ORIENTATION AND TRAINING
The main purpose of social work is to help people cope with stress from interpersonal or social problems. The focus of the social worker may therefore be on individuals, families, or groups or on their social and work environments, their organizations, and their communities.
Social workers are trained to deal with developmental problems, life crises, and emotional problems that arise in a variety of social situations.
Graduate schools of social work require varying periods of supervised internship; they usually offer specializations within the field—e.g., drug and alcohol abuse, developmental disabilities, child welfare, correctional approaches, family services, care of the aged, and others. It is now possible to find social workers whose training is quite specialized.
In some states, social workers may practice with a bachelor's degree; in many states, a master's degree is required. In addition, counselors are usually required to put in a substantial number of hours of counseling under the supervision of a licensed counselor.
FEES
Social workers in private practice normally charge on an hourly basis for their services, with sessions lasting thirty to fifty minutes. Rates vary considerably, in direct relation to other health care costs. Rates are higher in larger metropolitan areas and also higher in New England and California than in the South and Midwest. An approximate range of $35 to $65 per counseling session is normal at the time of this writing.
Costs for marriage and family counseling and for vocational guidance counseling are similar to rates for individual counseling.
The charge for group therapy is frequently made for a block of sessions. The group therapist may, for example, recommend that a group meet for ten sessions. The resulting per-session cost is normally significantly lower than is individual counseling. (However, the goals of individual and group therapy are in general different, as we will see; neither can automatically be substituted for the other.)