NASW Chapters Host Grants That Promote the Social Work Workforce

Chapters

By Paul R. Pace

The NASW Foundation, as the tax-exempt subsidiary of NASW, is available to all NASW chapters to house funds that are to be used for scientific, educational and charitable purposes. Within this partnership, the Foundation processes and acknowledges hundreds of NASW chapter charitable donations each year and serves as fiscal sponsor for chapter grant proposals.

Some of the current grants the Foundation administers include NASW chapters in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Minnesota.

In Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, grants from funder Interact for Health serve all three projects that aim to advance the behavioral health workforce in those states.

The project in Kentucky is called “Elevating Social Work Advocacy in Kentucky.” The previous NASW-Kentucky executive director was using the grant funds to support lobbying the Kentucky legislature to increase the Medicaid reimbursement rate for social workers, do studies of the impact of reimbursement rates on the workforce, and gather data of the needs for behavioral health workers, said Danielle Smith, the current executive director of the NASW Ohio and Kentucky chapters.

Kentucky especially has a behavioral health care workforce shortage, she said. Since taking over as executive director of the Kentucky chapter late last year, Smith has been using the funds to support a contract lobbyist in Kentucky to advance social work workforce issues.

“In general, the project in Kentucky has elevated the understanding (that) the way to really address the workforce shortages is to pay people more and to look to nonfinancial incentives to encourage people to do this work,” Smith said.

The lobbyist “has been meeting with legislators there to talk about what social workers do and why we need to be paid more to help shore up that workforce shortage,” she said. “These are definitely long-term, big aspirational goals for that project.”

All three states being funded have created an opportunity for collaboration and taking what works in one state and using it another state, Smith said. “Our liaison to the funder is a social worker, so we meet with her pretty often to coordinate across all three states.”

In Indiana, the project is called “Increase Awareness of Social Work Roles and Workforce Support in Indiana.” It works to upscale media and overall awareness in telling the story of social work and the services that licensed social workers provide. It also aims to increase social work advocacy efforts with elected officials, appointed officials and researchers to promote the social work profession.

Ohio Projects

The NASW-Ohio workforce project is called “Building Capacity for an Equitable Social Work Future in Ohio.” This project helps to partially fund a professional advocacy coordinator at the Ohio chapter. The coordinator focuses on:

• Increasing social work salary through insurance reimbursement
• Looking at creating new options for paid internships for social work students
• Examining ways to create culture and legislative change for alternative assessment for social work licensure.

“We’re also pursuing additional grant funding to be able to continue to do that work into the future, because the work he’s doing is very aligned with what funders are looking to do,” Smith said.

Another Ohio Chapter grant fund is “Navigating New Laws: Gender Affirming Care Training for Behavior Health Workers.” Ohio legislators passed a gender-affirming care ban, Smith explained. “To my knowledge, it’s the only ban in the country that also includes a restriction on behavioral health care practice.”

“There was an immense need to train social workers on how to navigate that because there could be a lot of harm done to the client and to the practitioner … ,” Smith said. “We had an immediate need to train people, and our membership reach is only a portion of the number of behavioral health care professionals in the state.”

Smith contacted potential funders with an urgent request to support training because the need was so sudden. Funding materialized from the Mount Sinai Foundation in Cleveland, the Mahoning County Community Foundation for Youngstown, the City of Columbus and the City of Cincinnati.

The funds helped train more than 2,000 mental health providers in Ohio. An evaluation of the program has shown it has had a dramatic impact on people’s understanding of the legislation and how to navigate it, Smith said.

She noted the NASW Foundation plays an important role in these grants.

The NASW Foundation “at the beginning of all this, helped us to realize we could do this,” Smith said. “They gave us the confidence to apply and assisted us with our grant proposals, giving us things at the last minute that funders asked for and helping us just manage the logistics of all this.”

These grants subsidize social work advocacy work by having outside funding come in, Smith said. “The Foundation makes all of
that possible.”

Minnesota Project

In Minnesota, the NASW chapter has a grant focused on building the state’s racially diverse social work community. It works to break barriers and create accessibility for racially diverse social workers and aspiring social workers—people who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC).

Funded by a grant from the Sauer Family Foundation, the project supports two cohorts of 20 BIPOC social work students each, using a comprehensive, wraparound approach. The initiative includes internship stipends, access to supervision in underserved placements focused on children and families, free licensure exam preparation, and coverage of initial licensing fees.

The goal is not only to increase licensure rates but also to build a sustainable pipeline of future BIPOC supervisors, thereby multiplying the impact across the profession.

Karen Goodenough, PhD, MSW, LGSW, executive director of the NASW Minnesota and North Dakota chapters, said she along with Mailee Vue, MSW, LGSW, program and events coordinator at NASW-Minnesota, are pleased with the progress
of the project.

“The whole point of this is to get people licensed and to have more BIPOC licensees in our state and also have more BIPOC folks that are prepared supervisors,” Goodenough said. “It is very important that we have more BIPOC licensure supervisors.”

“I’ve only been hearing positive things (from the participants),” Goodenough said. “And one person has even said that it has been life-changing just working with one of the BIPOC supervisors that we had.”

As of April, 26 participants have received their license during their time in the diverse workforce initiative. An additional four participants had a license when they started the program and are working toward the next level of licensure. One out of the 26 achieved two levels of licensures while in the program.

Eight of the 26 licensed participants sought their license through the provisional route. Four are currently receiving their provisional licensure supervision hours, and the other four have completed their provisional licensure supervision hours and received their standard licenses.

“One of our contracted social workers, Kia Lee, received the NASW-Minnesota Social Work Supervisor of the Year award this year for mentoring emerging social workers through NASW-Minnesota’s Diverse Workforce Initiative and supporting BIPOC professionals pursuing licensure,” Vue said. “Kia has provided individual and group licensure supervision to several Initiative participants. Her expertise, dedication and supportive leadership have made a profoundly positive impact on the professional growth and personal confidence of her supervisees.”