Listening Level : HIGH | Work- Jobs – Social Worker 2

Part two

Study steps:
1) Listen to Gemma talking about her career and answer sentence below.
2) Listen again and check your answers
3) Check answers at the bottom of page
4) Listen again while you read the transcript.

Please ask any questions in the comments section and I will answer them for you asap!

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:
a) What adjective does she use to describe the new role?
b) How does she describe the people she worked with in terms of society?
c) Why did she find it so hard to work with children?
d) Why couldn’t she do more for the children?
e) What were the 4 most enjoyable aspect of her job?
f) Why do social workers learn something new every day?
g) What is so rewarding about social work?
h) what will she cherish forever?

After doing that for two years I decided to take a job with a non-government organisation and that role was a bit more gritty, I guess, working with people who were more marginalised and people that were from backgrounds very different from mine and also people, I guess you would say, who were living sort of more on the fringes of society.
Yeah, the toughest part of that job was definitely working with children. I mainly worked with the parents because I was working with adults but there were some parents that had children or young people in their care and that was extremely difficult for me because I found myself getting very emotionally attached to some of the children and also worrying about them a lot.
So, I’d go home after work and I would worry about them, wonder if they were OK, wonder what I could do to help them and then I guess, the feeling of powerlessness in that I couldn’t really do much to help them, essentially because they already kind of had child protection workers and they were all being assisted by other social workers and that wasn’t really my role to sort of help them. so, I guess that feeling of powerlessness and not being able to help children in sort of situations which were quite confronting, I guess, was definitely the toughest part of my job.
The most enjoyable part of my job… so many things! I guess the fact that I was never bored, always interesting, always a lot to talk about with my colleagues, always lots of new things to learn. I guess as a social worker you kind of learn something new every day because you meet new people all the time and you learn about their lives and it’s really really interesting work.
The other parts of my job which were very enjoyable was the fact that it was extremely rewarding when you, I guess, had a success story with someone, so something that you did with them or something you did for them really really helped them and you could see the effects of that immediately and how positively that affected their lives and that feeling is just amazing. The feeling of helping someone in such a tangible way is something I will cherish forever, I guess, and I guess I’m really lucky that I’ve been able to experience that cause it really is such a good feeling an such a good experience and quite humbling as well.

ANSWERS
a) Gritty
b) Marginalised / living on the fringes of society
c) She would get very emotionally attached to some of the children and also worry about them a lot
d) They already had child protection workers and they were all being assisted by other social workers and that wasn’t really my role to sort of help them
e) never bored, always interesting, always a lot to talk about with my colleagues, always lots of new things to learn
f) because you meet new people all the time and you learn about their lives
g) when you have a success story with someone
h) The feeling of helping someone in such a tangible way