Unification of the Social Work Profession
Posted by sswrunification on December 20, 2007
The Society for Social Work Research is pleased to provide this blog to facilitate communication between members and other interested parties in the proposal currently being considered within the social work community to unify the disparate social work organizations into a single organization.
Mark Mattaini said
As one of the four persons at the table at Columbia University’s faculty house who initiated plans for SSWR (along with Janet Williams, Joanne Turnbull, and Ron Feldman), and a founding board member, I need to say that the “Fears” list in the Appendix of Ricky’s post continues to seem much more salient than the “Hopes” list; the potential for research to be as lost as it was under NASW & CSWE in the old days seems very real under the unification plan. The quality of research presentations at the other SW conferences continues, to my eye, to be quite weak. This concern does not mean unification should not proceed, but does to me mean that much more thought about this issue is needed before proceeding, else we will simply need to reinvent SSWR–which seems a terrible waste. (Just a side note, the idea that a much larger organization will be more “nimble” may be a hard sell?)
Bruce Thyer said
I agree with Mark. I also have concerns that the SSWR Board has appeared to act, and to make commitments, for the organization, without previously consulting the membership. Ideally this would be done through a vote of the membership as a whole (after all, we are 100% a ‘membership’ organization) as to whether of not SSWR joins any new organization.
I’d recommend that we observe, perhaps even be at the table participating in discussions and representing the views of social work researchers, but let this new unified organization get off the ground and run well (in terms of conferences, journals, etc.). Then and only then, have a membership vote about joining.
If NASW can decline to join this new organization until after it is up and running, so can SSWR.
Many people have worked hard for over a decade to make SSWR a well run organization, with a great conference, journal benefits, etc. Why commit to giving all this up?
Another point, there are many more social work organizations that those signing onto the Wingspread letter. Even if these Wingspread groups did succeed in joining, it would not create a a unified profession. There would still be many independent social work groups in existence. Such as the thriving Clinical Social Work Association.
Bruce Thyer
rickbarth said
I am in favor of exploring unification–as long as there is not a commitment to it without substantial input.
Unification could result in a federation of organizations under an umbrella organization (e.g., The American Social Work Association)that aligns membership organizations–like SSWR–in the support of a unified Public Relations and lobbying effort. Under that umbrella, strong organizations could co-exist nd contribute to the greater communication of the overall needs of the profession.
Some efficiencies could be developed through such collaboration, but one that cannot be reasonably considered–in my view–is that this organization continue to use a centralized publication mechanism for journals, as is currently the case for NASW and CSWE. The recent paper in RSWP (Holden et al., 2008) indicates just some of the concerns about this model. This San Antonio Statement and the Miami Statement, before it, attest to the need to scrap the current publcation mechanisms at NASW, especially. If the unified profession adopted a model like the American Psychological Association–which helps to coordinate many publications but the production of journals is decentralized–this could possibly work.
Rick Barth
Ricky Fortune said
I want to clarify some of Bruce Thyer’s comments. The SSWR Board has agreed to pursue the idea of unification, but has gone no further. The target date for unification is 2012, which is when NASW and any other organizations that agree to unification will join together. All social work organizations will be invited to join soon, once some of the feasibility issues are worked out.
As Bruce suggests, the SSWR membership must be involved in any decisions about commitments such as joining a unified social work organization. This website, blog, and several meetings at the annual conference are intended to air the issues for social work research. I hope more SSWR members (and others!) will join these discussions so we are fully aware of potential drawbacks and benefits such as the advocacy power and potential publications problems that Rick Barth identifies. What do you believe research will gain? Will lose? If SSWR joins a unified organization? If SSWR does not join a unified organization?
Ricky Fortune
SSWR President
Jerry Floersch said
First, I applaud efforts to think about and plan for some kind of cooperation and it was wise to provide a four year (goal of 2012) planning process. Each existing group, organization, and association will be challenged by issues of autonomy: potential gains and losses. In my view, how the planning processes and resulting plans respond to the intense feelings and ideas (that no doubt will be generated) about autonomy, in large part, will determine success. Thus, a process that addresses the challenges in a step-by-step and interactive fashion is crucial. I am currently participating in a university wide strategic planning process that is addressing collaboration difficulties among schools of medicine, engineering, nursing, dentistry, social work, law, and arts & sciences; not included in this list are dozens of semi-independent centers, institutes, and programs; all want to retain autonomy, yet there is general agreement that the university as a ‘whole’ needs a stronger national and international presence, which can only be achieved by collaboration. Based on my experience, I wonder: (1) if the transition task force might want to rename the overall goal by some other name besides ‘unification’? Perhaps, collaboration would be more neutral. I think ‘Unification’ will quickly evoke autonomy fears, whereas collaboration suggests cooperation with autonomy; (2) I wonder if the task force should first focus on the new organization’s mission and vision statements. The latter serve as the umbrella ideas and touchstones where all members can begin the process of identifying with the new organization, that is, can I see my old organization inside the mission and vision of the new; if successful, the latter helps with alleviating autonomy fears and creates buy in. Mission statements are robust, usually not even achievable; there function is to inspire the next generation of leaders and members. Vision statements, on the other hand, focus an organization or give it a kind of ‘brand’ name, and these should be less abstract than mission statements. Vision statements usually have two components: (1) fundamentals, that which every professional organization has to do to be successful (membership, conferences, publications, advocacy, etc.) and; (2) distinctiveness, uniqueness, or competitive advantage, that which every organization needs in order to demarcate its boundary and demonstrate its unique contributions—in this case, in the 21st Century, why (and how) social work? Again, I applaud the idea of organizational collaboration and cooperation and I look forward to participating in the process and learning about the details.
Bruce Thyer said
There is a great difference between being involved, or at the table, or assisting in planning, versus what has been posted on the SSWR website, namely
“We resolve to create a unified profession with one social work organization by 2012.”
“The 2006 SWLG retreat had concluded that ‘unification’ was a viable and necessary solution to the profession’s problems”
“The plan is to ultimately disband the current organizations and incorporate the new organization by 2012.”
This appeared today, 9 January 2007, from http://www.sswr.org/unification.php
This sounds to me like a commitment was made to disband SSWR and join this new group.
If this is not the case, then a public letter needs to be posted, notifying the Wingspread participants that while SSWR is happy to participate, we are NOT (and this should be made very clear) committed to disbanding and joining this new group.
I look forward to our panel next week.
Bruce
Allen Rubin said
I came to the SSWR meeting warily neutral regarding unification. My mind remains open about the idea, but what I’ve heard at our conference has made me much warier. Below is an email message I received from one of our members at the end of the conference, followed by my emailed reply, which I have been encouraged to post on this blog.
Here is the message I received:
SSWR and Unification:
Thank you all for your comments on Jan 19 at SSWR. I can‚t tell you how much I appreciate your leadership and willingness to move the empirical agenda of our profession along. That said, and recognizing that I too am very concerned about what this might mean, I want to make the following observations:
1. I heard some folks last night worry about unification watering down SSWRs agenda as if unification was a win-lose proposition. But this is not necessarily so. Spreading our doctrine does not diminish our message∑it is uplifting to others. In fact, why not insist at APMS of CSWE, NASW and other groups that we integrate „where‚s the data?‰ questions into every conference presentation? We need the SSWR message at every single CSWE or NASW presentation to make sure these points are raised. We have to be there to assure that this happens.
2. We have to be very mindful of becoming elitist. Rather than talking in terms of zero sum contests between SSWR and other organizations we need rather to see ourselves as Jennifer and Johnny Appleseeds. We need to be the harbingers of change and activist integrators of our shared agenda, not Apartheid separatists… this is a hard one. It is very tempting to gloat while walking around SSWR meetings feeling we are special∑.true believers if you will∑which can be a put-down to others who frankly couldn‚t handle the math. There should be no outsiders.
3. I also fear that separatism is a default condition that risks non members deferring to us. We can‚t afford „us and them‰ kind of thinking where folks who are not particularly empirically oriented pass the buck to Œsomeone who understands that stuff‰. We need to be present in every setting making SSWR‚s mission intelligible and manageable to our colleagues…not strutting around guarding the gates and raising the drawbridge.
Maybe unification is the best professional system-changing sacrifice we could make.
Thanks
Here is my reply (I’ve added the PS to this blog, only):
Thanks for sharing your thoughtful comments! I can sense from them that you share our concerns and are a kindred spirit, and I really appreciate the gratitude you expressed for the town hall meeting. With that positive comradery in mind, here are a few comments of my own:
1. With regard to worrying about being elitist, is that pejorative term the most apt in this situation? When I am seeking out the very best physician for my child’s health problem, one who will provide the treatment that has the best empirical support from the most rigorous research, am I being elitist? SSWR — and social work research in general — does not exist for the sake of research and academic prestige.They both exist because we are concerned about the well being of people in need. Unless we have the best research, we risk having practice guided by stuff that won’t help people as much as it should and might even harm them. Weak research, as well as practice done in disregard for rigorous empirical evidence, is unacceptable not because we want to strut and gloat, but because we want to improve services and policies and ultimately better serve the people who need us. You would not be an elitist if you didn’t want your sick child treated by some doctor who wasn’t guided by the very best medical research bearing on your child’s illness and treatment, or one who was being guided by shlocky research, and none of us are being elitist for feeling the same way about the poor people who get affected by all the forces in this profession whose unacceptable attitudes about research led to the formation of SSWR in the first place.
2. With regard to us insisting on things with organizations that historically have been inadequate with regard to research, if we did that as members of those organizations, only, and not as an outside force with its own organizational clout and resources, why should we think that they’d be any more responsive to us now than they had been in the past? For many decades, folks like us were trying to be the Appleseeds you mention as regular members of those organizations, but our seeds fell on unfertile grounds. I am reminded of the NASW summit I attended when I was SSWR prez. I along with several other SSWR folks thought we had convinced the summit participants to make practice-relevant research one of the chief priorities to come out of the summit. But when the summit conclusions/implications/etc were disseminated by NASW, research or evidence-based practice had been omitted entirely. I wrote a couple editorials about that experience in RSWP about seven years or so ago. You might want to read them. I was appalled not just at our voices being ignored, but also at the ignorant and pejorative statements about research that were being expressed by some NASW leaders who served as keynote-type speakers at the summit. The unresponsiveness of other organizations in the past is what led to SSWR’s emergence and growth in the first place. I don’t see us as strutting around and guarding the drawbridge. I see us as eager to do all we can to collaborate with other groups (as we tried to do at that awful summit) in pursuing a mutual agenda of trying to do what any profession should have as its utmost priority — ensuring that its clients receive the best services (and policies) possible. We in SSWR believe that that priority requires maximizing the quality of the profession’s practice/policy-relevant research enterprise. In my humble opinion, that’s not being elitist; it’s being professional and properly concerned about the poor, suffering, and oppressed people we exist for. And when we castigate those elements of our profession that for many decades (over a century?!) have denigrated or marginalized research, we are being no more elitist or strutting than those who castigate tobacco companies for producing biased research to protect their vested interests or than those who condemn snake oil peddling quacks touting pseudoscientific therapies (need I mention rebirth therapy? thought field therapy? etc.) that lack sound scientific evidence.
3. When a group of people feel unappreciated and marginalized by their larger social context, what’s wrong with them branching off into their own separate organization where they can feel more appreciated and support each other? Do we in social work call stigmatized folks who form support groups for themselves elitist and separatist? When after feeling unappreciated and ignored over decades of attending NASW or CSWE conferences we form our own conference, and then express skepticism about efforts to lure us back into the fold, does that make us separatists, elitists, or some other pejorative ists?
I could go on and on, but I’ll stop by just saying that given the very long and unfortunate history of the other organizations vis-a-vis research, the burden of proof is on them to resolve any reasonable doubt amongst us regarding whether merging SSWR under their umbrella organization would just set us back to where things had been for ages, with our voices (and seeds) being futile and overwhelmed by those who care little about research and perhaps even disdain it.
Thanks again for sharing your appreciative and thoughtful comments!
Best,
Allen
PS – I wonder if a group of practitioners would be characterized as elitist if they deplored widespread violations of principles of good practice by the practice community and criticized their professional organization for not seeming to care about the poor quality of practice.
Roberta Rehner Iversen said
I was very glad to read this statement in the May 2008 SSWR newsletter which came today: “Board members agreed that dissolving SSWR would require a vote of the membership.” That fact wasn’t clear at the January 2008 meeting. I also agree fully with Jerry Floersch (above) that “collaboration” (which means working together but maintaining autonomy, as Jerry says) is a much more appealing and forward-looking concept than “unification,” which definitely evokes absorption and lack of carefully-crafted identity/autonomy. Philosophically, in my view, one of the pivotal “plusses” of SSWR is that its research focus is outward-oriented (to those who can be helped by the research) rather than inward-gazing on the profession. Perhaps SSWR could lead other social work organizations toward such an outward orientation….collaboratively, not by becoming a single amalgamation.
Paestum said
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Paestum.
alan taub said
Hi. I’m a licensed MSW with and undergraduate degree in computer science and would like to pursue a social work career path that would value my IT knowledge within a social work context. I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter.
Thanks,
Alan