I first became aware of social work as a profession more than 10 years ago as I was browsing through American applications for adoption in China, the Chinese translations of which my parents helped to proofread.

Each application included a home study, which detailed the life stories of the applicants from their childhood years to when they were married.

They were conducted and written by an accredited professional social worker who obviously asked a lot of intimate, and at times difficult, questions, to make sure the applicants were genuine and capable of caring for an adopted baby as if it were their own.

Later, I had the chance to visit some shelters for women who had fled violent and abusive husbands or parents in Canada, and I saw social workers in action with my own eyes.

However, I had little idea how important the profession was to society at that time.

I was not alone. When I attended workshops to learn how to battle domestic violence in China or increase awareness of HIV/AIDS a few years ago, I met only doctors, police, lawyers, civil affairs administrators, government officials, trade unionists and women's federation staff.

In my articles, I celebrated the fact that so many people, from so many agencies or organizations, were contributing their efforts to stop violence within the home and to lend help to people with HIV/AIDS.

It started to dawn on me only a few years ago that as the economy booms and society becomes more diverse and sophisticated, China needs professional social workers to use their knowledge and methodology to help individuals, families, groups and communities relieve, solve or prevent social crises through the provision and operation of appropriate services.

As professionals, they also work with individuals or groups to help them regain confidence and deal with personal and social difficulties, and to obtain essential resources and services in social work agencies for welfare, labour protection, disabilities rehabilitation, health care, youth and corrective services.

The fact is that some universities in China started to offer social work programmes about a decade ago.

However, it wasn't until three years ago that Shanghai became the first metropolis in China to officially launch social work centres with professionals providing a range of services such as psychological counselling, guidance and help.

Today their number still remains very small, about 453,000 hardly enough to render adequate professional services to the needy: 22 million urbanites on welfare and 65 million rural people living in absolute poverty or on low incomes.

There are a further 82 million people with disabilities, 573,000 orphans and 143 million people over the age of 65 who also need help from the small number of social workers available in this country.

That is why China has made it a national objective to increase the number of social workers in the next few years.

However, I believe harder work is needed to raise public awareness of the country's need for social workers.

Until today, most graduates of social work programmes shied away from the profession as society did not take it seriously.

In Shanghai, fewer people registered to take the professional exam for social workers last year than in 2004.

A young social worker in Qingdao of Shandong Province even had difficulty making the local industrial and commerce bureau understand what his new agency did despite telling them he planned to offer youths help to kick or prevent online addiction, provide assistance to the elderly to adjust to life in the city, or to workers to adapt to new working environments.

The bureau officials did not even recognize the term "social work," categorizing the young professional's agency as an "information consultancy" instead.

Social workers have yet to win due respect and acknowledgement not only from the public, but from government agencies.

(China Daily 12/21/2006 page4)