After a decade efforts，the social work educational organizations in Shanghai have established a professional group of social workers，which is both fair in scale and wide in social influence. This group has effectively met part of the social demands. In spite of an early commencement in social work，the Shanghai group is currently facing some challenges，such as inadequacy in the number and professional expertise of social workers，strong government dominancy with low self-determination in social work agencies，and less significant motivation from social work monitoring bodies. Thus we shall work for a better functioning social work monitoring system，more efficient fiscal support and incentive mechanism and a more diverse participatory base for social work.