Announcer:
Welcome to NASW Social Work Talks. The National Association of Social Workers is one of the largest membership organizations of professional social workers in the world. NASW works to enhance the professional growth and development of it's members to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social work policies. With our mission in mind, the purpose of the purpose of NASW Social Work Talks is to inform, educate, and inspire. We encourage you to learn more about NASW by visiting www.socialworkers.org and we thank you for joining us for this episode.
Greg Wright:
Hi, this is Greg Wright, Public Relations Manager at the National Association of Social Workers. It's Social Work Month. Social Work Month has been around since 1963. We have here our CEO Angelo McClain to talk about social work and why it's so important. Welcome, Angelo.
Angelo McClain:
Hello, Greg. Good to be with you.
Greg Wright:
What does Social Work Month mean to you? And also, why should it be so important to our nation?
Angelo McClain:
Well to me, Social Work Month means an opportunity to shine the nation and the local spotlight on the good work that social workers do. It's very personal to me; I was a former Commissioner of Welfare in Massachusetts and that was always a time when we could around to all of our area offices and really thank the social workers for the great job they do. It was always fun because the community would come together and would sponsor a luncheon or a breakfast and really just give them a big pat on the back and say thank you. And often times social workers feel like they're working and no one pays attention and no one appreciates what they do, but during Social Work Month it's just a reminder that society actually does appreciate what they do.
Greg Wright:
What are some of the initiatives NASW will be working on this year? For instance, I've heard that we have a mental health bill that's out there as well as a social work safety bill.
Angelo McClain:
You know NASW traditionally has worked on legislation that helps advance the social work profession, helps protect social workers, and also work to assure that we have the resources that our clients and communities need. And obviously we are always working on issues of social justice. Some of the things we are working on to sort of promote the social work profession and protect social workers, we're working a social workers safety act. We are actually pleased that we got that bipartisan bill that we got filed in Congress. There are also social worker safety acts that are being worked on within the state legislatures.
We think it's important because social workers, often times, are in dangerous situations and if we can put more protections, that'd be helpful. We're working on something call the Social Work Reinvestment Act. That's an act that basically asks society to reinvest in social workers. We do quite a bit to increase the quality of life for our fellow citizens and we're asking the Congress to reinvest in social work. To pass legislation that would provide funding for education, training, and research to where we can do a better job doing what we do, but for the country to reinvest in social workers. Throughout the country and different states we work on social work licensure to assure that the licensing laws within the jurisdictions are laws that help the profession do a better job in helping people. Then we're working on something called license mobility and that's the ability for social workers who might be practicing in different states or someone who might locate to a new state that their license would transfer over, because it's a lot of time, energy, and effort to have to refile for licensure.
Greg Wright:
This is also a big year for this association because we are planning a national conference that will be in June. I wanted to find out why should a social worker attend that.
Angelo McClain:
The NASW National Conference, which occurs every other year, it really becomes the meeting of the social work profession. We have people from ever state in the country will be there. We even have, I think the last time, we had folks from twelve different countries that were there. We always make a big effort to have the top of sort of keynote speakers there in our workshops. We have the best of the best in our profession who provide cutting-edge information about new ways of practicing. People who are involved in evidence-based practice, folks who are involved in working with seniors, with elders, folks who are working in the field of child welfare, child mental health, and integrated healthcare. So we look across the spectrum of practice areas, we've got the leaders in those practice areas here. It's a fun time. The two times I've been involved in national conference, I've really been pleased just being there and listening to people, hearing their conversations, and seeing the smiles on their faces. I think it's a time when people get refreshed and rejuvenated and sort of a reminder of why they came into the profession.
Greg Wright:
Angelo, NASW has also been working on a modernization plan. I was wondering if you could actually tell our listeners a rationale for it and also where are we in that process at this point?
Angelo McClain:
The concept of modernization is a phrase we coined about four and a half years ago. It really relates to how can we look at our organizational structure, restructure our organization in a way that really positions us for more achievements in the coming years. The way some people looked at our old organizational structure, because we actually did the implementation of modernization in July of 2016, previous to that the organizational structure we had had been developed in 1975. It was a feeling that it was time for us to modernize organization structure to we could take advantage of new technologies and we could create more economies of scale. One thing that reorganization and modernization has been attempting to do is bring the association closer together. For about 40 years we've operated with a national office and fifty chapters and the chapters worked pretty much independent. They collaborated some with each other; they collaborated some with the national office. But each chapter sort of did it's own thing and the modernization really seeks to say let's come together as one association and let's all kind of move in the same direction because we can learn from each other, we can support each other, and we can do a better job. One of the things we wanted to do through the modernization is look across the chapters and standardize to extent it made sense of the services and benefits that members get. Early on in this position I heard from a number of members who said, "I've been a member of two or three or four different chapters each chapter I found different benefits. There was a benefit or service in Chapter A that I really liked, but it wasn't available in Chapter B." One of the things we'll do over time is have a standard package of services and benefits that members will find at all the chapters. Then, of course, the chapters will have their own uniqueness.
Greg Wright:
There has been a criticism that modernization effort actually takes away the voice of membership. Is that a true assumption, or is that false?
Angelo McClain:
Any of us who have been involved in change management know that change is hard. This is the probably the fourth major reorganization that I've been through. I went through a transformation of the child welfare system in Massachusetts, went through a transformation of the child mental health system in New Jersey, and did some significant work in restructuring substance abuse acute system in Massachusetts. All those change efforts were really hard because they were major, they weren't just small, changing a program or something, they were changing the whole system. And you think about our modernization, it's akin to those large state delivery system transformations. One thing that makes change hard, because there's never agreement, you know you get a hundred people there's going to be fifteen opinions on what they change should be. Even in our instance, there was quite a bit of agreement. Yes we need to change; there was no one disputing that, but there was some disagreement about how we should do it, when we should do it, and what what it should look like. I have to give our national board credit for making the tough decision to move forward with it, because this was something that a plan had been talked about for fifteen years before I came to NASW five years ago. During that fifteen year period, no one was quite ready to move forward with it. So all that being said, change is difficult, change is hard, one of the things we're trying to put into place is that we want to always be constantly evolving, we always want to be this notion of continuous quality improvement, so we don't get to a point fifteen, twenty years from now where we have to make another drastic change. We can make incremental changes over time. In terms of members losing voice, that's not the case. There's annually, there's an annual election for members of the national board. Every member has an opportunity to vote for the national board members. The national board is charged with the responsibility and authority for making the governing decisions of the association. Annually, at the chapter level, there is a vote and every member has a chance to vote in those chapter elections for folks who would serve on the chapter boards. Then we have something called delegate assembly. Every three years we get together with delegate assembly and that's where we decide the professional standards that guide the profession. There's about 270 delegates that participate in that. Every member has the opportunity to serve as a delegate, or to run to serve as a delegate, and to also to vote for the delegates. In terms of voice, that's still there. We've actually, through some of our use of technology, we have the ability for more of our members to weigh in on policy statements that we develop.
Greg Wright:
I was wondering if you could let our listeners know how you first got involved in this profession.
Angelo McClain:
I've been a social working coming up on about 40 years, it's probably not quite 40, hopefully it's closer to 35 than 40, but I've been in this field for a very long time. My coming into social work is sort of the convergence of football and family; kind of an odd convergence. But as a high school senior, a seventeen-year-old, I was playing my last football game and we played on a team that had an all-state running back. I was playing football in the state of Texas, so to be an all-state running back in that state was a very, very big deal. And it was the last game of the year for us and if we won that game, we would've been district champions. We didn't win the game, it was 28 to 20, but there were numerous college football scouts in the stadium that night because of the all-state running back.
Angelo McClain:
On that particular night, I happened to score three touchdowns. I played tight end, I caught three touchdowns and I played defensive end and I had about twenty tackles. After the game, I'm in the shower thinking okay I've just played my last football game. I'll go on with my life. I didn't know exactly what that meant. My coach comes in and says these scouts want to talk to you. I said they want to talk to me? And so I go out and I talk to fifteen scouts from Division-1 schools and they were saying we'd like for you to come play for us. There was only one of those scouts who asked me what I would want to major in. Of course, I didn't know what a major was. I said what's a major and he explained to me and I said well if I were to major in anything, I'd want to major in something to help people. The reason why I said that, my mom from earliest age I can remember, she always said whatever you do in life, make sure you do something that helps people. So that kind of came together, given that that was the one scout who asked me what I wanted to do, I felt like they had a personal interest in me and that's the school I went to. I majored in social work and the rest is history because I get a BSW, MSW, and a PhD in social work and worked in the field for 35 plus years.
Greg Wright:
Could you also let our listeners know what areas of social work?
Angelo McClain:
As a youth, a thirteen-year-old youth, my mother had to make the difficult decision to place me in what most of us would think of as a residential group home, a place called Cal Farley's Boys Ranch just outside of Amarillo, Texas. I was there for five years, from age thirteen to eighteen. When you're that age you want to be home, you don't want to be in a residential group home. It was a big place; it had over 400 kids there, boys, it was a boy's ranch. For instance, in my dorm, there were 36 kids in the dorm, six kids in a room. It was very big dorm. We had sort of first class of everything. There was nothing we lacked for, we had every kind of experience you could imagine, really good experience, but we weren't at home. Little did I know that that kind of prepared me for my social work career. I worked in child welfare for a number of years throughout my career. I worked with families, trying to help families keep their children, worked with families to get their children back home, worked with kids in residential treatment centers. I used to go visit the programs and the staff would ask me how do you know where to look. It's like well, I spent five years in a residential group facility; I know what goes on. And then I worked in mental health and behavioral health. Most of my career has been worked on trying to help families do a better job nurturing and protecting and raising their kids and then working with folks who have a mental illness or substance use issue in helping them through that. I had the good fortune over the last 20 to 25 years of working, having the responsibility of managing large state-wide delivery systems and working to improve those systems. Being able to understand there's a lot that goes into being able to provide the services that are needed in our communities. A lot of the different parts of the system have to be working together and people need to be talking and communicating to get the best outcomes.
Greg Wright:
A final question for you, are these challenging days for social workers? We have a president in office, several of his policies have actually been anti-social work. Here we are in Social Work Month, I was wondering if you have an inspiring word for social workers during these times.
Angelo McClain:
I had the good fortune of meeting with the Pioneer Steering Committee and the social work pioneers, they are basically the all-stars, they hall-of-famers of social work. I met with the Pioneer Steering Committee about four days after the election and was lamenting to them the results of the outcome of the election. They gave me some pearls of wisdom. They said to me this is not the first time we've been here; we were here in '68, we were here in '81, and to a lesser extent in 2001. They said we face these battles and we've been able to deal with them. You have to stay woke, w-o-k-e, basic saying stay vigilant, stay watchful, and be ready, because they'll be opportunities. When those opportunities present themselves, you make sure you seize the moment. These are challenging times for us because it feels like the values and principles that we stand for are being challenged. It feels like people aren't being treated with dignity and being treated with respect. It feels like marginalized populations are somehow being disrespected and forsaken, I guess that's the word. And it's up to us. There are victories we've had over the last 15 months that we probably don't realize, but the things, standing up for immigrants, standing up for getting a budget that puts the resources we need for the families and communities we concerned about, standing up for women's rights, standing up for transgender troops. I can remember when we put out some information about transgender troops and our outrage that there'd even be any thought that they somehow weren't worthy to serve. That got some of our biggest response. I think those times when we stand up, people are listening, often times we think they aren't listening, but they're listening and it does have impact. I think we have to stay woke, keep fighting, and there will be opportunities, we'll seize those opportunities. And if we think about the 2018 midterm elections, we know we need to do everything we can to empower voters - get people to register, get people to vote. Really our voter registration efforts are bipartisan because we want everyone to vote. The best form of democracy is when people participate. We want as many of our community members and clients to vote. I've seen personally how empowering it can be when we get someone who could be in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or even 60s who registers to vote for the first time and just how empowered they feel. Social workers, we have an obligation to be active in our communities in getting registered to vote.
Greg Wright:
Angelo, thank you. We also hope to have you as a guest here at a future date.
Angelo McClain:
Greg, it's my pleasure to join you and I just want to give a shout-out to all the social workers out there and say "Happy Social Work Month." What you do is very very very much appreciated.