Entrepreneurship and Social Work: a comparison between Social Work students and graduates

Social Work is a profession dedicated to help people who have a problematic situation to be solved. Social Workers have abilities and resources to resolve problems and they use the abilities of the person who needs that help to empower them. The ambit of those professionals is very varied: public administration, private companies or NGOs. In this context, we analyze the role played by entrepreneurs. In this work we have collected information that allows us to draw conclusions about social entrepreneurship and the vision that social workers have about that movement. To do so, we have sent a questionnaire, previously validated by experts in the field, aimed at Social Work students and graduates. The treatment of this information has enabled us to find out their opinion about entrepreneurship, the differences in the way of thinking between both groups concerning the creation or not of companies and if they believe that they might be entrepreneurs in the future. We have detected little entrepreneurial spirit among social workers, partly due to the lack of this entrepreneurial culture not only in society but also in the curriculum of Social Work degrees.