Career pathways of three social care sectors

Describe the roles, responsibilities and career pathways of three health or social care sectors Within this assignment I will be discussing three different health or social care professionals and describing their roles are and also their responsibilities.

Social worker

A social worker’s role is to help people with their issues and also their families, in order to help to adjust to the problems that are occurring throughout their lives. They most frequently work with those problems such as, child abuse, substance, abuse, mental illness, anti-social behaviour and many more.

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A social worker would specialise in a certain area and help a person with that certain situation. However, some people’s issues may be unchangeable therefore they help others to adjust to the situation and help them in order to accept that certain situations may not be able to be changed. Social workers usually work with the government in departments such as offices, clinics, prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, schools, businesses and many more. Being a social worker has numerous responsibilities entailed with the job which comes with helping others such as, preparing interviews with the service users and their families which enables them all to evaluate the situation, offering support through counselling, or group therapy to the service user and their family, ensure that the support offered enables the service user to lead their life as well as possible.

Although a vital role within social work is to ensure the safety, security and well-being and caring for the service users and their families it also involves numerous responsibilities that are a legal requirement within social work such as, giving evidence when necessary in court for the person they are working with, writing accurate records of what has occurred and preparing reports for special meetings (this may possibly be court too), writing up assessments about the situation that meet the stated standards and is on a timescale, communicating with other agencies such as hospitals, schools etc.

to ensure that they understand what is going on at home and to ensure their safety.

In order to follow the career path of being a social worker it is vital to have studied for 2 years at college or Sixth Form whilst gaining qualifications from them also. After this it is important to go to University in order to maintain a degree, the current qualification to study at University in order to maintain a career in social work is an honours degree in Social Work, however it is possible to also go into other degrees such as sociology, youth work or anything relatable and train to be a social worker afterwards. This is a popular approach for many people as it is relatively hard for those of a young age to get into a degree level of Social Work.

Midwifery

The role of a Midwife is to support, care and advise women, their partners and family, at every stage of childbirth; before, during and afterwards as they help women decide what care they would like throughout childbirth, the services they will use and any other important decisions that need to be made. For the first 28 days of a child’s birth they help by taking care of the new born child and provide health education and support the parent through this emotional, difficult and overwhelming period they do this with regular health visits to the new mother and new born child. The main responsibility for a midwife is to ensure that the mother and the new born child’s health is on top form which ensures their safety and security by caring for them, they do this by keeping to the hospitals health and safety policy furthermore, they have numerous responsibilities to adhere by in order to ensure this of their patients.

During pregnancy they must diagnose, monitor and examine the woman which ensures that nothing has or is going to go wrong within the pregnancy and if there is something found it can be treated fast and efficiently in the appropriate manner. This means that they must identify high risk pregnancies through this such as, ectopic pregnancies so that doctors and medical professions can be informed and the mother can be assessed and treated. During the pregnancy they must also develop an assessment, which evaluates the pregnancy too for an individual which has relation to care so that the mother knows what care they want and they can choose from this. Also, they must do this for their partners and families as they provide health education for the woman whether it is at the hospital, community or at home so that everyone can help the mother out.

As pregnancy can be one of the most dangerous things to do in a woman’s life many of them may be scared to do so and find the thought of labour intimidating, therefore it is a midwife’s responsibility to provide cancelling before and after the birth, especially after if they have suffered throughout it as they need to be ‘debriefed.’ They also supervise the mother throughout labour assigning her and monitoring her condition through their knowledge of drugs and pain killers. After the pregnancy is vital as the mother needs to be given support from the midwife and daily care of the baby, which includes breast feeding, bathing and making up feeds – especially for first time mothers who aren’t familiar with child baring.

In order to become a midwife you can either apply to a degree of nursing and on the third year branch off to midwifery or study a three year degree course in Midwifery. It is important that sufficient work experience or anything similar as midwifery is highly specialised and demanding job. They ask for 3 A Levels of the equivalent to this such as BTEC National Diploma. There are other courses that can get you into the career path of midwifery such as a midwifery access course. There are different entry requirements at each university’s however, every university asks for GCSE’s in Maths and English at C and above. The minimum salary that midwife would begin to work for is £21,000 and they would make their way up throughout their career.

Probation officer

The role of a probation officer is to work with offenders and ex-offenders who have emotional, behavioural and psychological issues which make the probation officers job highly stressful and demanding. However, the result of helping a person overcome these difficulties is highly rewarding for the probation officer. There are numerous responsibilities that are with the job which are vital as they must provide advice and information in order to support the criminal with the court sentencing related to this is the write and presentation of their pre-sentence and pre-release reports which enables them to help the with their sentence and parole as well. Another main responsibility of a probation officer is be emotionally supportive to the offenders that they are working with meaning that they must help the offender deal with the fact that they are having custodial sentences which may be jail or perhaps on house arrest depending on the crime committed.

This also means that they must visit the offender no matter where they are whether it is at the home, in court, prison, hostels or other institutions that they may be detained in. Although it is solely about the offender it is also important to liaise with the family in order to ensure that their needs are met throughout this overwhelming time as it will be highly emotional for them. It is a vital responsibility for probation officers to liaise with those such as the police, social service and anyone else involved with the case to make sure that they are knowledgeable of how the offender is getting on and is sticking to the agreements.

This is an extremely stressful job and also highly demanding, also being extremely controversial as they are working with offenders. In order to go into the probation services it is important to have a degree in anything similar such as community justice or social work where you would then apply to the probabtion services as a probation officer. After having that job it is vital that you take a vocational qualification level 5 diploma in probation practice to ensure that you are suited for the job, therefore it is then possible that gain a specialised area or move onto a managerial position. Probation officers have a salary of around £19,000 - £26,000 for a year and the after qualified they earn around £26,000 - £35,000 a year.