Social Work Saved Your Ass from a Beat Down

It's easy for some professionals to question the importance of social work to the day-to-day lives of the average person. First, understand that social work is merely the act of connecting people to skills, concepts, and resources that help enhance their health and wellbeing. Most helping professions (such as medicine or law enforcement) do this in some capacity. I'd like to highlight many of the ways in which the field of social work prevents problematic and painful situations.

 

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The Prevented Beat Down

There are many social workers who, specifically or as part of other interventions, work with people who have anger management issues. These are people who may punch you for looking at their girlfriend, choke you for suggesting that their child needs to be held back a year in school, or even knee you in the groin for breaking up with them. We help give these people the insight to be more patient, tolerant, and accepting of unpleasant situations and emotions so that they refrain from knocking the hell of somebody for a small slight or innocent mistake.

A social worker may have helped the person you just cut off in traffic--who has a history of maniacal road rage--get to a mental state that means they can handle you cutting them off without totaling your car and shooting you.

The results of effective social work are present in homes where kids don't get slapped around for misspelling words or spilling food; on streets where neighbors aren't fighting in the driveway over misplaced newspapers or unruly piles of dog shit; and in schools where teens can cope with their intense emotions by doing things besides beating up their fellow classmates.

Of course, violence does take place on a daily basis, all over the world. However, when someone tries to work out mutually acceptable, peaceful solutions to tense situations there's a good chance that, at some point in that now-non-violent person's life, they were influenced by the care of a helping professional. Any time you think you really deserved a beat down and didn't get one, think to yourself: "A social worker might have just saved my ass!"

 

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