Social care is a profession where people work in partnership with those who experience marginalisation or disadvantage or who have special needs. Social care practitioners may work, for example, with children and adolescents in residential care, people with learning or physical disabilities, the homeless, and people with alcohol/drug dependency, families in the community, older people, and recent immigrants to Ireland. Graduates of this programme are referred to as Social Care Practitioners and will typically work in a direct person-to-person capacity with the users of services. They will seek to provide an environment in which various social, educational and relationship interventions can take place in the day to day living space of the service user. A Social Worker’s role on the other hand is to manage the case, for example, co-ordinating case review meetings and negotiating the termination of a placement. Work in the sector is typically interdisciplinary and it would be very likely that social care workers, social workers, early childhood care workers, etc. would work together in multi-disciplinary teams in many work situations.

Social care is a profession where people work in partnership with those who experience marginalisation or disadvantage or who have special needs. Social care practitioners may work, for example, with children and adolescents in residential care, people with learning or physical disabilities, the homeless, and people with alcohol/drug dependency, families in the community, older people, and recent immigrants to Ireland. Graduates of this programme are referred to as Social Care Practitioners and will typically work in a direct person-to-person capacity with the users of services. They will seek to provide an environment in which various social, educational and relationship interventions can take place in the day to day living space of the service user. A Social Worker’s role on the other hand is to manage the case, for example, co-ordinating case review meetings and negotiating the termination of a placement. Work in the sector is typically interdisciplinary and it would be very likely that social care workers, social workers, early childhood care workers, etc. would work together in multi-disciplinary teams in many work situations.