What a Career in Social Work Actually Involves: Child Rights, Tribal Rights and the Field Beyond the Classroom

Ask most people what a social worker does, and the response often centres on charity, helping the poor, or doing good. That response is not wrong, but it is outdated. Modern social work is a rights-based profession: it begins with what people are entitled to rather than what someone chooses to give them. Anyone planning to build a career in social work should understand that it involves promoting dignity, justice, equality, and empowerment for groups that are marginalised, excluded, or denied their rights. The profession sits at the intersection of classroom theory and real-world situations that do not always unfold as textbooks suggest.

This guide explains what a career in social work actually involves, drawing on the experiences of two individuals who visited the Faculty of Social Work at Parul University.

In March 2024, the Faculty of Social Work (FSW) at Parul University organised a two-day fest, Samarpan, a Hindi word meaning commitment or dedication. The event celebrated social work, social justice, and the spirit of social change. It was designed to bring students together with two practitioners who had spent their careers in the field, offering an experience beyond traditional lectures. The pairing also provided a useful perspective on the profession itself, as the two guests worked at opposite ends of it.

Social work in India spans many populations, but two of the most significant are children and tribal communities, and the Samarpan guests represented one each.

The Chief Guest was Puja Marwaha, Chief Executive Officer of CRY (Child Rights and You), one of India’s most established child-rights organisations and the recipient of the 2018 Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize for Social Innovation. Her career illustrates the rights-based approach: interventions for children should begin with an understanding of what they are entitled to, rather than treating their welfare as a matter of discretionary charity. This shift may sound subtle, but it has significant implications. It changes who is accountable, how a programme is designed, and how success is measured. A charity provides a child with a meal; a rights-based organisation asks why the child was hungry, who was responsible, and which entitlement failed, then works to address the underlying system. For students considering social work as a career, understanding this distinction is the first real test of the field.

The Honorary Guest was Padma Shri Dr. Sudarshan Hanumappa, also known as Dr. H. Sudarshan, a veteran social worker and tribal-rights activist. He served as Joint Secretary and Vice President of the Voluntary Health Association of India and received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 1994 for developing practical and replicable solutions to pressing problems.

His career represents another branch of social work: decades of community development and public health initiatives for tribal populations, among the most under-represented groups in Indian policy. His work promotes health as a right rather than a service delivered to passive recipients, placing it within a broader rights-based agenda for communities often overlooked by mainstream development. While much child-rights work takes place in urban and organisational settings, tribal-rights work is often remote, long-term, and deeply rooted in fieldwork. The social work profession needs both.

There is always a shift. With time, there are new changes that come. The changes are mostly for the benefit of society. The single most important idea is the prospective social worker. Who should absorb the move from a charity model to a rights-based one. It works on everything the two guests represented.

A charity-based model is voluntary, may focus on specific events, and is often shaped by the giver’s priorities. A rights-based model, by contrast, is grounded in existing laws and policies. It focuses on advocacy, systemic change, and accountability rather than relying solely on direct relief.

This is why professional social work is not interchangeable with volunteering. It requires a structured approach to understanding the systems that create exclusion and the skills to intervene effectively. Organisations such as CRY and the Voluntary Health Association of India work towards these goals at scale, which is why learning directly from the people who lead them can offer insights that a syllabus alone cannot.

Both guests were recognised specifically for innovation, Puja Marwaha through the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize for Social Innovation, Dr. Sudarshan through the Right Livelihood Award for practical and replicable solutions. That matters because social innovation is one of the more misused phrases in the sector. In social work it does not mean a new app or a clever campaign. It means an approach to a social problem that works, can be repeated elsewhere, and changes the underlying system rather than patching a symptom. A replicable model for delivering health to remote tribal areas, or a rights-based framework that reshapes how an entire organisation designs its child programmes, is social innovation in the sense of the field values. For a student, the lesson is that creativity in social work is measured by durability and reach, not novelty.

Social work has a recurring training problem, namely, a department may teach theory, values and methods, but the field is where they are tested, and students often meet that gap only after they graduate. The Samarpan event organised by the Social Work Faculty. The practitioners visit the campus where they interact with the students. They addressed the students, answered their queries and guided them. They could witness the interaction between two laureates and FSW students. They also interacted with the faculty. The discussion focused on social justice, child rights, tribal rights and community development.

The event was not driven by any particular agenda, and the stated outcomes, more grounded understanding of the profession, awareness of real-world social issues, and professional ethics, were goals in and of themselves rather than means to some further ends. That very honesty is a valuable lesson as it reflects a certain social work ethos that avoids overstating the case, as communities served by social workers cannot be let down, as they often have little resources to deal with issues or even to take advantage of promises made to them by others.

Studying at Parul University is altogether a new and learning-filled experience. The faculty are experienced who have worked in the subject matter. With their on-the-ground experience, they teach students. Students get practical exposure too through internships at NGOs, hospitals, CSR offices, etc. The university is NAAC A++ accredited with 3.55 CGPA. It offers BSW (Bachelor of Social Work) and MSW (Master of Social Work).  These programmes offer classroom training with practical learning through coursework. They get to participate in events like Samarpan. Samarpan helps students to connect with practitioners working on child rights, tribal rights and community health. The institute also organises programmes on gender equality. It focuses on inclusion, its impact on society, and other social issues. Social work is a profession that works for the people. It focuses on human dignity, justice and sustained work with non-deserving communities.  The qualities both Samarpan guests built their careers on.