By Robert Schachter, Executive Director

(May 2000)

As the New York State legislature moves through May and June, with its time consuming deliberations on the State budget behind it, the prospect of social work licensing being passed into law emerges once again.

A key issue at this point, and one that the Chapter has been addressing along with other social work organizations in the State, is whether, or to what extent, there may be staff shortages if licensing is passed and only licensed social workers can be hired for the numerous positions that become open each year.

This is not a simple matter. Social services is a huge enterprise in the State of New York, comprising at least a dozen service delivery systems from health and mental health to child welfare and services to the aged. Literally thousands of staff who have no formal education in social work are engaged in performing social work related tasks, but once licensing is passed, these staff may be greatly limited in working in this area.

The approach to licensing has always anticipated this, at least to some extent. For example, social service workers who have been in the field for over 20 years will be allowed to be grandparented in within one year following the passage of the licensing law as licensed baccalaureate social workers (LBSW's). Social service workers with six years of experience will also be able to be grandparented in with LBSW's provided they pass an exam.

In addition to this so-called grandparenting provision, there are exemptions for staff who are currently working to continue to do so without being considered to be practicing without a license. For staff who do not have degrees in social work, this means that as long as they remain with their employer following the passage of licensing, they can continue to perform social work related tasks.

These are temporary measures. With grandparenting, only a limited number of staff who do not have social work degrees will be able to qualify, and future staff will not have this opportunity at all. With the exemption feature of the bill, staff currently holding positions doing social work can remain in them, but eventually the size of this group will become smaller and smaller. In fact, with turnover such as it is, many of these staff will begin to be replaced as soon as licensing goes into effect.

Here's the catch: based on discussions with agency representatives and a survey recently carried out by the New York City chapter, we are now estimating that the number of positions that will need to be filled will far surpass the number of baccalaureate and masters level social workers who might be available to fill these positions. This number is estimated to be in the thousands. One view about this anticipated staff shortage is that serious efforts should be made to make certain that agencies are able to hire qualified, licensed social workers. According to this line of thinking, which has great support among social workers, is that agencies, schools of social work, state government, and NASW should work together to assure that enough social work graduates are available to fill the open positions.

Underlying this line of thinking is the major point that social work needs to be carried out by well educated professionals and that having licensed social workers in so many more positions will improve services to a broad range of consumers of social work services. In addition, there is an added benefit in that the professional education works to assure that there will be less turnover and burnout, which in turn works to reduce the cost of hiring and training new staff.

The leadership behind social work licensing over the years, has firmly believed that licensing is important enough to the effective delivery of services to compel agencies and government to make the adjustments noted above to assure that higher standards that licensing will require will prevail. However, there are some very hard realities involved in the funding of services that make it clear that such proposals will not easily prevail.

For example, in 1994, when Governor Pataki came into office, child welfare was significantly cut back, and lobbying by agencies since then has been to simply return to prior levels. Secondly, I doubt that anyone in educational circles in social work is looking at how many additional students would have to enter the schools and graduate annually in order to create a pool of candidates large enough to fill the number of positions that will exist each year. I am not aware of any of the schools of social work being prepared to gear up to expand their student bodies to the degree that would be necessary. We are talking about a very large expansion. If this can be done over the long term, planning needs to begin, involving the schools and their universities.

As we move forward in the legislature with the licensing bill, these are some of the key issues that have come in to greater focus. Without a remedy to deal with the expected staff shortages, which will emerge quickly once a licensing law goes into effect, consumers of services will find growing waiting lists or simply less access to services.

This is a serious dilemma for the social work profession: shooting for higher standards through licensing could spark a staffing shortage and fewer services to clients.

Several key legislators, especially in the State Assembly, are aware of this dilemma and are looking to see whether licensing should move forward. A solution is to permit staff without degrees in social work to perform certain functions that we consider to be part of social work. It's a compromise. Another proposal, which builds on this, is to require such non-social work degreed staff to work under the supervision of licensed social workers.

These are remedies to an anticipated staffing problem. Without them licensing will probably not fly. Interestingly, the 40 some-odd states that already have licensing have had to contend with this problem.

No doubt, the situation that I am describing here is disappointing to all of us who know very well that a social work education makes a very big difference. We all see how services suffer when skill, backed by knowledge and social work values, is lacking. But recognizing the limitations here, these realities, will allow us to achieve something that is greater than we now have with our present state of certification.

I also believe that NASW will emerge from all of this with stronger ties to many agencies. In our discussions, we find social work administrators committed to forging an alliance to work together with us to hire more social workers and to lobby for funding to support non-degreed staff to get social work degrees. NASW will also need to insist that we work together on salaries and the image of the profession.

Licensing plus workforce development plus better salaries plus image. This must be the collective agenda for all of us.

One final note: Many of us would like to get licensing behind us so that we can devote, in addition to the workforce issues, greater resources to managed care and the anticipated damage from welfare reform as clients come up against time limits. All of this will be NASW's agenda.