The Proactive Profession: The Importance of Social Workers
Born in Newburgh New York in 1983, Stephanie Carnes has always known that she wanted to help people with her life but was not always certain what the best way to do that would be. Carnes entered the working world in the field of Counterterrorism, but after some time felt that while the work in this field was important, it did not have the proactive effect that she was searching for. She wanted to change the lives of people around her in a substantive and meaningful way.
Carnes went for her Master’s Degree in Social Work in 2009 and was placed in two different social worker positions from 2009 to 2011. The work she did from 2009 to 2010 was entirely volunteer work, and her first paid position was at the Poughkeepsie Children’s Home working with young mothers and children.
The program she was a part of had her working with struggling new mothers, an incredibly vulnerable part of any community. This position showed Carnes the true disparity in our world, and she felt that she needed to do everything in her power to seek social justice for disproportionately affected communities.
Her career has shown her people struggling through some of the most trying times of their life, but she says their spirit to continue forward despite their struggles is what motivates her to keep pushing for social justice.
“They’ve [marginalized populations] experienced so much oppression, and to have the resilience to survive so much just to get to where they are,” said Carnes. She felt that it was a necessity for her to use her voice to speak up for those who had been systemically silenced by society, believing any person with the ability to speak and be heard should use their voice to push for a better society.
The profession of social work is often incorrectly oversimplified down to someone who works within the CPA or is responsible for food stamps, but this could not be any further from the true nature of the field of work. The field of social work is a constantly expanding field, with demand for social workers arising anywhere there is social injustice. In every way that the quality of living for people can be improved, that is where a role for a social worker to fill is created.
It is this unique way of viewing the field of social work that has pushed Carnes towards pursuing a role related to teaching social work. She feels that people need to have a sense of social justice “coursing through their veins” and wants to instill that sense in the next generations of social workers.
When asked about her ideal future in the profession of social work, Carnes said that she wanted to be responsible, or make meaningful work towards policy changes in regard to immigrant children and students. She greatly stressed the importance that education has in someone’s developing life and that it should be a fundamental right that everyone is guaranteed regardless of where they are from.
Carnes also stressed that it was just as important that we as people take care of ourselves to ensure that we can continue to carry out the best possible job that we can. “We won’t be able to help anyone if we also don’t help ourselves.”
