Social work is a vocational career and many countries find it hard to recruit and retain workers. In order to turn this around many countries are recruiting workers from all over the world. This is beneficial to you and you can obtain lots of advantages from both going it alone and being recruited by a company whilst seeing the world. It will help your social work career to have an international flavour.
When looking into going to work in another country as a social worker you will want to find out about the types of jobs available to you and the processes and procedures which will govern your work.
o Look out for jobs in various sectors and with different services users groups such as Children and Families, Adults, Mental Health, voluntary, private and statutory sector.
o Understand what will be expected of you in your new job: obtain information about legislative guidance
o Research tools and resources to aid your work
o Find out how the organization you will be places in captures data and organizes files
o Have an understanding of the structures and if it is a large organization how each department relates to each other and specifically to the one you will be working in.
o Find out how the day to day work is done, is there a procedural manual which you will need to learn or reference?
o Get to know the criteria, assessment processed and good practice tips for your intended work place.
Social Work is a demanding job what plans to do you have to create a work life balance when working away?
