From the Executive Director
Formation of Center—Helping NASW Be the Best It
Can Be
(November/December 2003)
Last February, the board of directors of the NYC-NASW voted to create the Center
for Social Work Policy and Practice. The purpose is to “understand
and advance the state of social work policy and practice on behalf of the communities
we serve”.
The NYC-NASW Center will be involved in data gathering and, equally important,
assuring that social work practice is supported in service delivery organizations.
Also central is carrying out the vision of NASW’s recent three-year strategic
plan that includes the objective of “promoting the value and visibility
of the social work profession”.
One of the first tasks that we have undertaken as a result of the Center being
formed is to change the nature of Currents, the chapter's newsletter, which is one of the most
visible communication tools in social work in New York City. In order to carry out the Center’s work, many
of the upcoming issues of Currents will examine specific service delivery systems.
Given the Center’s goals, we will use future issues of the newsletter
to focus on various service delivery systems.
In addition to how the newsletter is being utilized, The Center will also be
the home for a number of NASW activities, often involving partnerships with
other organizations. One is the Latino Social Work Task Force, which has been
convened by NASW along with the Puerto Rican Family Institute. The Task Force
is seeking to expand the number of bi-lingual, bi-cultural and Latino/a social
workers.
Another partnership involves the Chapter along with the New York Academy of
Medicine and the City’s Department for the Aging. Together the three organizations
are examining the future expansion of gerontological social work as a field.
Our three organizations have developed a proposal to examine the level of knowledge
and skill of the City’s many contract agencies to provide services to
an increasingly older, frail and more diverse population.
A third area of activity that now falls under the auspice of the Center is the
NASW-1199/SEIU Social Work Alliance which was responsible for getting licensing
passed into law and is currently monitoring the licensing regulatory process.
The Alliance will be lobbying in the upcoming legislative session for loan forgiveness
and mental health parity.
A new area that we are developing is the Undoing Racism Project, which is emerging
out of workshops that have been offered. Plans for the project are now in the
development stage.
Time will tell what the outcomes of having formed the Center will be, both on
NASW and the broader community. From my perspective, having created it is helping
us be better organized, clearer about the range of things that NASW is doing,
and I anticipate that we will be more effective over time.