Why i Want to Become a Social Worker

My interest in social work evolved nearly five years ago when dealing with multiple issues taking place in my own family. The interests arose in regards to my uncle’s children, two girls and two boys. They became part of the foster care system in Los Angeles while I was attending my second year of college. For the majority of their lives, these children have been through foster care, shelters, and on the streets while growing up. My uncle is a drug addict and has been in both jail and prison since he was twelve years old. However, their mother had two son’s from another father. The older son of the two, was sexually abusing my nieces for many months before anyone in their home had discovered.

My grandmother, who was also my guardian my entire life, attempted adopting these children in order to provide them with a loving home. These girls were suffering mentally and physically due to the traumatic events they had to go through and my grandmother wanted to be able to help her grandchildren. However, due to her bad health and the lack of the appropriate financial income to provide for these children, she was unable to keep the children for very long. Lastly, my mother, who had me at the very young age of fifteen, adopted them for a period of time as well. Unfortunately six months later, she decided the children were too stressful and made a negative impact on my younger brothers, and gave them back to foster care.

These children have consistently been abandoned, neglected, and abused. They do not know what it is like to have a normal life like any other normal child. They never attended school regularly because they were often homeless or in shelters. And even though the children are in the foster care system, the system lacks proper effectiveness. My grandmother does the best she can to see the children every chance she can, however, the foster care family often avoid answering calls or state the kids are punished and cannot go see their family. My grandmother and I have attempted numerous times to speak with the social worker in charge of my nephew and nieces’ case, but she does not respond for days a time. Furthermore, this is why I strive to be a part of our social work system to provide the help and justice that serve these kind of families in our society. I want to be able to provide the equal opportunities of an education and a positive home environment for these children in order to pave the way for them towards a brighter future.

Moreover, the struggles I have dealt with while growing up and seeing my nephews and nieces deal with even worse struggles have shown me how to develop the values rooted by the social work profession into my own life. The values of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence have always been demonstrated in volunteer experience. I have grown a great amount of appreciation towards the importance of human relationships while working in the Gang Diversion team. Human relationships are highly significant because they are essential to the way you become as an adult. Whether you become a civil citizen or turn into a criminal.

Which demonstrates the critical race theory consistently found through the groups of people categorized in our society every day. While in the Gang Diversion program, I mentored a number of young adults in terms of their attitudes and mannerisms. Due to their upbringing, in which there was no adult figure in the picture, these young adults began to have problems at school and in many cases these problems worsened to juvenile offenses. Therefore, we had to mentor these childrens to learn the importance of an education and the significance of growing up in a positive environment that will help you in the long run.

In addition, I have shown my value for service, social justice, and integrity by helping the underprivileged communities at the Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles located in the Los Angeles Superior Court of Pomona. The majority of the litigants I assisted were often low income families, with lack of financial resources or education, seeking help from volunteers to explain the process of the judicial process and the completion of court documents. I assisted litigants without legal advice or representation with divorce, custody, visitation, eviction, parental rights, name change, and gave out appropriate referrals. These type of cases are often seen as social and legal problems mostly in third class communities, mostly of made up of minorities.

With becoming part of the field of social work, I believe that all these values which I incorporate into my life and my decision making shown throughout my volunteer experience, will be an amazing opportunity. This will give me the opportunity to continue to help others in need of help and to progress towards social justice. This will further create a positive impact on low income communities, disadvantaged socially, politically, and financially within our society.

Moreover, these experiences I have observed as a volunteer demonstrate the critical race theory that pertakes in the United States, specifically in the city of Los Angeles. The Critical Race Theory basically recognizes racism as a major factor utilized in United States’ power structure. Racism, therefore, creates an automatic disadvantage in terms of education, health care, political rights, and social justice. However, in our society, race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation are part of the entire combination with race which demonstrates how our society works among those who are rich and those who are poor. Moreover, these communities also struggle with other oppressive factors like homelessness, immigration rights, and poverty.

These disadvantaged communities are in need of social services. This is why obtaining a career in the social work profession is important to me because these individuals are far below the majority of society and they desperately need help. Social workers are there to provide the resources, opportunities, and hope for these families.

I believe I obtain multiple strengths that will assist me in my graduate education and as a professional worker on account of my commitment to helping these disadvantaged communities. One of my greatest strengths that would assist me is my dedication. When I dedicate all my effort, my time, and my compassion into something in particular, I always remain dedicated through the easy times and the challenging times. I know having a career in social work, especially involving families, is a very difficult type of career.

However, I have always been dedicated to those I care about and my goals when it comes to any difficult situation in regards to my job, my education, and most importantly, my family. I have a great amount of compassion towards helping these families, I believe it is my responsibility to accomplish this. The feeling and knowledge of creating a positive impact on a person’s life, after all the struggles you went through personally, is one of the most rewarding accomplishments in life. This is why I want to have a career in social work, to make a positive impact on those who need help to have a better life.

I am applying for a place to study in social work because I have always wanted to be able to make a difference in people's lives. With social work, I believe I can do this in a caring and supportive way. I have gained some insight into mental health while caring for my grandmother and the difficulties she faced on a daily basis while suffering with having multiple heart failure problems. Another family member suffered from drug and alcohol addiction and I witnessed the effects it had on his mental health and the effects drugs had on his family. My nephews and nieces have been in and out of foster care due to the instability of not having a home and parents who could not provide food and shelter for them. These personal experiences instilled in me the further desire to become a social worker.

I have always been the type of individual to finish any goal which I set my mind on. There is nothing more in the world that I would love to do than to be able to gain the opportunity to help struggling families. Growing up, I never had a stable family of my own, I come from a broken home. My biological father was never known, my mother disregarded my existence.

My mother had me at the age of fifteen years old, therefore she had no experience and no knowledge on how difficult it would be to raise a child. In the end, my grandparents became my permanent guardians for the rest of my life. I am the oldest of four younger siblings and the only female among my siblings as well, therefore I did not have any adult figure to look up to. I did have adult figures, such as my grandparents, in terms of my manners and work ethic, but in terms of education, I could not turn towards them to help me with my studies. I have never obtained help from anyone while reaching my education this far. The most help I have gotten from my education came from my teachers and counselors. I want to be able to work and be able to have the resources to help those children that struggle with similar situations that my family and I have had as well.

Over the past few years, I have learned to create realistic goals for myself and focus on achieving them one at a time. By doing this, I have had some accomplishments, which I benefit from such as passing my driving test, focusing my attention towards helping my community, taking care of my grandmother and advancing my education to help others. The next step for me, is applying to this social program offered by California State Dominguez Hills. I chose Dominguez Hills for their excellent teaching methods, college atmosphere, amazing diversity and their full time route enables me to carry on with my family and work commitments. Once I qualify to be a student for the Master’s of Social Work Program, I would like to work towards specializing in Children, Youth and Families.

I understand how difficult it may be to obtain a career as a professional social worker. It will be difficult due to the delicacy of the issues that come into play on a daily basis, but I know I will be resilient. These issues arise from working with children, youth and families, individuals with mental health problems, and the elderly, who often go neglected. Social workers have the mission to work towards helping those in communities struggling with these issues. As a result, I am willing to work to the greatest extent in order to learn to provide the proper resources and opportunities for these individuals to progress in society. Social workers have the challenge of maintaining their personal feelings separate from the legal cases they are assigned. And when feelings get intermixed with the cases one is in charge of observing, decisions become biased. I will persevere and keep the mission of helping these families first and foremost, ensuring I maintain a healthy balance of empathy and professionalism. 

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