XN000022-1995-05-30 — Page 8

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Career opportunities for social work graduates

University graduates with the requisite skills in social work and the aspiration to serve the community are urged to consider joining the Social Welfare Department (SWD) or the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as Assistant Social Work Officers (ASWOs).

The appeal was made by the Director of Social Welfare, Mr Ian Strachan, when he delivered a talk on career opportunities for university graduates in the social welfare fields at the Appointments Board Meeting of the Chinese University of Hong Kong today (Tuesday).

Three years ago, the SWD recruited 96 university graduates as ASWOs. Last year the figure doubled to 190.

Mr Strachan said about 80 per cent of the new recruits would take part in front- line activities such as out-reaching to the needy, or providing counselling to families with problems and the other 20 per cent would take on supervisory or administrative duties, like supervising people under probation orders.

"A social worker's responsibilities are indeed multi-faceted. Areas of service include youth, family welfare, rehabilitation, offenders/drug abuse, elderly, community development, central administration, medical social work service and social work training.

"For NGOs, a majority of social work personnel work in areas of youth, family welfare and rehabilitation. For the SWD, family welfare accounts for the largest share, followed by offenders/drug abusers and medical social service.

"As the department is committed to expanding family welfare services and to reducing our caseloads, a significant number of graduates recruited recently have been posted to our Family Service Centres as caseworkers," he said.

The day-to-day duties of a Family Services Centre caseworker include providing counselling service to families and individuals with relationship or bahavioural problems; providing casework service to those the SWD has statutory responsibilities, such as abandoned children and wards of the Director of Social Welfare; conducting social investigation on complicated cases and working with socially and physically handicapped clients with personality or social problems.

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