Finding Joy in Social Work II: Intrapersonal Sources

Do social workers find joy in their work? If so, how does that happen? In this article we report findings from our qualitative research on social work joy. We could not remember ever reading about social work joy, or even hearing people talk about it. But we searched the literature and found one old reference. Dr. Richard Cabot (1919), the physician who created the first hospital social work program in the United States, declared: “There may be some professions where a man or a woman can be of use who does not draw joy from work, but certainly social work is not such a profession” (p. 157).