also opportunities to specialise in certain areas within social care. This may lead you on to further studies. Graduates frequently pursue Masters programmes in, for example, Youth and Community Studies, Addiction Studies, Child Protection, Social Work and Child, Family and Community Studies.

The Health and Social Care Professionals Act was enacted to protect the public by enabling Health and Social Care professionals to practice in a regulated, controlled and safe environment and in a way that ensures the highest standard of interventions while meeting the complex needs of the people that we serve. The act provides for a system where professionals are made accountable and responsible for the actions. This allows for professionals to provide the highest standard of care. Social Care Workers is one of the twelve professionals listed in the act.

At present we do not have a date for the registration board for Social Care Workers however Social Care Ireland has advocated that the time is right for the board to be established in order to protect the most vulnerable in our society