Social Workers Creed

Excerpt from Social Workers Creed

Poem to honor Social Workers

Copyright Deborah Young

We are Social Workers, all with an eclectic dossier

We are educated from many an accredited CSWE academy

We hail with the BSW, MSW or DSW degrees

And, stints of unique supervised fieldwork, has enhanced our abilities

We are licensed, certified or even registered; valid, prudent uniformity

Be it LCSW, LMSW or LBSW; the titles, we display, respectfully

We empower, helping people help themselves; we’ve got the right stuff

We possess dedication, determination and competency; minus the fluff

Sho’ ‘nuf, we are America’s empathetic angels; tuff enough

The NASW Code of Ethics, we staunchly adhere to and abide

Cause it encompasses values, principles and standards to guide

We celebrate March as National Professional Social Work Month, for sure

Yet, throughout the year, we practice what we preach, without forfeiture

We definitely make a difference, free of an air of flare

We are authentic and resolute, with lots of care

We claim it; we are judicious Social Workers, extraordinaire

Social Work heroes; worthy of a Bust on a Stand; forever, there...

Creed

Use this in your work or when you go to school, review it often to ground yourself and to remind why I want to be a social worker, why I became a social worker.


I respect the dignity of the individual human personality as the basis for all social relationships.
I have faith in the ultimate capacity of the common man to advance toward higher goals.
I shall base my relationships with others on their qualities as individual human beings, without distinction as to race or creed or color or economic or social status.
I stand ready to sacrifice my own immediate interests when they conflict with the ultimate good of all.
I recognize that my greatest gift to another person may be an opportunity for him to develop and exercise his own capacities.
I shall not invade the personal affairs of another individual without his consent, except in an emergency I must act to prevent injury to him or to others.
I believe that an individual's greatest pride, as well as his greatest contribution to society, may lie in the ways in which he is different from me and from others, rather than in the ways in which he conforms to the crowd.
I shall therefore accept these differences and endeavor to build a useful relationship upon them.
I shall always base my opinion of another person on a genuine attempt to understand him - to understand not merely his words, but the man himself and his whole situation and what it means to him. As a first essential to the understanding of others,
I shall constantly seek a deeper understanding and control of myself and of my attitudes and prejudices which may affect my relationships."