By: Robert Schachter, DSW, LMSW

In early August, Chapter President Rose Starr and I attended an NASW meeting in Washington, D.C. This was the Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM) in which the presidents and executive directors of all 56 NASW chapters come together with members of the national NASW board of directors and national staff.

It was a fabulous meeting. While there are enormous challenges facing the social work profession and, by extension, NASW, it is heartening to see the variety of activities going on across the United States on behalf of the social work profession.

The single best thing to share from the ALM is the work of Dr. Elizabeth (Betsy) Clark, the executive director of National.

Betsy was hired to take the helm of NASW in 2001. To run NASW, one needs to be a very strong administrator, but that barely scratches the surface. The job could never be done unless one was also a superb social worker and an organizer who has the qualities of both a visionary and a realist. In my opinion, NASW and the profession are fortunate that we have these qualities in the person who has been asked to give us leadership.

Over its 50 year history NASW has done many good things, but perhaps its single greatest accomplishment was getting social work licensing enacted into law in all 50 states. It would have been one thing if this could have been done in one place through Congress, but the reality was that licensing needed to be pursued one state at a time, taking on challenge after challenge.

The inherent question has been, what would be next? What Betsy has done, I believe, given that licensing has been accomplished, is set out a direction for many years to come. Here are four things that she is doing.

Campaign to Invest in Social Work

At the ALM Betsy laid out a vision for all NASW chapters, as well as the National overall, to get all levels of government, and society more generally, to understand the need to invest in the social work profession. By this she means recruiting social workers into the field to meet shortages in critical areas, assuring that working conditions, including salaries, are appropriate, and lobbying for funding for such things as loan forgiveness and scholarships.

Right now Betsy is asking all of the chapters to begin discussions to think through how such a campaign might be done.

Public Education

While public education needs to be part of the campaign that is being envisioned, Betsy has already succeeded in getting social work in front of the public’s eye. Let’s be very honest, doing a public education campaign is enormously expensive. Our dues dollars are simply not enough to run the association and also do public education, and this has stifled NASW in the past. Under Betsy, things are moving ahead as money is being raised (you can contribute, go to www.socialwork.org).

You may have already seen in the NASW News that high quality ads are being placed in Oprah magazine from September through December, which will be seen by millions of people. Locally, national NASW placed an electronic ad in Times Square during last year’s Christmas holiday, viewable by those gathered for the New Year’s eve celebration as well as by shoppers and theatre-goers, from all over the country.

Research for Social Work

Betsy has also been working to strengthen the research capacity of NASW, and recently, under the newly created Center for Workforce Studies, the largest study of licensed social workers was conducted. Data collection such as this will prove invaluable for developing greater support for social work. Betsy has also requested that the U.S. Department of Labor define social work by education  in its data collection. This has been a long time in coming.

Unifying the Profession

There is no question that the social work profession would be stronger if we all worked together, but this is usually a pipe dream. Yet, in 2005, under her leadership (Betsy humbly denies that she was the moving force), 400 social work leaders came together to identify priorities for the profession for the next decade. One immediate outcome of this is a closer working relationship with the Council on Social Work Education, the deans and directors of social work programs in the United States. and other independent social work organizations.

At the same time, we are going to see a more unified program among the NASW chapters, with national NASW, as a result of Betsy’s clear vision to tackle some of the most compelling challenges we face. I anticipate that there will be a synergy from all of this that will, in fact, make us stronger.

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