Facts about Social Work and Family Strengths

Click here to download a pdf version of the 2008 Social Work Month Toolkit.

• The most common setting for social workers providing services to some children and adolescents is private practice (21%), followed by social service agencies (15%), hospitals (12%), and schools (12%).
• Social workers who serve children and families are most likely to be satisfied with the amount of their time to provide clinical services and address presenting problems, and most likely to be dissatisfied with their time to perform administrative tasks and conduct investigations.
• Based on caseload estimates gleaned from this study, it is estimated that the study respondents provided services to more than 115,000 people.  Projecting those caseloads to the broader population of licensed social workers, we estimate that licensed social workers provide services to more than 10 million people each day.

Additional facts about social work and families:

• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 272,000 child, family and school social workers.
• The first professional journal in social work was The Family.
• According to the last US Census, there are almost 72 million family households.  
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, child and family social workers provide social services and assistance to improve the social and psychological functioning of children and their families.
• According to Homeland Insecurity…American Children at Risk, in 1996 there were 4.4 million families on welfare.  Today there are 1.9 million.

For more information about social workers and families, please click here.