Title: What Exactly is it We Do that Makes a Difference?
Abstract: THE WORLD WOULD SAIL RIGHT ALONG if social workers were to vanish from society. It might be a better or worse world, but it would certainly be different, somehow. There was a time when social work didn't exist as a profession. The potential that birthed us into an occupation was (among other things) the human impulse for caring for others and the quest for social justice, equality, fairness, opportunity and the knowing that we, as a people, could be more than what we are. The profession became, over time, a melange of people doing an impossibly wide variety of tasks to address an impossibly wide variety of human and social needs in a world that too often doesn't give a damn. We coalesced into a profession in a society in which social inequality, racism and discrimination, and human needs were ill addressed—in short, we exist because many people did, and still do, get “the short end of the stick” in life. So, what do we do that makes one darned bit of difference about that reality and how do we go about do...