A Valuable Resouce: The Social Worker as a Consultant Series

Last month I wrote about how I wish I’d learned more about the skills required for entrepreneurship while pursuing my degrees in Social Work. I later published a follow-up post that carried over from conversations on LinkedIn where other Social Work professionals weighed in on some things that they wish they would have learned while in school.

For any of you who might be interested in getting into consulting, and using your passion and skills to work for social justice in an entrepreneurial way, I’m very happy to share this great resource with you: The Social Worker as a Consultant Series.

This series was written by Dr. Michael A. Wright, Owner and President at MAWMedia Group, a consulting firm based in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Wright was also featured last month in The People Who Inspire Series.

In this series, Dr. Wright covers several different areas that crucial for anyone to consider who may want to branch out on their own.

Take a look.

 The Social Worker As A Consultant Series

Part 1: Defining the Social Worker as a Consultant: “The primary difference between the social worker and other professionals is the requirement that social workers engage in individual change and social change….” Read More

Part 2: As a Consultant: What the Social Worker Already Knows: “Social work professional education includes in its core curriculum some important constructs that are also vital to the social worker as consultant…” Read More

Part 3: As a Consultant: What the Social Worker Must Learn: “Consider that, as consultant, you must gather the ingredients, the cooking pans, the oven, the electricity, and the dinner guests. You cannot simply show up with napkins and a winning personality. The ability to plan and manage complexity across systems bakes success into the consulting casserole…” Read More

Part 4: Managing Your Consulting Business: “Social work tends to attract persons whose primary concern is not money, who do not typically publicize their achievements, who favor trust-based relationships, and who are uneasy charging directly for the good they do. The social worker as consultant will need to face these tendencies in the context of business and consider an approach in four areas: legal structure, marketing, contracts, and consulting fees.” Read More

Part 5: Four Contexts for the Social Worker as a Consultant: “Launching and sustaining any business depends on three things: Development of a brand, marketing of brand, and truth in advertising. In other words, first, you have to come up with something to sell. Second, people have to hear about and understand what you are offering. Third, your product or service has to work for them if they are going to tell their friends about it…” Read More

Part 6: Consulting with Start-Ups: “The first and most important task for any start-up is a two-page executive summary outlining your business model. In two pages, you need to be able to summarize the market, operations, management, and financial projections of your new company. It must have real information (not fluff and wishes), and it must build logically…” Read More

Part 7: Ethics of the Social Worker as a Consultant: “The social work Code of Ethics (naswdc.org/pubs/code) is robust enough to cover the activities of the social worker as consultant. Its ethical principles of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence remain true and applicable for social workers in every practice arena. Yet, … Read More

Part 8: Educating the Social Worker as a Consultant: “The standard social work education curriculum has 5 areas of inquiry: Practice Methods, Policy, Ethics, Human Behavior in the Social Environment, and Social Research.  The social worker as consultant may organize these into two categories: Systems of Practice with Human Behavior and Social Mechanisms…” Read More

These posts are helping me tremendously as I continue to develop myself, and I hope that they benefit you as well.

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins, MSW

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