Social workers are essential for Singapore. So why don't we treat them that way?

They manage trauma, hold families together and care for our most vulnerable. We need to rethink how we value them.

- Robbie Goh

"Are you paid to do this?" That's the common response when Ms Ashlyn Leng mentions her occupation in conversation. Ms Leng is a social worker in senior care.

Even among those who know social workers are paid to do their job, she feels that there is a common perception that it is not a "prestigious" profession like "finance, banking or IT".

In the eyes of many, social workers are often lumped together with vocational workers. Many Singaporeans still look down on jobs in technical and community care fields. As a result, these roles are often undervalued and underpaid.

Mr Muhammad Saddam Husin, a medical social worker at SingHealth Community Hospitals, believes that reports in the media add to this misunderstanding by often highlighting dramatic crisis cases, while ignoring the important day-to-day work that social workers do.

This issue isn't unique to Singapore. A 2025 poll in the UK found that 75 per cent of people felt social workers were not valued by society. One social worker even described it as an "image problem" that makes an already tough job even harder.

The image problem certainly adds to the challenges of social work here as well. The commitment and passion required to be a social worker set a high bar. It is no nine-to-five job, and harder to switch off at the end of the work day than in many other professions. Each case requires not just long hours of hard work, but takes an invisible emotional toll. Long, difficult and repeated conversations with clients who are experiencing multiple conditions or stress-points are all too common.

Another social worker described what is known as "secondary trauma exposure", where a social worker shares indirectly in the trauma recounted by the client. They admitted that often, emotional exhaustion has an impact on their own family members, too.