National Association of Social Workers

From the Director

Celebrating Past, Looking to Future

By Elizabeth J. Clark, Ph.D., ACSW, MPH

As NASW celebrates its 50th anniversary, it is a time to look both to our history and to our vision for the future.

In 1955, seven associations came together to form one unified group to speak for the profession — the American Association of Social Workers, the American Association of Medical Social Workers, the American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers, the National Association of School Social Workers, the American Association of Group Workers, the Association for the Study of Community Organizations and the Social Work Research Group.

I'm certain that decision was a difficult one. Each group had an identity, a purpose and a specialized constituency.

When the details were final, the new association — the National Association of Social Workers — had 22,700 charter members. More than 500 of these original members have maintained their NASW membership for 50 continuous years. These individuals had a vision, and they have sustained that vision for half a century. We all owe them a great debt of gratitude.

In November 1979, the Sixth NASW Symposium was held in San Antonio, Texas. The Symposium Planning Committee, chaired by Shanti Khinduka of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, chose the theme "Social Work Practice: Directions for the 1980s." The goal was to promote increased awareness of the societal forces to which the profession of social work would have to respond during the next decade.

They discussed the value dilemmas, changing social needs and emerging technologies that were expected to characterize future social work practice. The symposium participants felt a futurist approach was warranted and they took into account that the decisions made in 1980 would shape the 21st century.

As Bertram Beck, chair of the NASW Commission on the Future of Social Work, noted in the symposium proceedings: If the profession wishes to be proactive rather than reactive, it needs a map, however crude, of where the road it travels goes, and it needs to correct that map whenever explorations reveal the profession's assumptions about unexplored terrain to be faulty. He concluded that by systematically assembling data to correct the map, the organization could plan activities to ensure a role for professional social work in shaping the world's future and to serve the profession's objectives in the face of changing social conditions.

Fast forward to March 2005. Once again, seven professional social work organizations came together (Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors, Council on Social Work Education, National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work, Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education, the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research, Association of Oncology Social Work and NASW).

They first developed a vision statement for the next decade. Then 400 social work leaders drawn from all areas of practice met for two days at the Social Work Congress 2005 to develop a new road map for the profession.

The charge was to focus on improving the profession itself. Two lenses were to be used. First, participants looked at the profession through the lens of issues: aging, behavioral health, health and health disparities, and children and families. Then they took a second look focusing on social work education, research, practice and policy. The goal was to determine major imperatives — what is most crucial to meet the challenges facing social work today — and to determine what must happen for the profession to be successful.

At first, many in attendance at the Congress found it difficult to focus inward, to put the profession itself under the microscope. It was easier to look outward, to examine social problems and issues rather than to examine the problems directly confronting the profession.

We were asked to formulate imperatives that the profession could achieve without help from outside sources. At the conclusion of our deliberations, 32 "candidate imperatives" had been developed, and Congress attendees voted to select and adopt 12 of them [see "Social Work Congress Sets Future Course," this issue].

During the next few months, key strategies for each of the imperatives will be identified, and the new road map will be refined. Then the actual journey — the journey to transform the profession, to make it more relevant and essential for the future — will begin.

The course of our profession does not depend on the decisions and actions of others. It depends on us. Can we unify the profession, work in concert, speak with one voice, address our shortcomings and challenge the status quo? Can we make the vision for 2015 a reality?

In 1955, social work leaders had the courage to change the profession, to strengthen it to ensure its future. They would expect us to do no less.

To comment to Elizabeth J. Clark: newscolumn@naswdc.org

From May 2005 NASW News. © 2005 National Association of Social Workers. All Rights Reserved. NASW News articles may be copied for personal use, but proper notice of copyright and credit to the NASW News must appear on all copies made. This permission does not apply to reproduction for advertising, promotion, resale, or other commercial purposes.