Tag Archives: social work

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Jane Addams

Posted on August 4, 2011 by | Leave a comment

*I’m still on maternity leave and, so, revising and republishing some of my favorite posts from the past two years. I’ve tried to select some that were particularly popular at the time, as well as some of my own personal favorites. I appreciate your patience as I dedicate myself to full-time motherhood for a few more weeks!

Jane's on the right!

No human being is faultless, and I think it’s worth reminding ourselves of that frequently, less we be tempted to idolize mere mortals and, in the process, let our analytical powers go lax. Still, I was struck in reviewing some of these quotes from Jane Addams by just how much they speak to me, as a woman, a social worker, and an advocate for social justice. I’ll spare everyone the history of Jane Addams–Hull House, the Nobel Peace Prize, the leadership on women’s rights and children’s issues, the establishment of the ‘social justice arm’, so to speak, of our profession of social work. Instead of a history lesson, today, I want to reflect on these words that have been swirling in my head, and what they made me think of from my own social work journeys.

• Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
ML–Okay, so this kind of makes me not want to go to sleep. Ever. Taking a deep breath, though, I reflect that this is really what has pushed me to do a lot of my advocacy work–really, in my head, I know that this press conference or that lobbying visit or this speech is not going to change the world, but, in my heart, there’s a little part that wonders, ‘maybe?’ Please, don’t take this quote as an admonition from our founding mother not to ever take a break; instead, let it give you hope that this next hurdle just might be…it.

• The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
ML–This is on the header for this site; many people have said something similar, but I still think it’s worth repeating over and over again. So often, especially for me now, with so much of my energy focused on my kids, it’s easy to get caught up in getting what we can for ourselves instead of remembering that it is that which binds us together that produces our real security and comfort.

• Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.
ML–Has there ever been a more appropriate time for this particular expression? After years of hearing that loving your country meant loving everything your government does (or at least being quiet about it), we saw a presidential candidate who dared to say that change and dissent and even agitation were valid ways to express real patriotism, and the result was record voter turnout, our nation’s first African-American President, a return of Democratic control, and a resurgence of interest in all things political. Jane would be proud, I think.

• Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
ML–Social workers, listen up. Jane is reminding us that what we say has little to no ethical relevance; it’s how we live and practice that really speak to the kind of social workers we are, and that really gives meaning to our collective professional conscience. Daunting, yes, but ethically imperative.

• Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we often might win, by fearing to attempt.
ML–I think of this every time that someone tells me, “I could never speak in public,” “I don’t have time to lobby,” “I’m intimidated by Congress,” or a variety of other roadblocks constructed to keep people who could make a major impact on policymaking away from the exercise of this power. We are, really, our own worst enemies sometimes, although Jane said it better than that.

• Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited.
ML–Um, true in her time and even more true today. Privatization cannot cure all of our ills, and charity is no substitute for well-funded, well-run government-provision of services to those that private charity most often leaves behind.

• Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.
ML–This says quite eloquently what I’ve lumbered around trying to say in class for the past few years; there is a difference between social work advocacy/organizing and that conducted by other professionals. Our commitment to empowerment, ethical orientation that rules out unacceptable means, and strengths perspective, taken collectively, should ensure that the way in which we undertake advocacy and organizing is, in real ways, qualitatively different than the processes pursued by those coming from different perspectives.

• I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
ML–This one made me laugh outloud and, of course, I immediately thought of the women, in today’s society, who have done just those things! Here, Jane was working hard to keep women off of the pedestal which marginalized us, just as we must do whenever we work with comparatively powerless populations. Only people who are considered real and complex and far from harmless are given seats at the tables of power, and that’s precisely where we want to be.

• The excellent becomes the permanent.
ML–And the powerful becomes the inevitable.

ML–These last two are pretty long, but I like the first one because it gives me some new thinking on how to integrate my own faith into my understanding of the pursuit of social justice and the second one because she found a way to defend and exalt socialism without ever saying as much, which I find quite clever.

• That Christianity has to be revealed and embodied in the line of social progress is a corollary to the simple proposition, that man’s action is found in his social relationships in the way in which he connects with his fellows; that his motives for action are the zeal and affection with which he regards his fellows. By this simple process was created a deep enthusiasm for humanity; which regarded man as at once the organ and the object of revelation; and by this process came about the wonderful fellowship, the true democracy of the early Church, that so captivates the imagination…. The spectacle of the Christians loving all men was the most astounding Rome had ever seen.

• It is always easy to make all philosophy point one particular moral and all history adorn one particular tale; but I may be forgiven the reminder that the best speculative philosophy sets forth the solidarity of the human race; that the highest moralists have taught that without the advance and improvement of the whole, no man can hope for any lasting improvement in his own moral or material individual condition; and that the subjective necessity for Social Settlements is therefore identical with that necessity, which urges us on toward social and individual salvation.

Do you have a favorite quote, Jane or otherwise, to which you turn for inspiration? Do you have alternate analyses of any of the above? Who is your favorite social work hero?

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Why do lobbyists get such a bad rep?

Posted on April 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Guess that quote origin again, folks:

“It is of serious interest to the country that the people at large should have no lobby and be voiceless in these matters, while great bodies of astute men seek to create an artificial opinion, and to overcome the interests of the public for their private profit. It is thoroughly worth the while of the people of this country to take knowledge of this matter. Only public opinion can check and destroy it.”

Serious stuff, hunh? Undoubtedly related to the Jack Abramoff scandal and the recent outrage over the influence of “special interests”?

Or maybe President Obama, speaking about his Administration’s policy to bar lobbyists from working in his White House (which, then, of course, immediately included some exceptions, in the realization that, for example, crafting immigration policy without the insight of Cecilia Muñoz, former lobbyist for National Council of La Raza, would be a bit unnecessarily difficult)?

Or, try, Woodrow Wilson, May 1913, speaking almost 100 years ago about an issue that, certainly, has not abated from the public agenda in the intervening century.

But, as I’ve written at some points in the past, this is something I’m conflicted about.

I mean, to me, the real problem isn’t the influence of lobbyists, who, in many cases, are knowledgeable professionals who play an integral role guiding elected officials through the myriad of complex policy issues on which they must decide (would anyone like to see what policy 90+ new Missouri legislators would come up with this year without someone around who has been there for more than a month?).

The real problem is the oppressive, and distorting, power of money, and the fact that some lobbyists have disproportionate authority not so much because of their own influence but because of the moneyed movers and shakers they represent.

And, so, that’s why I always get nervous with this “anti-lobbyist” talk.

I mean, I called myself a lobbyist for many years, was a registered lobbyist, and believe(d) very strongly that my lobbying was the best way for me to serve my clients, and, indeed, my country. I absolutely influenced legislation, and legislators, and convinced people to take stands that they would not have taken without my efforts. I changed votes, on multiple occasions, and I used every tool I could think of to do so.

Does that make me part of the creation of an “artificial opinion”? Was I distorting the process? Or, in fact, are we misplacing our angers when we take aim at lobbyists instead of those who sometimes hire them? Why do we decry the yeoman’s work of those who monitor legislation, provide counsel to confused or conflicted policymakers, and interpret the policy process for lay men and women in their home constituencies, rather than focus our energies on the campaign finance system that allows vested interests to buy their lobbyists greater access and control?

I know that those who talk about “special interests” don’t necessarily mean low-income communities with nonprofit lobbyist representation. I certainly never had campaign contributions (or free tickets to anything) to throw around. I usually bummed a Diet Coke from a state senator friend of mine. But I did try everything I could, and worked long and hard, to change the outcomes in the legislature, and I was focused on the relatively narrow interests of my target constituency when I did that (believing, of course, that the polity as a whole would benefit, but I bet some of the corporate lobbyists would say that, too!).

That makes me a lobbyist.

But it doesn’t make me ashamed.

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The Facebook Effect: Rethinking Productivity

Posted on April 5, 2011 by | 4 Comments

I’ve never been one for chatting.

During my full-time career, I think I went out to lunch with colleagues about three times in seven years.

These days, I tend to view any moment not explicitly tied to production as a minute wasted–60 more seconds that I’m kept away from my awesome kids.

I love to-do lists, and especially crossing them off.

And, yet, one of the quotes from The Facebook Effect that stuck out at me most is this: “understanding people is not a waste of time” (p. 143).

And that has me thinking about what productivity really looks like, and about the kinds of behaviors nonprofit organizations should reward, and about the proper role of social media in the social work workplace.

Because the truth is, of course, that social workers are not immune to the time-wasting potential of social media. We often need to relieve stress, and a few moments spent in idle browsing can turn into…a few more, until we’ve been distracted from our real purpose.

That’s not just poor time management. It’s unethical social work. We have an obligation to use our agency’s resources wisely, and to keep our clients’ needs foremost in our minds. To do less is to violate a core trust, and to abdicate our most sacred responsibility.

But what about social media usage that connects us more deeply to our constituents, helps us to engage with donors, shapes the nature of the conversation about our issues, and gives us insights into how others view our organizations, and our work?

It’s hard to argue that collecting that kind of information, building those relationships, and broadening our scope of influence could ever be a waste of time.

Even beyond “official” agency uses of social media, I think a strong case can be made for individual social workers using their own connections to engage friends, family members, and colleagues in the quest for social justice, and, indeed, to practice their listening and relational skills in this medium.

When I look back, actually, I think about the relationships that I may have shortchanged with my intense focus on accomplishing tasks. Would it have been easier for me to permeate the organizational culture with an emphasis on advocacy, had I engaged in more relational work with colleagues? Did I ever unintentionally send clients the message that they should “get down to business”, and, in so doing, cut off important relationship-building?

Did I ever make people feel that understanding them was a waste of time?

How do you use social media at work? What dangers do you see, and what opportunities? How do you balance collegiality and productivity? How would our work lives look differently if we valued building relationships as much as accomplishing tasks?

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Why direct practice will always matter

Posted on October 5, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Lyndon Johnson was no social worker.

But it is a speech of his, or rather a section of one, made on March 15, 1965, one week after the march in Selma, Alabama that drew the nation’s attention to the urgency of the struggle for racial justice, that, for me, best highlights why it is so critical that policymakers, in any profession, be rooted in the lives of those who will be most touched by the policies they create.

Towards the end of his speech outlining for Congress his vision for The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which remains, in 2010, an essential piece of civil rights legislation and one of the core victories of the African-American struggle for equality, he said:

“My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn’t speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.

Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.

I never thought, then, in 1928, that I would be standing here, in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.

But now I do have that chance–and I’ll let you in on a secret–I mean to use it.

And I hope that you will use it with me.”

We will not all become President, certainly, nor wield the kind of power that Lyndon Johnson did at his peak, but we can cultivate positions of power and authority in our pursuit of social justice, in the expectation that we will, too, someday have the chance to do great things on behalf of those who have touched our lives by allowing us to walk with them.

Failing to seek that power gives up that chance. And it’s inexcusable.

As is forgetting those faces once we’re in a position to do something to help them.

And, for all his many, many failings, that’s something Lyndon Johnson, the teacher and the President, can help us remember.

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The future of our female-dominated profession

Posted on August 31, 2010 by | 13 Comments

One of those women I can't imagine our profession without--Bertha Capen Reynolds

As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t mind controversy.

In fact, some of my favorite stories are about when I had to do a talk radio show ON MY BIRTHDAY (a Saturday, no less!), and the host had people call in to say whether I was “the stupidest person who’s ever been on the show” for advocating drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants; or the time I was kicked out of a church for trying to mobilize immigrant parishioners; or the time my own grandmother called me to tell me I’d been horribly misquoted in the paper, and I had to admit that I’d actually said those things.

And this post might rank up there with those.

So let me just say, first, what’s true, that some of the brightest, most passionate, most talented people I know are social workers. It is obviously my career choice, and I have never doubted for a moment that I made the right one. Period.

Something that I read about teachers in Super Freakonomics has got me thinking, though, about the nature of our profession, overwhelmingly female, and its future in the face of ever-changing gender dynamics.

We know that teaching and social work are both dominated by women. And we know that, for generations in this country (and others) they were two of only a handful of career options open to women in any meaningful numbers. Nothing shattering there. But what those freaky-economists have found is that overall teacher aptitude, measured by teachers’ score on intelligence tests and skill measures, have been falling since 1960, paralleling…the rise in occupational alternatives for women. Of course, the authors are quick to point out, this correlation is abetted by the low wages within teaching and the comparative attractiveness, then, of other professional choices–it’s not, in other words, that the brightest women no longer want to teach but, simply, now that they CAN do other things, many of which pay more and offer more rewards and fewer headaches, many do.

Which is what has me thinking about we social workers. I mean, who’s to say that Jane Addams would have chosen social work if other avenues would have been just as open to her? We can hope, but hope won’t get us the talented social workers, women and men, that we, and, more importantly, our clients, so deserve.

The answer, obviously (I trust!), is not to restrict the career options of women so that they’ll have to be social workers. But we do need to acknowledge, albeit perhaps belatedly, that the pipeline of bright women no longer heads straight to our doors, which means that we’ve got work to do.

  • We need to be serious about our professional image as a profession of choice, not of refuge. This means high standards for admission into our professional schools, based not just on academic qualifications (although they can’t be overlooked) but also engagement in the world and commitment to our profession’s values and ethics.
  • We need to work at the system level to raise salaries for qualified social workers–articulating the clear value of what we do, fighting for equitable funding for social services, and rigorously evaluating our impact.
  • We need to recruit, hard, among the target populations we hope will choose social work–not just the women who have been our profession’s backbone and guiding inspiration, but people of color, first-generation college students, rural residents, GLBT individuals, non-traditional students… If we can’t make the case as to why people should choose social work, then we can’t be surprised if they don’t.
  • We must break down barriers that make other professions more attractive routes to helping people than social work. I don’t have an exhaustive list of ideas here, but I know that it needs to include loan forgiveness for work with underserved communities and mentoring for new professionals, because we, like teachers, tend to lose some of our best folks early in their careers.

    I don’t think we have a crisis of unqualified social workers. Every semester, I’m a little bit amazed by some of the very smart, intellectually curious, naturally empathic, all-around wonderful people who have chosen to cast their lots with us. Amazed, delighted, and reassured.

    But I do think that a profession with a value base that compels us to advocate for the advancement of the less powerful, including women, must be planning for how we’ll fare in the very future we’re seeking to create–one where women have the same set of career options and incentives that men do, and where we’ll have to compete with all sectors of the economy for the best and brightest of both genders, in order to staff our profession with the hearts and minds we’ll need to tackle that next set of injustices, just beyond the horizon.

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    Posted in Analysis and Commentary

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    Social workers as policymakers

    Posted on August 20, 2010 by | 26 Comments

    Social workers are not, as a general rule, very comfortable with power.

    Listen to a group of social workers, or social work students, talking amongst themselves for any period of time, and this will usually become quite apparent. “You know, I wanted to make the big bucks; that’s why I became a social worker!” (facetiously, of course) “They don’t tell me anything; I’m just the social worker!” You get the idea.

    The reality, of course, is not only that such self-effacing attitudes are quite self-defeating (more on this later, since I just realized I’ve never written up my whole “power speech” for students!), but also inaccurate.

    Social workers have tremendous power. Ask any client who has ever been rejected for services, been made to feel ‘less than’, had her children removed from her home, been required to attend condescending classes, or been scheduled for an appointment at a terribly inconvenient time.

    In fact, every day in many ways large and small, WE are what our clients most directly experience as power, and as policy.

    And when we deny this, or when we fail to recognize it, we don’t win any points for our martyrdom. We don’t empower anyone by pretending that we have less power than we do. When we fail to adequately account for and ethically employ the power we have, we, instead, fail our profession, our institutions, and, most importantly, those we serve.

    This is an often uncomfortable realization for social work students who, after all, got into this business to help people, not to wield power over them. But power, and the way that power works in relationships, is really at the heart of any clinical relationship–how would we, as social workers, ever help anyone to change his/her life if not for the power granted to us by virtue of that mutual relationship? And it’s an integral part of administrative and advocacy practice, too, particularly when it comes to the discretion that social workers at all levels enjoy–to apply eligibility rules, to interpret ambiguous rules, to selectively apply certain incentives or sanctions. The literature and history of our profession recognize this–skim any introductory social work text for “social control and social assistance”–and we know that, if we were honest, our job descriptions would also include words like “gatekeeper”, “rule-maker”, and “policy police”.

    This discretion is a core part of what what makes social workers (and other, similar professions) professionals, and it’s a big part of what makes social work a feasible proposition. Think about it: there is no way that an organization could create policies to account for every possibility, and there are dozens of ways, every day, in which policies as enacted are unworkable as implemented.

    The challenge for social workers, then, is to acknowledge the policies we make through our decisions, and through our inaction, too. It is to accept the ethical ambiguity of this policymaking and seek consultation and engage in deliberation to approach it with the utmost caution. It is to build mechanisms that incorporate the perspectives of those served in this decision making, and to share power meaningfully so that these clients experience our discretion as a thoughtful exercise of professional authority, not an arbitrary or capricious exercise of personal fiat.

    The brief scenarios below come from my own social work practice. I’d love to hear from other social workers grappling with this whole idea of professional discretion and of the iterations of social work policy making within our organizations. How and when have you confronted this realization of your power? As a supervisor, how do you manage discretion for your direct reports? How do you build transparency and accountability into the policies made by your actions, the same way we seek to build these measures into policy we create in other contexts? How do we create a truly empowering relationship with clients, knowing that it is only through an embrace of our own power that we can hope to empower others?

  • As an Adult Protective Services worker, I was regularly humbled and rather stunned by the tremendous discretion that I and other APS workers had to make determinations about what constitutes abuse, neglect, or exploitation, who should be held responsible, and what the appropriate corrective actions are. When social workers go into someone’s home to ask these uncomfortable questions, we are exercising huge authority and serving as an arm of government power. And, most of the time, no one’s watching over our shoulders to be sure that we use this power “correctly”.
  • My work has often required interpreting for clients. Every single time, I am cognizant of the power that comes with this role–I am literally putting words in their mouths, and I’m filtering everything that they know about a situation that is often of real importance to them. While few social workers serve as multilingual interpreters, we all play roles in helping clients to navigate the social service delivery system, bridging gaps, and “translating” their circumstances for those unfamiliar with them. This makes us creators of reality, a gigantic power.

    We spend a lot more time talking about how others do policy to us–state legislatures, Congress, federal agencies–than about how we make policy. I think that’s because the latter is a lot more uncomfortable for us; it requires confronting our power and the often ‘sticky’ nature of our policy decisions. We owe it to our clients, though, to do this confronting. We are, for many of them at many points in time, the embodiment of policy’s potential to oppress or to empower, whether we like it or not.

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    Posted in Background Reading

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    The what? Why you should know/care about the social work congress

    Posted on July 26, 2010 by | 2 Comments

    A large, diffuse, diverse organization like the National Association of Social Workers has a real challenge in setting national direction while maintaining energized connection to members, in the field, who often feel disconnected from the workings of the umbrella organization. Achieving this unity of purpose, however, and being able to communicate it, is critically important in how the organization builds power and emerges as a force to be reckoned with in society.

    And, you know, I like to be a force to be reckoned with.

    That’s why I’m quite interested in the proceedings of the 2010 Social Work Congress and, in particular, in how few social workers (and students) with whom I’m in regular contact have any real idea about what the Social Work Congress is, or how its work setting a vision for the association could impact the profession’s trajectory.

    In order to advance that unity of purpose that I view as so important to our profession’s stature, then, I want to share some of the outcomes of the Social Work Congress. I want to hear social workers’ responses both to the content/tone of the imperatives that flowed from the two days of deliberations as well as to the process–how can/should NASW disseminate this information, and how can social workers in the field best engage in discussion about where our profession is headed, together?

    The participants in the 2010 Social Work Congress (of which I was not one) included representatives from state NASW chapters, the Council on Social Work Education, the country’s major social work organizations, and other leaders in the profession. The core of their work was to develop ten imperatives, which include integrating technology ethically and effectively into practice; improving recruitment and retention of social workers, especially by addressing debt relief and mentoring for students and young professionals; infusing models of business practice into social work; making the case for social work’s value to policymakers and the general public; and integrating leadership development into social work curricula.

    For my tastes, the imperatives aren’t explicit enough on what I view as THE imperative for our profession moving forward: building the power we need to successfully assert a vision of a just society, the kind where social workers’ services would be nearly irrelevant.

    The closest the imperatives come to talking about this kind of advocacy relates to strengthening the ability of social work organizations to speak with a unified voice on “issues of importance to the profession.” To me, though, that could mean those issues which more narrowly affect our own, individual, status, and not necessarily a collective demand for justice, the likes of which we know our clients deserve.

    Still, I’ve been part of some of these group decision-making processes, and I know something about how laborious they can be, and how much easier it is to sit on the outside and critique. There’s no denying that these ten are, at least, essential questions facing our profession in the near future and, so, worthy of our common attention.

    So, now, you know what the Social Work Congress is (although, just as an aside, weren’t you secretly hoping that now Congress was a Social Work Congress–what if Congress could be made up of nothing but social workers, at least for a day? That would be awesome.) I’m interested in your take–what would you see as the ten ‘imperatives’ facing the profession in the coming years? And how would you structure a process that makes this sort of deliberation resonate with all social workers, throughout this vast and disparate nation, and profession, of ours?

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    Another Argument for Diversity

    Posted on May 25, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    iqoncept, via Flickr

    Social workers talk quite a bit about diversity, really. Our Code of Ethics has strong language about respect for marginalized populations, and our Council of Social Work Education’s standards for courses include pretty strong language requiring inclusion of diversity. In my course evaluations every semester, students are specifically asked if I’ve done enough to include content on diverse populations.

    And that’s all absolutely good and important.

    But, lately, I’ve been thinking that we maybe rely too much on “it’s the right thing to do” kinds of arguments, when talking about the importance of diversity, instead of coupling that moral imperative with a discussion of the wisdom of diversity, as a matter of group performance and organizational excellence. After all, we know from advocacy that we make the best arguments when we appeal to both heart and head–why this is the right thing and why it’s the smart thing–and, in pushing our profession and our organizations to reflect more of the diversity around us, maybe that parallel track approach would help too.

    Because we need some work, honestly. Again, we talk a good game, but the truth is that our profession and the organizations in which we work still don’t fully embrace the full range of the diversity we serve. We still, too often, relegate the perspectives of people of color, people from other language backgrounds, people of diverse sexual orientations, people of different abilities, to a “special”, side track, rather than completely accounting for what we still need to do to be the diversity we so value (because, yes, that means aggressive Affirmative Action programs and targeted recruiting practices and lots of other initiatives that take money and hard work).

    In the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, which I picked up because you know how much I super-love crowdsourcing, the author presents some really fascinating research about how calculated diversity within groups does far more than just look good on an annual report: it absolutely helps the group to make better decisions.

    The book is worth reading, especially if you like reading about psychological experiments (!), but, essentially, in terms of this topic, what the research he presents finds is that a group of people, working on a problem from their own diverse perspectives, can come up with better solutions, most of the time, than any one individual (even a really smart one with a lot of knowledge about the problem), or, usually, even a group of really smart people from the same perspective.

    A lot of the reasons for those results align with the moral arguments social workers make about diversity: people are shaped by their own backgrounds and experiences, which make them approach problems differently and reach different conclusions. So, bringing people together who come from very different backgrounds and different interests can, in and of itself, increase the likelihood of getting a good decision.

    But this kind of diversity doesn’t just mean checking off different boxes for race or ethnicity or gender. We’re all embedded in our social context, after all, and that can mean that, even if we come from different places, spending a lot of time together can start to make us converge on the same (even if really bad) decisions.

    And we can’t afford those bad decisions. We’ve got to figure out how to best support low-income working mothers, what kinds of housing options work best for those leaving homelessness, what kids leaving foster care need to succeed. Solving those problems will mean approaching them with fresh minds, not foregone conclusions, and there are too many examples, from social work and beyond, of tightly-knit groups of rather similar people being blind to considerations that influenced their decision, sometimes with tragic results.

    That means that, if we want real organizational excellence, then we have to continually solicit the participation of new people, from new perspectives. Certainly some of our volunteers and even the general public can be part of this process, but it seems fairly obvious that developing a good system for endowing our clients with real decision-making roles is the surest way to institutionalize the kind of diversity that can lead to success.

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    I should make “Facebook” part of your learning contract??

    Posted on April 22, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    If something sits on your desktop long enough, and it’s about social media, someone will come out with something new and you don’t have to worry about it! And then, of course, the new thing sits for quite awhile, too, and then you wait until you’ve got a nice, natural tie-in (to rationalize the delays!)?

    So here’s the thing. There’s a lot of talk these days about nonprofit organizations and social media and whether it’s all just a lot of hype or whether there’s real potential there, and how we’ll ever know because organizations aren’t tracking outcomes like they should, and because they don’t have the money to invest the way that they’d need to in order to get the outcomes they want and…all anyone wants is to be like Charity:water and is that so wrong? Or so hard?

    The answers, of course, to those last two questions are no. And yes.

    But so what this got me thinking, since it’s April and in social work education land that means students interviewing with practicum sites and looking forward to next year and thinking about where they’ll fit in their next stage of actual practice (!), is that maybe we need to start carving out a role for social work students, at least those in a social work administration/advocacy practice-type concentration, for a social media presence within social work organizations.

    I know, all of the social media experts caution nonprofits that they can’t just solve their social media problems by sticking an intern on the task, but we know that social work practicum students are NOT just “interns”. They bring the value base and client-centeredness of social work, the support of their university setting, and, not insignificantly, a huge time commitment every week over a relatively long period. And, for the most part, they have some familiarity with social media, a passion for their organizations and their work, and a desire to let the world in on the terrific stuff that’s going on in their corner of it!

    I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but, if nonprofit leaders are successfully convincing their Boards of Directors and CEOs that they need to invest in social media (oftentimes at considerable financial cost), and if social media mavens like <a href="“>Heather Mansfield are coming up with really concrete, fairly easy ways to tell the impact that social media has on an organization and its work, can’t we convince field instructors and the field education powers that be that it has a place in social work education too?

    Here are some of my thoughts, based on a review of the learning contract for advanced administrative students, on how some basic social media strategies (like creating and maintaining a presence on social networking sites, using social news sites, and assisting with an organizational blog) might fit in:

  • “Briefly describe the history of your agency, being sure to emphasize historical and current mission statements, targeted clients, catchment area, and important partner agencies.”–This requires being able to tell an organization’s story, and those are the kinds of stories that can motivate people to action when told in a social medium. Think about a series of blog posts about turning points in a particular organization’s history, or using social media to connect to current and potential coalition partners in the community.
  • “Interview several direct service social workers and clients in order to gain an in-depth understanding of client needs (both met and unmet needs), the day-to-day activities of direct service social workers, and the challenges they face.” Again, these stories would be so compelling as blog posts, or accompanied by photos and posted as links to Facebook, or as part of a revamped, interactive organizational website. We need to think about how we can accomplish student learning goals while simultaneously advancing the organizational mission–that’s what field education is, at its best.
  • “Demonstrate the ability to represent the agency in a professionally responsible manner in the community.” Um, enough said?
  • “Use at least one advanced administrative practice skill designed to influence policy and/or program development, implementation, or change on behalf of clients and/or communities in the student’s chosen field of practice.” If we apply some of the evaluation techniques to figure out the impact of our social media work on our social change goals, this could fit very well. Certainly the relationship-building, message-crafting, and strategic planning that go into a good social media approach qualify as ‘advanced practice skills’.
  • “Apply knowledge, skill, and abilities to mobilize resources for meeting needs and enhancing well-being.” This could be really fun–maybe a Twitter-based fundraising campaign, or a Cause on Facebook, or a Flickr photo contest that ties into the organization’s website, driving traffic and boosting donations. As a field instructor, this was always a hard item for me to tackle, but I can see a lot of potential with social media.
  • “Demonstrate the use knowledge and skills to build teams and organizational cultures that maximize staff morale and engage community diversity and Demonstrate an understanding of how knowledge and skills can be applied to recruit, interview and hire prospective staff members/volunteers.” This is a particularly good fit, I think, given the necessarily social nature of social media and the opportunities to use outlets like blogging to build a sense of community, help workers to tell their stories, and bring in new people who will be committed to the organization’s mission.
  • And, finally, “Demonstrate the knowledge and skills needed to develop measures of status change, behavior change, client satisfaction, productivity, efficiency, resource acquisition, and staff morale for an agency program.” Maybe social work students could even design a social media program and its indicators of success, to develop an increased understanding of outcomes and how to track them while laying the foundation for the organization’s successful implementation of a social media approach?

    Look, I know that social media is never going to be the core of the social work field contract. Nor should it be. But I also know that social work, as a profession, has to be continually concerned with keeping our skills relevant, providing real value to those organizations who facilitate our very existence by providing field placements, and sustaining our work by helping the organizations where we practice to survive. Social media is showing some real promise in helping nonprofit organizations to connect to new people in new ways and build momentum around their work, and I think that social work students are particularly well-poised to play a role in this revolution.

    Now, let me know if you want some help figuring out how to approach your supervisor!

    Materials:
    Study on Nonprofits and Social Media ROI (or lack thereof)

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