DR. RONALD A. FELDMAN, Columbia University School of Social Work

For the first time in recent memory, three crucial "planets" (the federal, state, and city governments) are aligned simultaneously against the interests of social work clients, professionals and educators. In previous eras, social workers in the City were able to gain support from one or the other of these entities even if the others were hostile. Hence, it would be foolhardy for social workers to underestimate the long-term adverse consequences of the recent election. The situation will be even more imposing should the Democrats lose the White House in 1996.

If the next Congress is able to implement the major features of the so-called "Contract With America", public expenditures for social work and social welfare will erode greatly. If a balanced federal budget amendment is enacted into law, it is unlikely that state and city governments will be able to absorb the ensuing cuts in funds. Moreover, our plight will worsen if Governor-elect Pataki's tax cuts are invoked and if the City's budget deficits remain unaddressed.

If these initiatives come to pass, we can expect sharp reductions in programs for social work clients. New problems will emerge and old ones will rise again to afflict vulnerable populations. Indeed, orphanages could be resurrected for youngsters whose sole sin is that they were born to young, poor unwed mothers.

Correspondingly, we can expect a steep decline in social work jobs in the near future. Yet, as social needs go unattended, it is likely that a pent-up demand for services will develop in the long run. This will lead eventually to a resurgence of social services and of employment opportunities for social workers.

For at least the next two years, agencies will be required to cope with severe cutbacks in funds. Social work schools will need to anticipate reduced enrollments. At Columbia, even though applications have more than doubled in the last three years, we will anticipate this trend by reducing the size of our Fall 1995 class by approximately 10%.

Only the most cost-effective models of practice will be supported by the public. More than ever before, agencies and practitioners will be asked to demonstrate the quality and cost-effectiveness of their interventions. Correspondingly, social work curriculums will need to provide more content that arms tomorrow's social workers with tools to demonstrate their effectiveness.

At Columbia, a required course will be offered that enables faculty to rapidly introduce new content which anticipates changing social needs. Moreover, several new fields of practice will be offered. Curriculum content about influencing organizations, communities and social policies will be expanded. Similarly, the School's clinical curriculum will be based upon the most current and effective practice models.

CUSSW's faculty hope to forge working partnerships with agency leaders and others so that our best resources can be brought to bear on our mutual problems. And, like other concerned institutions, CUSSW will redouble its efforts to generate resources to support its mission. Particular attention will be directed toward efforts to raise scholarship funds.

Concerted efforts are needed to assure that the federal executive branch is not lost to the interests of those who are served by our profession. Yet, social work also needs to recognize that it cannot place all, nor even most, of its proverbial eggs in the basket of politics. Our profession needs to improve its capacity to stand on its own merits, strengthen its resource base through private and public sources, and collaborate more effectively with allied helping professions and other constituencies.

Last, but not least, social workers need to learn that we can ill afford to engage in unnecessary combat with one another whether due to resource constraints or to philosophical, ideological or strategic differences. A strong shared effort must be directed toward the real threats and challenges that confront our clients and all of us. Planning groups and working consortiums should be formed among social workers from various agencies who face similar threats and concerns. NASW will need to play a leadership role in promoting such efforts.

As always, social work is likely to emerge from the coming era of challenge and constraint with renewed vigor and with a stronger sense of purpose. But we cannot do so merely on the basis of blind faith. We must demonstrate a renewed sense of common purpose and of determination, resilience, vision adaptability and expertise. Regardless of our past struggles and failures, social work now is better equipped than ever to face the challenges and uncertainties of tomorrow.

DR. MARY ANN QUARANTA, Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service

Many constituencies in the country have been stunned by the results of the November election. We have been inundated with analyses by pundits and political scientists who are filling the airwaves and the newspapers with their commentaries. It is evident that what happened and what is planned is a clear repudiation of our values and beliefs and of our long support of the tradition of this country that government is responsible to help those in need. Particularly distressing is the mean spirited scapegoating of welfare recipients in the guise of advocating for social welfare reforms.

More so than some other professions, social work is dependent on political forces, given that most funding for social services comes from government either directly or through contracts with the voluntary sector. Private charity constitutes a small fraction of the cost of social services.

Social work then is faced with the daunting challenge of developing a strategy to respond to the massive assault on social services and on some of our cherished values and beliefs.

We must increase our efforts in lobbying and social advocacy with the realization that ours is a small and weak vote, representing a numerically small constituency and being associated in the minds of many with the low status of our clients. NASW's efforts should be directed toward rallying and mobilizing the membership and their influential networks toward more engagement in advocacy for the adoption of more humane social policies and programs.

Perhaps the most important way in which we can respond is to demonstrate that our programs are effective in changing peoples' lives. We must be mindful of our failures in leaning too heavily on the virtue of our work for its own sake and our weakness in providing data on the impact of our programs on clients. We must be responsive to the increasing emphasis on accountability in the form of identifying the outcomes we seek and in measuring the degree to which we achieve those outcomes. All the relevant institutions in our profession must participate in this effort to document the impact of policies and communicate "up" practice evaluation to inform policy makers.

Our obligation to our clients will insist on our participation in efforts at welfare reform which we support, although not in the form which is being suggested. We can be effective spokespersons in indicating the lack of wisdom in the proposals being talked about in Washington and in the state houses.

All of our plans and strategies must include making some assumptions about the future. If greater wisdom does not prevail in addressing welfare reform, we can anticipate an exacerbation of social problems, and social work will be called

upon to provide services to the people who are the victims of flawed social policies. New models of service are already in evidence. Managed care and short term approaches will be considered the models of choice. Social work will respond to new approaches, but we must be more articulate in identifying the risks and not be silent and passive as we were when mental hospitals were emptied throughout the country resulting in some of the worst social problems this country has ever experienced.

There is already a trend that social work services will be offered at community based organizations, full service schools and neighborhood health clinics. Increasingly, social workers will be collaborating with professionals from other disciplines, highlighting the need to give more attention to this aspect of our work.

There are many messages for schools of social work in these anticipated changes. The continuing commitment to a generic orientation is important in that graduates will be called upon to provide services with different size systems. In view of the projected demographics for more of the population being elderly, the schools should engage in greater activity to stimulate student interest in working with the elderly. Social workers will continue to provide direct services or be involved in some capacity in the direct service field as is 85% of the present membership of NASW. A comparable percentage of students in graduate social work education are electing clinical concentrations. These concentrations can be improved by greater emphasis on horizontal integration of the clinical practice content with research, evaluation of one's own practice and/or the social policy perspectives of clinical practice.

Clinical practice needs to focus more on special populations and on how clinical services can be provided to the homeless, AIDS patients and their families, victims of violence and elderly clients. Education needs to focus on short term and managed care models.

Change is inevitable and social workers have been responsive to changes over the life of our young profession. We will adapt but we will remain committed to the enduring components of our profession, our values and ethics. Our firm commitment to our values will energize us to work through the changes that confront us.

DR. BOGART R. LEASHORE, Hunter College School of Social Work

The City of New York has been in the forefront of developing innovative and effective human services in response to some of the nation's most complex social problems. Budget cuts in social programs and other pernicious actions resulting from the recent elections pose real challenges for social workers and other who believe that our country's opportunity structure should be open enough to include the poor and other disenfranchised people. Inherent in the mean-spiritedness of these cuts is a philosophy that professes little government responsibility for insuring the general well-being, and a subtext rooted in racism and sexism. The immediate policy and practice implications are: doing more with less, restrictions on the beneficiaries of services, and alterations in services.

Despite these dire consequences, social workers must remain steadfast as advocates for the poor and diligently work to build community and public support for employment opportunities at decent wages, accessible health care, and social and economic justice. We must not abandon these and other long-term goals, and we should remember the recurring tides of social progress, despite the set backs, swept in by extraordinary hardships, e.g., the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War, the New Deal after the Great Depression, and Post World War II social programs.

The current diminishing and dismantling of government support for social services compels the Hunter College School of Social Work, and indeed all of social work educational institutions, to teach and reinforce values and ethics which define our profession. We must reiterate social and economic goals which enhance the general welfare, and encourage and guide our students in providing responsible practice and services. During periods of morally corrupt and bankrupt politics, it is imperative that our curricula address discrimination and oppression, poverty, and diversity and multicultural practice. Students at the Hunter College School of Social Work have taken a particular interest in enriching our efforts to address problems of racism, sexism, and homophobia through a series of experiential workshops. Our faculty forges ahead in extending educational opportunities to those who otherwise might not have access, and in conducting research and training projects that address effective practice, cutting across practice methods, problems, and population groups including: intensive case management for mental health providers, group work for probation workers, substance abuse, AIDS, family preservation, health care, disabilities, human resource development and settlement houses, minority mental health and aging, child welfare, and bilingual social workers. With a recent grant award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we have established the National Resource Center for Permanency Planning which will strengthen our efforts to promote effective child welfare services. We remain committed to agency-based practice, especially to public sector services, and we are exploring the possibilities of using distance learning technology for education and training. Finally, our faculty has initiated plans for a teach-in to address the implications of the recent elections for social work.

As our professional association, NASW should intensify its lobbying and protest activities, and practitioners should keep us informed about implications for service delivery and practice, as well as alternative options that may be considered. These and other actions can only be enhanced if we all join in partnership with each other and in community coalitions for progressive human services. The time is now.

ELEANORE Z. KORMAN, New York University Shirley M. Ehrenkranz School of Social Work

Social work was already in the midst of dramatic change before the elections. Managed care, welfare reform, cost containment, and the breaking down of career ladders in the public sector were issues that have concerned us for some period of time. It seemed that social work practice was being driven more by economics than by compassion for people.

Yet we were not prepared for the drastic shifts that occurred in the November 8th elections at the national, state and city levels. The unexpected, particularly when it involves the ascent to power of those who appear to be hostile to our values and goals, can create anxiety and deep uncertainty about the future.

Many of us have lived through the unfulfilled promise of The Great Society, the difficult Nixon years (remember the aide, later jailed for his role in Watergate, who said that when the Administration finished with social programs social workers would have to find "honest employment"), the brief Carter presidency and the callous Reagan-Bush era. Somehow the nation and the profession survived and, in some ways, flourished.

Now, for better or worse, the key concept affecting the immediate future of social work is "privatization". Privatization is at the core of many of the "new" proposals--ranging from the well-intentioned to the punitive--being debated in city, state and national legislatures involving everything from managed health care and welfare reform to collecting the garbage. As a concept, privatization is not necessarily bad. The problems arise when we have to consider who is implementing the privatization. What are the standards that will be set for the delivery of services? And how will they be regulated?

As of today, 23 states have already enacted legislation to have all welfare clients receive health care through private HMOs. Social workers are needed to document the quality of service delivery and to advocate for the clients when the care is inadequate. And even when the voluntary social agencies contract to handle services there will always be the problem of accountability.

It is not a time to panic! Crisis and profound challenge can lead to experimentation, expedite the testing of new theories and methods, forge new alliances and strengthen the cooperation between educators, practitioners, agencies, and consumers.

It is time to mobilize our professional resources to become strong advocates for those members of our society who are poor, ill, powerless and increasingly disdained by the majority of our citizens. Coalition building is crucial. There is strength in close collaboration in determining agendas and strategies between NASW, the schools, agencies, and supportive groups in the community.

Social work education has the special challenge of keeping students focused on basic principles of good practice. At the same time it is imperative to emphasize the need for more efficient and cost effective service interventions, not out of desperation, but in an attempt to rethink and improve the ways in which we are helpful to people and communities.

Social workers must not become defensive. It is essential, however, to demonstrate in our practice that we can adapt to a changing world and make improvements in the social service delivery system while holding firmly to professional values and ethics and our commitment to people.

DR. SHELDON R. GELMAN, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University

Recipients of welfare services, those who deliver those services, and the services themselves, are once again being targeted as the cause of society's ills. While there is a clear and documented need for reform, the proposed strategies of reform will again bring harm to the most vulnerable and will do little to reduce the burden on taxpayers. Reductions in the social service workforce, more stringent eligibility requirements and imposed work mandates will only exacerbate problems and return us to the "residual" days of welfare. A crisis, rather than a preventative mentality, will prevail with problems becoming more intractable as caseloads increase and the waiting lists for needed service get longer.

It is unfortunate that we have learned so little from our past experiences with processing people rather than engaging them in a process aimed at assuring self-respect and independence. Without suitable housing, meaningful employment opportunities which pay a living wage, access to quality health care, and appropriate social service interventions, the proposed cliché reforms will result in yet another call for an overhaul of the welfare system.

Effective reform will be costly, it can't be done quickly, on the cheap, or in a way that further stigmatizes the most vulnerable portion of the population. Welfare reform must address all types of government subsidies including those to corporate America or else welfare will remain as charity, a privilege rather than an entitlement or right.

Philosophy aside, social work, in its politically diminished status, will be expected to do more with less and to maintain the distance between the "haves" and the "have-nots," or those in need of assistance. Social control, rather than social service will once again place the profession in an uncomfortable position. Privatization, whether in the form of artificially contrived make-work programs for mothers, orphanages for children, boot camps for delinquents, or isolated institutions to segregate those who make us uncomfortable, will not save those in need or the taxpayer. Increasing property taxes in place of income taxes by shifting responsibility to the states or calling for private charity to play a larger role does not effectively address the problem.

The social work profession through NASW, and the schools of social work through CSWE, need to take a forceful stand in bringing the facts, not the fiction, of social service successes and failures to the forefront, so as to inform public debate. Social workers need not be defensive, but should articulate what works and what doesn't work and the reasons behind each. Students need to learn what is real and what is feasible.

The faculty at Wurzweiler have long been conversant with and involved in addressing "welfare" related issues. They have been instrumental in designing and evaluating innovative approaches to assisting those in need to become more independent and self sufficient. Our Icahn Institute for Child Protection is training students to provide comprehensive services designed to prevent and alleviate the ravages of child abuse, and our newly operational Lieferman Center for Professional Training in the Care of the Elderly will address issues of productive aging in the 21st century. Wurzweiler students collectively are involved in the provision of more than 10,000 hours of uncompensated service per week to the most vulnerable of our citizens.

As the rhetoric of welfare reform faces the reality of the political process, reason will hopefully prevail. We have been through this before and will go through it again. Whatever reform occurs will be incremental in scope given the wide range of interests that will have to be accommodated. Unemployment, violence, drug abuse, poverty, discrimination, and hopelessness are not the product of social workers or social programs. They are problems that require a comprehensive social response.