5 Great Clinical Social Work Jobs

5 Top Careers in Clinical Social Work

  • Professor
  • Clinical Care Coordinator
  • Youth Program Director
  • Social Worker
  • Social Services Supervisor

Clinical social work jobs account for a sizeable portion of the mental health and community help industries. They also can provide some truly satisfying and well-paying careers. What are some of the jobs that fall into this professional sector? The following are just five great examples of the many options available.

1. Professor

Anyone who may enjoy teaching and helping others may also enjoy the work of a college professor. This approach can also offer some flexibility in how closely that person desires to focus daily on social work itself or even subsets of the discipline. Working as directly as possible on the core subject matter of clinical social work might see the professor teach classes such as Theoretical Perspectives in Social Work, Management in Social Systems, Advanced Social Work, and many others. Classes slightly straying from but still related to the core of clinical social work often include Survey of Research Methods, Qualitative Design, and Quantitative Analysis.

2. Clinical Care Coordinator

Clinical care coordination is all about how an organization is structured and functions with regard to providing care services. This can be a rather broad area of managerial concern, and rather than placing such wide-ranging concerns on managers already busy with other tasks, many organizations choose to utilize clinical care coordinators. While these professionals are tasked with handling overall care-rendering structure, they may also be found handling other tasks as well. The exact aligns of this role can fluctuate greatly from one organization to the next.

3. Youth Program Director

Working with youth can be as rewarding as any other vocational option to many people. Working as a youth program director is one way to do this while also working in the social work sector. Youth program directors essentially manage programs and projects involving children and adolescents. These programs may be government-run, based out of private businesses, or even a branch of the work done by non-profit organizations. Whether helping youth stay on the right track or helping them to find their way back to it, this area of work can be especially rewarding.

4. Social Worker

Most people have heard of social workers, but what exactly do they do? Social workers are essentially counselors that have an extra ability to help their clients to navigate the social and governmental programs they may need assistance with. In other words, they are advocates and help to bridge the gap between services and treatment and the patient in need of them. Of additional interest to some may be the fact that US News & World Report recently ranked social workers as having the fifth best social services job and placed 63rd in its list of the top 100 careers.

5. Social Services Supervisor

The social services supervisor, or director in some cases, is the manager of all operations of a social services location. As such, they may be responsible for some very important areas of practice: mental health case management, child protective services, foster care systems, day care systems, disability services, family services, and more. Oversight of staff and policy is also an important component to this position. A Master's in Social Work is typically required for entry into this important role.

Related Resource: Top 25 MSW Online Programs

Social work helps many communities and individuals across the country. The above-mentioned careers in this line of work only represent a few of the many career options available in the social work community.