By Shirley Tam
A young girl in her 20's enters the room for a weekly social work gathering, followed by a tough-looking boy of similar age. People can hardly guess who they are and what their aim is for the day's activity. Though they look different from each other, they came into the room with the same determination.
Carol Sam and Vicent Yeung, both graduates from the Institute of Polytechnic last year, bear their mission to work. They are "social workers" in Macao. Though they are not the first generation of Macao's social workers, they are professionally trained with university degrees.
The title "social workers" may sound abstract for a lot of local residents as they do not have a clear idea of what it means and what jobs these people do. Actually most of the jobs a social worker does are very practical in life. They can be divided into three categories, individual case work, community work and group work.
Individual case work is to deal with personal problems including a person's family disturbances, work pressure, emotional troubles and so on. Social workers are trained to listen to him/her patiently and give out advice to ally their worries.
Community work helps disadvantaged groups of people, such as people with family financial problems caused by unemployment, new immigrants who have difficulty to make ends meet and so on. Social workers invite these people with similar problems into small groups and provide advice on how to deal with their problems. Especially for those facing unfairness in their lives, social workers empower the small groups to fight for a better life.
Group work focuses on providing practical solutions to specific groups of minors, like school dropouts or teenagers. Social workers will organize some seminars and activities for them, helping them build up their self-esteem and preparing them for a better future. Those seminars are mostly directed by the Education Department of Macao. The themes of the seminars mainly focus on the self improvement of teenagers and how to equip them with job skills. The group work is developmental, aimed at developing and discovering special talents in these teenagers.
Social workers believe that everyone has the ability to become a better person in spite of the hard times in their lives. "The objective of a social worker is to help people obtain self-confidence and self-esteem," Yeung said.
Sam said that social workers also pay specific attention to small groups of disadvantaged population in society. They include orphans, people with physical disability, low-income families and retired-elderly. "They need someone to fight for their rights and help them make a living," she added.
According to Yeung, schools need social workers too to act as a bridge between students, teachers and parents in order to find out teenagers' need and their emotions. "Actually social workers work as an 'active personal web' which links up to each other," he said.