Message From the Executive Director

The 2005 - 2006 Program Year

         NASW-NYC works on a yearly calendar that goes from July 1st to June 30, as most non-profit organizations do in New York City.  City government is also on this calendar. 

         As we enter October the NYC Chapter is looking ahead to a full program, a good deal of which was set in motion in the last year.

Moving Loan Forgiveness from an Idea to a Program

         One of the things members want to know is what is happening with the newly created loan forgiveness program.  The program was passed along with the State budget last April.  Our information is that the NYS Higher Education Services Corp. (HESC) in Albany is putting this new program in place and applications should be ready soon after the beginning of January. 

         NASW will be keeping tabs on this and we will alert our  members as soon as we have information from HESC to share.  We will also be lobbying to increase the funding for this program.

On-going Issues With Licensing

         Now that licensing has been State law for one year, there are many issues that NASW will continue to address.  For example, agencies that provide mental health and family and children services are grappling with being able to provide appropriate supervision for LMSW’s seeking to obtaining their LCSW in three years.  There is also concern with the requirement to have client contacts that are 45 minutes in duration when major payors for mental health services such as Medicaid reimburse primarily for 30-minute sessions. 

         The Chapter’s Licensing Implementation Task Force, chaired by Board First Vice President, Jennifer Crumpley, is busy monitoring these
and many other develop-ments and seeking accomm-odations where feasible, without compromising appropriate professional standards.

Enhancing Diversity Within the Profession

         The Chapter’s Latino Social Work Task Force, formed almost three years ago in partnership with the Puerto Rican Family Institute, Inc., raised money last March to begin a scholarship fund to support Latinos applying to get their MSWs.  There is a significant shortage of Latino MSWs in proportion to the size of the growing Latino community, and this is hampering the provision of human services to this community.  Significant support is being developed to fund a chapter proposal to provide mentoring to Latino students and to do outreach to increase the number of applicants and acceptances into graduate programs.  We hope to be able to announce the launching of a new program to carry out these objectives by January. 

         The work of the Latino Task Force represents an evolution within NASW in terms of capacity to deal with shortages within the social work profession.  The Chapter’s Board of Directors has always seen this work as a model for eventual replication with other communities where shortages exist.  I anticipate that we will be planting the seeds for similar work to address issues relevant to social work with the Asian community and to communities of African descent.

Exerting a Pull on Social Work Salaries

         One of the greatest concerns to social workers is that salaries usually do not reflect the level of education and value of the work that this profession provides.  This is a very tough economic nut to crack for a wide variety of reasons.  One thing that we will be doing in the short term is updating our salary standards, which were last updated in 2001.  The standards reflect salaries that NASW says are reasonable and modest, yet they are considerably higher than what is being paid for beginning social workers at the BSW and MSW levels in community based not-for-profit organizations. 

         The new standards will not necessarily be higher than what is being paid in hospitals or the public schools.  These systems, which are represented by strong labor unions, generally pay social workers higher than other employers.

         It should be clear that the standards cannot compel employers to raise their salaries; their existence is intended to exert a pull on organizations to strive to come into compliance.  It is interesting to note that there are more hits on our website for salary standards than for anything else.

Plugging In to NASW’s Network

         Finally, I want to share that we have been developing the website over the past year and we are expanding our capacity to do electronic communications. 

         Reaching members through email opens some important possibilities.  For example, after sending an email to a portion of the membership to contact legislators to urge support of loan forgiveness being funded, hundreds of contacts with legislators were generated within a two-day period.  More recently, over a thousand members read our new e-newsletter featuring interviews with the four Democratic candidates for Mayor.  This e-newsletter will be available periodically. 

         In the near future we will be creating a “members only” section where important  and relevant information will be available to members of the NYC Chapter.  Our goal is to increase the amount of employment ads and to provide updates on trends and changes in the law that social workers need to know about.

         In closing I just want to underscore the importance for social workers to stay current on trends.  We found that as the licensing law went into effect, despite a tremendous amount of coverage about this in the Chapter newsletter, there were members of NASW and other social workers who were not affiliated who were almost totally unaware of how the law would affect them.  Even as we tried to reach out in many directions about this, a large number still remained
uninformed up until the last minute.  You can help us by encouraging your colleagues to join this network that we call NASW.

              It is the Chapter’s mission to help social workers stay informed.  We represent the largest network of professional social workers in the City and worldwide.  All one has to do is get plugged in, through joining.

We would like to hear from you personally. Email us at naswnyc@naswnyc.org