Writing for Social Work

Writing is incorporated throughout life in almost every professional career. Even jobs that don’t publicize their writing, often behind the scenes, require writing for documentation or legal reference.

“Writing is an essential social work skill. Social workers who can write a well-constructed report, a clear description of a client, or a persuasive memorandum or letter, are more effective in serving the interests of their client systems” (Falk; Ross). Social work actively involves all types of writing styles throughout the profession seeing as; there are all different types of social workers. Say you become a counselor; you may be expected to keep a professional journal including technicalities and professional opinion of the clients you encounter. The definition of “professional,” in the business world being, “conforming to the standards of skill, competence, or character normally expected of a properly qualified and experienced person in a work environment.” This is part of the communication aspect in social work.

You may also entail writing when thoroughly trying to understand your client. Why should you understand your clients? So that you can fully and accurately diagnose situations you encounter. To do this, you may find yourself writing from the perspective of your client. This assists you when resolving client situations by being coherent to their point of view. “To be effective, social workers must be exquisitely sensitive to the experiences and feelings of those they try to help and able to describe these experiences and feelings” (Falk; Ross). As you can understand, describing through writing is vital to the social work field. I don’t mean “describe” as in using fancy adjectives to add on and create drama to a situ...

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...mportant events. “Agencies have replaced extensive narrative with a combination of brief narrative and standardized forms, with the focus very much on accountability” (Kagle, 1995). Procedural documents, contracts, progressive records, client referrals, and occurrence summaries are all examples of the type of paperwork you’ll be filling out using your writing skills. It will be your responsibility to account for the happenings in the work place and with your clients.

Works Cited

Falk, Diane S., and Phyllis G. Ross. Academia. Working paper. Academia, 2001. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. .

Hartman, A. (1993). Many ways of knowing. In Beebe, L. (Ed.). Professional writing for the human services

Kagle, J. D. (1995). Recording. In Edwards, R. L. The social work encyclopedia (19th ed.), (record 33372, CD version).