Commencement
By Janlee Wong, MSW
To our graduating students, I’m going to start off by not saying “be the change,” by not saying “make a difference” and by not saying “give it your all.”
You’ve probably heard it all before and tried to live up to those sayings. These sound good but they’re somewhat vague, inspirational in the short term, but what do they really mean? I’m going say be Christine Ford or be David Chenot or be David Cherin or Caroline Bailey or Sean Hogan, or Juye Ji or Mikyong Kim Goh or Alexander Ballan or Marcella Mendez.
These are faculty members at CSU Fullerton, but you can list the faculty at your school. Since the list is terribly long and I don’t have the space, I just say be Christine Ford or David Cherin for the purpose of this article, but you can substitute the social worker that inspires you the most. I’ll get back to this later.
California schools of social work will probably graduate more than 3,000 professional social workers this and next month. Possibly even 4,000. We estimate there are 60,000 plus social work jobs in California. To hire all the new social work graduates, about 6.5 percent of those jobs would need to be vacant. It’s not far-fetched; baby boomer social workers are retiring like mad. Why wouldn’t they be retiring? After long fabulous careers, we’ve done our share, now it’s your turn.
As wonderful as we think we are as professional social workers, there’s competition for those jobs from those without social work degrees. And because the employer climate in this state is to devalue social workers with the attitude that anyone, just about anyone, can be a social worker, there’s a deep pool of social worker wannabes competing for your job.
What to do, what to do? Social work graduates need to be clear and confident about their identity, their education and training and why they are unique and specially positioned for job. You need to be Christine Ford or David Cherin or someone like them. Isn’t this what your faculty have been telling you?
It’s clear that social workers have good clinical skills. Every social worker has the basic education and field experience that includes interviewing skills, assessment and evaluation, client engagement and relationship-building skills. But you know what, so do the other professions. We believe we have the strongest ethical code not because we’re egotists, but our code includes an environmental approach that challenges us to social and political action in pursuit of social justice. We’re also different because we just don’t simply march in the streets or rage against the machine. Because we had the research and policy courses, we know when, where and how to advocate effectively. Love those research classes.
Despite our leanings to be symptom and diagnosis oriented (we do so because it is also the underpinning of our medically oriented reimbursement systems), we look at clients as having inherent value, as having strengths that they can build upon and thus empower themselves.
Some employers want you to be more clinical not because that’s the way to help people, but that’s the way to get reimbursed. Medicaid doesn’t pay for social action or social justice. Yet isn’t that the most effective way to help people on a mass scale?
What distinguishes social workers from the other professions or applicants is our belief that social workers can not only help clients empower themselves, but clients can become the advocates for their families and communities. That they can be the social change. Not every employer recognizes that these skills are as important as the clinical skills, but they do appreciate client results and outcomes.
So when an employer asks if you think you can help this client or this family, respond with, “Not only can I help this client or family, I can help many families through social and policy change because I’m a trained professional social worker. Because a social worker like Christine Ford or David Cherin inspired me to be a better professional ethical social worker.”
I’ll tell you a couple of stories about your own inspirational social workers. Christine Ford, while working at Orange County DSS, found an intolerable situation where young pregnant girls were taken to get married at the Mexican consulate as a way of “resolving” the problem. She blew the whistle at great risk to her own job. She later won a NASW Koshland Award for this act of brave social work.
David Cherin found out social workers weren’t being included in a state workforce development council working on the Affordable Care Act. Volunteering, he went to a council meeting and got a “why are you here” type welcome. David, a former hospital administrator, used his charm and assertiveness to permanently include social workers in this effort.
So, I want you to be Christine Ford or David Cherin or David Chenot or Caroline Bailey or Sean Hogan or Juye Ji or Mikyong Kim Goh or Alexander Ballan or Marcella Mendez or the many faculty and field instructors you all have had.
Be the social worker who inspires you the most. Then you’ll change the world. Thank you.
