From Child Welfare to Client Advocacy, it's Time for Change and Action

From the President

By Yvonne Chase, PHD, MSW, LCSW, ACSW

As I considered topics for this column, I realized I wanted to share several important issues and updates with you. I am including some child welfare and mental health news, as well as information about events planned as we celebrate NASW’s 70th anniversary this year.

Foster Care and Child Welfare

May is National Foster Care Month, a time to raise awareness about the needs of children and youth in foster care and the individuals who support them. I want to take this opportunity to thank foster parents across the country for the work you do. Fostering a child who is experiencing the pain of separation from their family, as well as the aftermath of abuse or neglect, can be challenging. Developing a trusting relationship with a child in those circumstances takes time and patience.

Foster care has a long history—with a 7-year-old becoming the nation’s first official foster child in 1636. While the U.S. Children’s Bureau published minimum standards for child welfare in 1919, foster care remained a private nonprofit entity until 1935, when, with the passing of the Social Security Act, grants were authorized for stipends for foster parents following a state inspection of the foster home. President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation in 1988 naming May as National Foster Care Month.

The child welfare system could not operate without foster care. Initially developed as a way to provide temporary care for children who were unable to live with their birth family, thousands of children currently reside in foster homes. Many agree that the child welfare system and the subsystems within are broken and require a new paradigm. Children in today’s system often require intensive therapeutic interventions to be maintained outside of residential care. Foster parents face many challenges in the current child welfare system, including timeliness of resources like Medicaid authorizations for a child’s mental and physical health, respite care when needed, and providing therapeutic interventions for children with severe mental health issues.

Child welfare also is intrinsically tied to the legal system and cannot function without it. Advocates have been calling for massive changes to the system for more than 30 years. We can expect the U.S. border/immigration issues and the loss of jobs for many American families to put more pressure on an already broken system. It is time for change to occur. We owe it to the children and families who have been harmed, rather than helped, by a system in crisis. There is a saying that out of chaos comes creativity. Please check a future column of mine, where I will propose some ideas for a new system—one that supports children and guarantees their safety and sense of belonging.

Suicide Prevention Standards

I am excited about the creation of a task force to develop standards for suicide prevention. Suicide affects entire families, and this standard has been missing in NASW’s standards for the social work profession. The task force comprises individuals with expertise and years of experience in this specialty area. We anticipate the draft standards to be available for public comment by December. This is an essential addition to NASW’s professional standards. Please plan to review and comment when the draft goes out for public review.

NASW Celebrates 70 Years

As part of our 70th anniversary this year, NASW is undergoing a rebrand, which will demonstrate we are prioritizing unity and collaboration to create a strong and influential voice for social justice, and that we are proactively looking to the future of the profession. The new NASW logo will represent inclusiveness, strength and unity. Creating a new brand is a tall order, and NASW staff and consultants have worked on this for more than a year. Look for updates soon.

The theme of our national conference this year—“Social Work: Celebrating Our Legacy, Developing the Future”—reflects both our rich history and our plans to focus on a bright future for the profession. The national conference is moving out of Washington, D.C., this year after being held in the nation’s capital for many years. We will meet in Chicago, June 15-19, and will be heading to other major U.S. cities every other year going forward. In election years, the conference will still be in D.C. For more about this year’s conference, visit socialworkers.org/events/NASW-conferences. I hope you will join us there!

Make Your Voices Heard

The Trump administration’s recent executive orders have put many of our clients at risk. It has been reported that attorneys working with children entering the country alone can no longer ensure these children have representation in court. Children as young as 2 years old are faced with no one to guarantee their safety. Both children and adults who have depended on Medicaid for life-saving medical care are finding resources being eliminated and reductions occurring. Adults who thought they were employed for the foreseeable future are finding themselves unemployed and without sufficient means to pay their mortgages or rent, or to buy food.

As social workers, our voices need to be heard—louder than ever. This is not a time to be reactive; we need to be proactive. Contact your state legislators and representatives in Congress. Ask for their help in creating new support systems for those in the midst of this national crisis. We have an ethical responsibility to advocate for fair treatment for all human beings.

At the same time, we social workers have a responsibility to care for ourselves. Please remember you cannot be effective if you are not taking care of yourself.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Contact Yvonne Chase at president@socialworkers.org