Scholarship Essay for Social Work

My desire to become a social worker began as a young middle school student when I learned about the suffering of children by abusive adults through a non-fiction story we read in class. At that time, I just wanted to “rescue” the children. Since then I have matured through serving families and children within the child welfare system and my mission has broadened.
I have worked in various childcare programs in several different capacities and the majority of my client base has been African American.   In my experience I have noticed that these clients were overwhelmingly poor, young, single parent women with a lack of emotional and financial support as well as parenting skills. As a product of a single parent household, I found this to be very unsettling. Fortunately, I was often able establish a strong bond with my clients because they felt I could relate to them. As a result, I was able to reach them in way that several of my coworkers could not. After completing the MSW program, my goal is to create a program targeting low-income African-Americans who are parents of children between the ages of 0-5 with services providing educational classes and professional support to lessen the likely hood of child abuse or neglect in their families.
Data shows that the majority of child fatalities and maltreatment involve children under the age of six (Child Trends, http://www.childtrends.org/Files/ChildAbuseRB.pdf).     My program will consist of nurses, parent educators, and social workers who will provide preventive classes and services such as after-delivery home visits, infant care classes, playgroups/support groups, mental health screenings, referrals, relationship/ sex ed. workshops, breastfeeding and nutritional classes. This will allow providers to build a relationship with families and get into the home before the children are school aged during this critical period when most child abuse occurs.  
I worked with the U.S. Army and discovered that a similar program...