In spite of the progress made in various walks of life and an ostensible rise in education around the world, social inequalities, and social injustice is still present. Many people are deprived of their basic human rights. They are victims of persecution, injustice, inequality and ethnic and racial bias. Moreover, lack of knowledge about nutrition, healthcare and environmental hazards cause serious medical and psychological problems. Such a grave situation demands consolidated efforts to solve the social problems and provide basic facilities of life to the suffering humanity without any discrimination. The efforts made in this regard, both on the individual and the collected level are called social work. As a profession, social work attracts those who wish to serve humanity and want to improve people’s lives having various deficiencies. One of the major concerns of the social workers is health-related social problems. They help people facing some life-threatening diseases, or have some physical deformity and are thus unable to live a normal routine life. They provide psycho-social support to the people having incurable diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, or AIDS. They also manage medicine and food for the deserving patients. Sometimes, the social workers also make arrangements for organ transplantation for the needy patients. Medical and public health social workers also work in the hospitals in the time of emergency.


Social workers also look after people with serious psychiatric problems. They help people having social problems like poor housing and unemployment and also aid the families with serious domestic problems like child or spousal abuse. Apart from these, there are many other places where social workers perform their duties. The overall concern of the social workers remains the social well-being of the masses.


Social work is taught as a subject in various educational institutions of the world. Social work is also available in online educational institutions with a range programmes from associate to master level. There are enormous career opportunities with handsome salary packages. The people qualified with social work degrees find jobs in various national and international humanitarian organizations in public and private sectors. There are social assistance industries, State-run social welfare departments and local government agencies which have many career prospects for you. These organizations demand usually a graduate degree in social work as the basic recruitment criterion. A master degree in social work qualifies for many lucrative careers. But it should also be remembered that social work aims at serving humanity. The focus of attention here is to serve people instead of personal gains. Hence we may not compare the field of social work with careers in other professions in financial terms.


There are many laudable efforts made in the field of social work around the globe. But still a lot remains to be done. There are many sectors in which social workers have done marvelous work but the experts believe that only one tenth of the work has yet been accomplished. They urge people to come forward to meet the dire needs of people deprived of the basic needs of life and provide opportunities to those who have disadvantaged backgrounds.