By: Susan Nayowith, LCSW, PhD; Director, Office of Client Advocacy, NYC Department of Homeless Serivces; Adjunct faculty, Clumbia University SSW; former Member, Executive Committee, NASW-NYC Board of Directors (January 2006)

As most of us know through experience, professional social work education takes place both in the classroom and in the field. Schools of Social Work in the greater metropolitan area have similar approaches to classroom training in the area of homelessness. Each school integrates content about homelessness or other fields of practice into their curriculum.

One program has a field of practice course called Contemporary Social Issues that includes homelessness, while others have electives designed to expose interested students to homeless policy or practice issues. The field placements related to homeless services have students placed at government or non-profit organizations to work with clients at family and adult shelters, drop in centers, outreach teams, and vocational programs. Students are also placed in administrative positions to work on management and contract compliance, as well in re-housing programs, advocacy, policy and research departments and more.

Students are placed in accordance with their method of concentration in direct practice, administration, policy, planning and research areas. Fieldwork education exposes social work students to areas of practice where they can learn to develop their social work skills by helping others through the use of their unique set of skills.

Fieldwork - First Exposure to Homeless Services

The fieldwork education opportunity is one of the ways many of my colleagues, my students and I came to learn about and work in the field of homelessness. Twenty years ago, I started my professional social work education. At the beginning of that first semester of social work school, I received notice of my fieldwork assignment. I was placed at Manhattan Bowery Corporation (MBC), now known as Project Renewal, because it was located four blocks from my home. Without the capacity to conduct a “Google” search, I was left wondering what kind of experience it would be.

MBC started in 1967 to assist public inebriates. It had a medical alcohol detoxification program for homeless men located on the 4th floor of the notorious Shelter Care Center for Men run by the New York City Human Resources Administration. MBC was instrumental in developing creative approaches to reach out to homeless people on the streets. The program was located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, on the Bowery, where homeless alcoholic men were known to live and congregate.

When I began my fieldwork in 1982, New York City records reflected that there were 3,382 men, 404 women and 1,005 families totaling 7,584 people who were known to our shelter system. Times were changing; we would see a mushrooming of need and the development of a wide range of shelter services available to individuals and families without permanent places to call their own. The average daily census for October 2005 revealed that there were 6,012 men, 1,930 women and 7,943 families totaling 32,094 people receiving service in the Department of Homeless Services’ shelter system. After periods of tremendous growth, the population is now declining.

During that earlier period, Stephanie Cowles, the Associate Director and my supervisor, along with the staff at Project Renewal, introduced me to the values and ethics of professional social work. The MBC staff were serious about the work and their commitment. At the time, while there may have been chaos around me, Stephanie helped me focus on the work with my clients and the program. Each week, I wrote process recordings of my sessions and, each week, she went over every detail about what happened in the interviews. She helped me to think about my work and offered new ways to conceptualize issues and new ways to intervene. There were weekly case conferences where degreed and life professionals came together as a team to talk about cases, make assessments and create treatment plans. I was part of an incredible team and I was doing important work.

Coursework Provides Theoretical Knowledge Base

Today’s social work education still allows students to learn about practical issues in the field, and to learn their theoretical and fundamental underpinnings in the classroom. In social work school we learn how to understand the problem, what questions to ask the client, how to ask the questions, how to make assessments and how to determine and carry out possible interventions. In policy classes we learn a historical, social and cultural perspective about how our government works, how changes in legislation and policy are made, how decisions made at any one level of government affect other levels of government, and how to advocate to implement changes to address these issues. We learn about current policy and how it impacts the work we do. In social work school we learn how to make a difference when working with an individual as well as when working on a policy issue.

The most effective professors I had in both my Master’s and Ph.D. programs have integrated materials from the class and the field, demonstrated to students the importance of the social work skill-set and illustrated how social work values are important with all clients. Something learned while working with one client can be used in thinking about work with another. Social workers have to learn how to engage clients wherever they are located, on the streets of NYC, in the emergency room, or in a mental health clinic. We learn to ‘start where the client is’, and we work on issues the client brings to us.

Skills Acquired in Homeless Services - Applicable in all Fields

MBC was then and still remains an agency on the cutting edge of research, development and service provision to homeless individuals. It’s service models include bringing professionals to where the clients are; they also value using social workers on their treatment teams. The enthusiasm that my social work supervisor and her colleagues demonstrated about their work twenty years ago caught both my interest and my attention. I wanted to learn anything and everything about the field. The relationship between the social work student and the social work supervisor can create an environment where students are open to learning about themselves and the field they are exposed to. Hopefully, this exposure to different ways of addressing issues creates a spark of interest in the field and its possibilities.

Throughout the years, I have had a good number of social work students representing every school of social work in NYC; they also presented diverse choices for future social work practice. The hardest sell I have to make is to students who are turned off or overwhelmed from the images and complexities of work in the field of homelessness. I have to determine how to convey to them that the skills of working with others in homeless services are transferable to every field of practice and to every practice modality they may choose. The homeless population includes families and individuals, young and old, of all races and religions, as is the case with other areas of practice.

When we unpack the issues our clients present, we find interpersonal and family conflicts, interpersonal violence, medical illness, substance problems and mental health disorders all wrapped into problems of unemployment or underemployment, limited education or vocational skills, poverty and lack of resources.

Students need to find a way to connect and engage with their clients. Social work students need to learn to listen to the reasons their clients give for being there. They need to make an assessment of the best place to intervene using the client’s strengths and available personal and community resources. Students in this field learn about engagement, assessment, utilizing and leveraging available resources, and initiating institutional changes that may make things a little easier and more efficient. I work to ensure that students understand that the practice skills they acquire in homelessness fieldwork can be used in all practice areas.

Opportunities in the Field

There are many opportunities for social work graduates in the field of homelessness. The skill-set one learns in social work school and refines afterward, with the help of supervision, is important. The ability to look at whole persons or groups served, in the context of the environment, as they are impacted by cultural, familial, political and social forces, is also very important. That is true whether providing individual or group services, doing research or creating policy in both the nonprofit or government sectors.