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Core Values of Social Work

Arjun Kulkarni
If helping people out is your thing, then social work is the field for you. Being polite and holding the door open for others won't be classified as professional work. What really distinguishes the real heroes in this field are certain essential traits, which they use to get the job done.
Social work involves giving back to the society a little bit of what you feel, you owe to it. That in short, is the crux, the raison d'etre. People who are reasonably rich, successful, or famous are so because of the society, which has given them their education and the opportunities, with which they have been able to achieve something in life.
It is this inherent indebtedness, which they feel for the society that let them thrive. This creates the need for people and corporate organizations to dabble with social work.
It is often divided into two different branches. You can either help the society physically or financially. Some people who do not have the money to give back, contribute with their time and energy. There are several cases where, we see people going for teaching the underprivileged children and conduct drives on social awareness, etc.
The other lot, with more money and less time, prefer financing these pursuits of social work bodies by handing out hefty sums of money as donations and charity to help them run.

Core Values

Service

Because that's why you're in it anyway. It is all about serving people who are financially backward and need your support to be able to work with an even footing with the rest of the world. An attitude of service, hence is important as the point of social work is to help people grow.

Social Justice

The people that the worker is serving are clearly for one reason or the other, disadvantaged. By helping out, the underlying idea is to minimize this disparity between them and the rest of the world.
So, the person who has undertaken the task needs to keep in mind that ensuring and upholding justice is a crucial aspect of the work that they do. It needs to be done with the objective of making sure that at the end of it, every person has an equal opportunity.

Integrity

Integrity is one of the truly fitting core values given that it is integrity itself, which sparks out the true spirit of social work. Integrity is a feeling, which is borne out of moral correctness and the need to conform to one's value systems. When integrity is made a part of the core values, only then can the social work be deemed a success.

Competence

Gone are the days when this field was left for those with little time and few skills. Social service today requires great deal of competence, hard work, and a drive to excel much as in any corporate job. An incompetent person certainly shouldn't opt for it. In this field, there is nothing less than the best performance demanded by those who are in it.
All through this, one should remember the crux of the existence of social work, which is to help the underprivileged so that they too may become competent world citizens.