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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3412

Social work associate professionals

Social work associate professionals administer and implement social assistance programmes and community services and assist clients to deal with personal and social problems. Tasks include - (a) collecting information relevant to clients’ needs and assessing their relevant skills, strengths and deficits; (b) helping persons with disabilities or the elderly to obtain services and to improve their ability to function in society; (c) assisting clients to identify options and develop plans of action, while providing necessary support and assistance; (d) assisting clients to identify and access community resources including legal, medical and financial assistance, housing, employment, transportation, assistance with moves, day care and other referral services; (e) counselling clients living in group homes and half-way houses, supervising their activities and assisting in pre-release and release planning; (f) participating in the selection and admission of clients to appropriate programmes; (g) providing crisis intervention and emergency shelter services; (h) implementing life skills workshops, substance abuse treatment programmes, behaviour management programmes, youth services programmes and other community and social service programmes under the supervision of social work or health care professionals; (i) assisting in evaluating the effectiveness of interventions and programmes by monitoring and reporting on clients’ progress; (j) maintaining contact with other social service agencies, schools and health care providers involved with clients to provide information and obtain feedback on clients’ overall situation and progress. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Community development worker - Community services worker - Crisis intervention worker - Disability services worker - Family services worker - Life skills instructor - Mental health support worker - Welfare support worker - Women’s shelter supervisor - Youth services worker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Marriage counsellor - 2635 - Parole officer - 2635 - Probation officer - 2635 - Social worker - 2635

A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't. It ranks 263 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • life coach
  • legal guardian
  • crisis helpline operator
  • social care worker
  • social work assistant

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

67.1
Holds up
against AI Minimal Exposure

AI could take on 32.9 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 32.9 = 67.1

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

25.7
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

12.5
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 17.9 · hand skill 7.1 · cramped spaces 12.5 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on under 50 Less than half hands-on

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

What this number leaves out This job rates 25.7 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 55.5, while the average is 32.9. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 55.5

    Collecting information relevant to clients’ needs and assessing their relevant skills, strengths and deficits

    Medium
  2. 50

    Assisting in evaluating the effectiveness of interventions and programmes by monitoring and reporting on clients' progress

    Medium
  3. 41

    Assisting clients to identify options and develop plans of action while providing necessary support and assistance

    Low
  4. 36.5

    Assisting clients to identify and access community resources including legal, medical and financial assistance, housing, employment, transportation, assistance with moves, day care and other referral services

    Low
  5. 30.8

    Participating in the selection and admission of clients to appropriate programmes

    Low
  6. 26.5

    Helping persons with disabilities or the elderly to obtain services and to improve their ability to function in society

    Low
  7. 25

    Implementing life skills workshops, substance abuse treatment programmes, behaviour management programmes, youth services programmes and other community and social service programmes under the supervision of social work or health care professionals

    Low
  8. 24

    Maintaining contact with other social service agencies, schools and health care providers involved with clients to provide information and obtain feedback on clients' overall situation and progress.

    Very Low
  9. 21

    Counselling clients living in group homes and half-way houses, supervising their activities and assisting in pre-release and release planning

    Very Low
  10. 18.3

    Providing crisis intervention and emergency shelter services

    Very Low

10 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

3 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
65.3
AI does it for you
35

Helping wins by 30.3 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 2249, 4117, 4234

Compared with similar jobs

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” group, averaging 65.4. This one is above that.