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i have been thinking about doing some kind of human services thing. possibly social work. as far as i can see you need to do a degree for this? is there any kind of TAFE course that would see a job placement in this kind of area? also, if i were to bite the bullet and do a uni course what are the job prospects? is it hard field to get into, even with a qual? what are some positives and negatives of working in this area? thanks.
My Mum did welfare studies and then worked in the area. After a few years, she found that she needed the 'bit of paper' to move within her workplace and to work elsewhere and so returned to study and completed social work by distance education.
Yep I'm a social worker. Depending on your previous educational experience, work and life experience there are a few options open to you. There is a welfare diploma as HotI mentioned. You do work placement with this. I'm not sure of the work prospects from this diploma but it might be a bit limiting, but then it depends really on what you want to do.
You can either do a 4 year full time social work course or depending on previous experience and education you might be able to get straight into what they call a Qualifying Masters (is in Victoria but not sure of other states) of if you are in another state there might be another type of advanced entry. Basically the advanced entry or Masters is 2 years full time. You do 2 x 14 weeks of placements which are unpaid. You try and focus in on areas that you might want future employment in. There are a lot of job opportunities as a social worker across a lot of different fields. Some fields like counselling you usually can't get into straight from uni - or depends on what other experience you bring into the role I guess. Sometimes it can take a few interviews to get your first job but then once you've got the job it's easy to get further employment.
The good parts are job variety, working with people, thinking, planning, problem solving, helping people to solve their own problems, meeting people in different walks of life and circumstances and the times when you feel like you make a difference.
The negative parts are sometimes systems you work in have a lot of red tape, there is never enough resources to do what everything that needs to be done, there is never enough hours in a day to get everything done (you get used to work stacking up on your desk day after day), there can be a lot of paperwork depending on your field, pay isn't fantastic, having to make tough decisions which can impact on people's lives.
Good luck with your decision making.