NASW Social Work Talks - EP6: Social Work & Public Policy with Joan Levy Zlotnik

Episode Date: May 1, 2018

Joan Levy Zlotnik, PhD, ACSW, discusses how public policy is an important part of social work. See Episode 6 show notes for resources

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 its members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social work policies. With our mission in mind, 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. Hi, this is Greg Wright, Public Relations Manager at the National Association of Social Workers. Our guest today is Joan Zalotnick, a consultant at NASW. I consider Joan an encyclopedia of social work. Her knowledge is amazing. Today, we will be talking about social work and public policy, and also a report maximizing social work's policy impact in a changing political climate. Welcome, Joan.

I'm glad to be here today. So, our first question is, social workers have long been involved in shaping public policy. I was wondering if you could actually give us a few examples of that. Sure, I'm happy to do that. Certainly, historically, social workers were involved with the creation of the Children's Bureau in 1912, and throughout the years, social workers have had a strong role in the Children's Bureau, including currently Jerry Milner is the head of the Children's Bureau. He's a social worker with great child welfare experience in the Clinton administration.

Carol Spigner was head of the Children's Bureau. And Uma Al-Awalia serves as head of health and human services for Montgomery County, Maryland. Allison Blake was the child welfare director for many years in New Jersey, all strong social workers. And perhaps of particular note, because people see her on CNN and MSNBC and other NPR, is Wendy Sherman, who's a social worker, graduate of the University of Maryland School of Social Work, who is the chief negotiator of the Iran nuclear deal. um even though there's a lot or many social workers who are involved in public policy there's always a sentiment that they could do more or that there could be more doing this and um why is that attitude out there joan i think while social workers have always had uh involvement in policy making and policy has been an important part of macro social work practice

It's one thing to have some key people who are leaders in policymaking, but I think what we really want to look at is how can we make sure that social workers, no matter what they're doing, are aware of the importance of policy involvement every day in their careers and how policy really impacts their practice, whether they're clinicians or people who are working in agencies, no matter what the population is. And so we want to really see how we can get more social workers involved in policy practice and understanding that advocacy is an important part of social work from a code of ethics point of view. In 2015, the Fund for Social Work Policy Education and Practice was actually created to get more social workers into public policy. I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about this fund.

Sure, I would be happy to. Patricia White, who was a longtime program officer at the New York Community Trust, worked with the New York Community Trust to really target funds towards social work and policy involvement with the Fund for Social Policy Education and Practice. And she went and directed that implementation of that fund between 2015 and 2017. Pat White's a social worker, and she really involves key social worker organizations in the fund to really get more attention to policy and advocacy within the profession. And there's a number of activities that that fund supported, including enhanced field placements, improved Web site and resources from influencing social policy, policy fellows from the Network for Social Work Management, a boot camp for early career researchers around getting policy to getting research to policymakers. Also, in April of 2017, this fund was instrumental in actually creating a summit, which was hosted by NASW, called Maximizing Social Work's Policy Impact and a Changing Political Climate. I was wondering if you could actually tell us how this summit was formed and what happened there. the summit was created as one of the projects of the fund for social policy education and practice was a coalition of social work organizations really working together to really give more

visibility to policy efforts and some of the initiatives that i just mentioned and one of the things that the coalition thought was that it would be really important to have some kind summit that would bring together these various initiatives that were going on, and that became even more important after the November 2016 election. So that changed the focus a little bit, but really the focus was on enhancing the efforts in social work around policy practice to infuse greater attention to policy across all of education and practice, and to highlight highlight opportunities for partnerships between social work education and advocacy organizations. We included in the summit people from national policy advocacy organizations and think tanks,

people from NASW chapters, social work educators, social work practitioners, managers, people from other national organizations, and really wanted to develop an action agenda about what could happen to really address the changing political climate as well as enhanced attention to policy practice and advocacy. I'm wondering what are some of those action items that resulted from the summit? So there's a whole set of action items that occurred, and they kind of fell into different categories, really representing the fact that social workers are really well positioned to impact policy, both in terms of the values of the profession, the ethics of the profession, as well as the system's perspective and the ability to connect real-world stories with data and research.

So the initiatives really kind of building on the idea that social workers could be policy change agents focused on what national social work organizations could do, especially the National Association of Social Workers and the Council on Social Work Education, what advocacy organizations and think tanks could do, what social work education leaders could do, what field directors could do, what social work faculty can do, and what social work students can do. And those efforts really focused on wanting more attention to policy practice and suggesting that for NASW and CSWE, they should make in their communications a much clearer link to what the policy implications are of what's talked about. Like one idea would be that what clinical social workers get reimbursed for by insurance companies is very closely tied to the Medicare reimbursement rates.

And the Medicare reimbursement rates for clinical social workers are very low. And the only way to change that is through policy change. And that would impact the profession overall. But a lot of people aren't aware of that link. Also, there was a recommendation to promote the idea of more policy awards for policy practitioners. For NASW and the Council on Social Work Education to serve more as sort of an intermediary to get research to policymakers, since they both have active policy advocacy efforts going on on Capitol Hill at the national level, and certainly NASW does at the chapter level as well.

and to really make sure that people understand the difference between lobbying and advocacy because lobbying is on a specific piece of legislation, but advocacy is really about educating policymakers about what a difference it makes in terms of access to various services, protection of immigrants, things like that. Joan, we are wondering how folks can take recommendations from this and actually translate it into, you know, social work, education, and other areas. We're wondering if you could give us just a few examples of that. Sure.

One of the issues is that many schools of social work don't really offer policy field placements or encourage students to pursue policy field placements. So there's an opportunity to really have field directors in schools of social work at both the BSW and MSW level, learn from colleagues who've been successful in developing field placements. And one of the initiatives that's highlighted in the report is what's gone on in the New Mexico chapter of NASW with field students, as well as some of the work that's gone on in Nevada at the University of Nevada, Reno. So people could learn about that and follow up on it, as well as we involved in the meeting the chair of CSWE's Commission on Field Education

to really take this focus on policy practice and make it greater. And it's important for students who are interested in policy work to really be good advocates when they're in social work school to say they really want this and not get discouraged if someone says, oh, well, you should be doing something else because policy is a strong part of social work education. Another thing we really recommend is for schools of social work to do a better job in keeping in contact with their alumni who do go into policy careers. And we recommend to the people who are working in policy to link back either with their school of social work or the schools that are in their community where they're working so that they can serve as mentors and potentially field directors for social work students. there's also a program called social work heals as well how does all of that tie into this sure

that's a great question because the new york community trust while i was funding the fund for social policy education and practice also funds a project called social work heals that's a collaboration between the national association of social workers and the council on social work Education, where it's providing funding in 10 schools of social work for BSW and MSW students to do health field placements, to have enhanced social work education. It also provides enhanced funding for four each year Byrne Lyons scholars through the NASW Foundation. Those students come to D.C. one time during their fellowship year to come and hear from social workers working on health policy, and then to go up on Capitol Hill to speak with their lawmakers, and the

students have been so impressive in really understanding that connection between what they're learning in school, what they're experiencing in their field placement, and the impact on policy related to things like the opioid crisis and neonatal intensive care. The HEALS program also provides doctoral fellowships, and one of those is particularly focused on health policy as well. And each of the 10 schools of social work that are involved have also done a policy event in their community. And the project's a five-year project. We're just going to be entering year four of it. So it's really been very exciting. Joan, tell us a little bit more about yourself. How did you first get involved in social work?

Who actually got you into this? Growing up, I don't think I really knew any social workers. But as a high school student, I spent a summer volunteering at a local hospital. And I was in the home care unit. And so that's where social workers went out and did follow-up for people who were in the hospital. And I really found that kind of work very interesting. And it was really after college that I then decided to pursue a social work degree. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the time, it was very focused on a systems approach to social work,

so it wasn't kind of dividing people up into the sort of micro and macro. And I think that education really was so valuable, And I always thought that I wanted to kind of work at the local level. But then when I moved to D.C., I wanted to take what I learned at the local level and really work at the national level. And I was fortunate back in 1987 to actually be hired by the National Association of Social Workers to be their key staff person working on child welfare and aging and family issues. And from there, it kind of took off. And I spent nine years running an organization that really worked at the intersection of policy practice, research and education, where I was really working to look at sort of what's the evidence base and how can we inform policymakers and work with the executive branch of government to really highlight the contributions of social workers. Thank you for being our guest on Social Work Talks, and we hope to have you back. Thank you, Jim. Thank you.

You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social work policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. We also invite you to join us for the 2018 NASW National Conference, which runs June 20th through the 23rd in Washington, D.C. You'll have an opportunity to earn 20-plus CEUs, hear nationally renowned speakers, participate in unique professional development workshops, and enjoy fulfilling networking opportunities. To learn more and to register today, we invite you to visit www.socialworkers.org.

Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.