The Profile of Social Services Workers Employed by the Local Councils and their Perception over the Job of a Social Worker An Exploratory Research in Braşov County

In this article we will present the results of an exploratory research on the professional identity of social workers in Braşov county. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 social workers employed in town halls, during the period of June-August 2018. The localities selected are on the list of communities with a high number of vulnerable groups. The analysis of the data was performed using the NVivo11 software, by means of open, axial and selective coding techniques. The main categories gathered refer to: the social workers’ educational background, their career path, opinions about their job as social workers, the main challenges at their workplace, the greatest satisfactions at their workplace, and the changes they would operate in their profession as social workers to make their job more efficient. The results of the research emphasise a significant number of situations in which the social workers do not have a solid specialised background, but feel dedicated to their work; the work is perceived as very complex and very demanding; the changes are more of a legislative nature, and also refer to creating and consolidating the work teams, as well as other concrete measures which could improve their work efficiency.

Keywords: social worker, professional profile, perception over work