10 May, 2019

Tomorrow’s Another Day

By |2021-08-19T20:33:33-04:00May 10th, 2019|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: , |0 Comments

During the summer of 2010, I was in the throes of my first job after graduating from my graduate program.

I was running out of money and couldn’t afford my apartment any longer due to my roommate moving out. I ended up moving out and placing my belongings in storage.

When you’re unemployed, running out of money, trying to find a job in a profession that you’ve only studied and didn’t have real experience in, and living in a stressful place like New York City, you’re tired, to say the least.

The best part about that time is having friends who opened their homes to me and invited me over to eat. On this summer day, the friend I was staying with invited me to join her and some of our grad school classmates for a day at the beach.

A beach in New York? Yes. Though I can’t remember which beach we tried to go to. “Tried” is the operative word, as we tried getting there by car and ended up getting stuck in traffic for hours before turning back around.

As my friend and I were getting ready to leave, I remember how excited I was. I needed a break from applying to positions where I never got a response back and getting “thanks, but no thanks” emails from recruiters.

I want to feel normal, even if it is for a day, I thought.

When you don’t have a permanent home to feel safe in, to cook for yourself in, to have your belongings surrounding you, or to have your mail delivered to, it’s pretty difficult to care about anything else. I could have easily asked my family to book a flight for me so that I could go home to Atlanta, but I was too stubborn for that. I have a Masters degree now, I thought, and I need to find a way to make this work.

Flash forward to December of that year. After a summer of struggle, I managed to land a job as a clinical case manager and had been on the job since August. I also moved into my first apartment without roommates at the start of December. Toward the middle of the month, my agency held its annual holiday party for clients.

During the party, I was standing with a few of my coworkers as we watched our clients eat and enjoy themselves and their families. I spotted several of my clients, many of whom tend to be in crisis mode when I would have regular appointments with them.

But on this day, they were fine. In fact, I met with one of my clients the next day. When I asked her if she enjoyed the holiday party, she said:

“I loved it! I love coming to the holiday party every year because when I’m there, I feel normal. Even if it’s just for a day.”

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15 Aug, 2018

Women of Color and The Diversity of Social Work

By |2021-08-19T20:15:55-04:00August 15th, 2018|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: |0 Comments

In 2016, I wrote a blog post about the flexibility of a social work degree. I followed it up a year later on why there’s no one way to be a social worker.

The irony of the social work profession is that, while it’s touted as a diverse and expanding field, it often promotes a particular image of a social worker: Someone who provides one-to-one services to clients in a particular setting.

Also, there are many ways for social workers to connect in-person and online, and how we market ourselves should reflect that. (And “marketing” tends to be a touchy word for many, not just social workers.)

I’ve enjoyed sharing my social work journey throughout the years, and today, I’m going a step further and giving a face (or, in this case, multiple faces) to how social workers are utilizing their degrees to give more insight into the expansiveness of this profession when we think outside the box. Since my focus is on women and girls of color, I’m highlighting WOC social workers I’ve known and admired for a long time, as well as ones I’ve admired from afar. I’ve chosen these social workers to not only showcase their interests and expertise, but how they’ve managed to connect with others while building their professional brand. Whether you decide to work for someone or work for yourself, you still need to figure out how to get yourself out there in a way that’s authentic to you.

While this blog post is specific to social workers, I hope these women serve as a testament that, regardless of your profession, you can make your career be whatever you want it to be.

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11 Apr, 2018

Ask Nicole: What Don’t You Like About Social Work?

By |2021-08-19T20:12:16-04:00April 11th, 2018|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: , |0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

Back when I doing direct practice client work, I had a client who was undergoing a housing issue. The issue was at the fault of the client, and the client asked for assistance in eviction prevention. 

One day while interacting with this client, the client blamed me for not doing enough to help fix the situation. I could feel the anger growing from within. When the client told me, “You don’t know what I’m going through,” I wanted so badly to remind the client that the situation was occurring because of the client’s own doing. More so, what I really wanted to say was…

“…And you don’t know what I’m going through!”

In addition to personal matters, I was dealing with the death of one of my favorite clients and the suicide of another client, of which I was asked for documentation that proved I did as much as I could to prevent the situation. I was on edge, to say the least, but luckily for the client, the situation worked itself out and the client was able to remain housed.

I’ve gotten a few emails from social workers and students over the few past months asking me share the aspects of social work I don’t like, specifically from a direct practice perspective, including dealing with difficult clients and how to stop caring about clients once the work day is over. There’s plenty of professional advice on this the you can do a quick Google search on.

But to answer the questions, my short answer is this: Establishing boundaries isn’t enough, empathy is everything until it isn’t, leaving your clients problems at the office is not easy, and clinical/direct practice social work ain’t for everybody. 

You’ll hear of social workers leaving the field for a variety of reasons, but for me the answer was pivoting to another aspect of social work that better suited me. 

As a disclaimer: Is what I’m about to share the case for all direct practice social workers and case managers? Not at all. In fact, everything you learn in clinical studies and practice—engagement, assessment, planning, implementation, evaluation, termination, and follow-up—translates to most social work positions, and is the model I use with my consulting clients. So I did learn a thing or two while working in direct practice. 

When I landed my case management position 3 months after graduation from my masters program, I was just happy to be employed. When I first started, I had a caseload of around 25-30 clients. By the time I left nearly 6 years later, I had close to 90 clients. 

That may not seem like a lot, but having to engage with 90 clients (and their providers and emergency contacts) on a monthly basis was taxing. It did a literal number on my self care, self esteem, and my desire to remain in the this work. 

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3 May, 2017

Ask Nicole: Advice on Being a Better Health Educator

By |2021-08-19T19:32:48-04:00May 3rd, 2017|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: , |0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

This month’s question comes from Nichelle, a health educator with a New York City-based health care center. Nichelle writes:

I was hoping to get more information on resources available around reproductive health. I am facilitating a teen group at the health center, and I am not sure if this is up your alley but I wanted general tips on how to be a better health educator overall.  This month’s focus for the group is reproductive rights. I  want to give accurate information while also facilitating meaningful conversations with the girls.

Nichelle requested a phone conversation, so we scheduled a time to chat. Nichelle is based at a local high school and has been given an opportunity to create a series of workshops for young women attending the school between the ages of 14-18. When she held her first workshop earlier in the year on body image, she had low attendance. But when she held her most recent workshop, more students came.  While Nichelle has been given the freedom to structure the workshops however she wants, she was clear on wanting a higher focus on intersectionality as opposed to feminism. I followed up with her after our conversation with the information we discussed, and today I’m sharing my advice based on preparation, implementation, evaluation, and resources.

Planning

As a health educator, your top priorities are to 1) provide medically accurate and age appropriate health information and 2) provide that information in a way that is memorable and action-specific. The key here is to start with the end in mind, and work backward. By the time participants leave your workshop, what are 2-3 key takeaways or calls to action you want participants to walk away with, above all else? Don’t overwhelm participants with a laundry list of things to know. You can always pique their curiosity enough so that when they have follow-up questions, you can address them (be it in another workshop facilitation or outside of the workshop).

Starting with the end in mind will give you laser focus on what aspects of a topic you want to cover, the key points you want to share, the resources that can provide additional information, and activities that can bring the information to life. This will help you to create a workshop structure that works for you. Also, an advantage Nichelle has is that she is familiar with the participants, of which they are very open with her about their lived experiences as well as topics they want to learn more about. When you know who’ll be in the space, you spend less time in the “getting to know you” phase and you can get right to work engaging with your participants.

Implementation

What’s one way to provide health information that’s memorable and action-specific? Have participants teach back what they’ve just learned using the Teach Back Method . The Teach Back Method helps participants retain information because they’re reciting it in their own words, and since they have to teach someone else what they know, it brings up the motivation to get it right. This works out for you as the health educator because it shows where you need to correct any misunderstandings (if any). Also, this takes the focus off of you being the only expert in the room, as participants come into the space with their own lived experiences. In the case with youth, this can be a great way for them to develop skills in peer education.

Another way is to use real-world examples of the topics you’re teaching. In Nichelle’s case, she wants to have more of an intersectional lens on the topics she covers. And since she wants to cover reproductive rights and the right to parent or not parent in her next workshop, how can she do that using a real-world example?

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22 Mar, 2017

There’s More Than One Way to Be a Social Worker

By |2021-08-19T19:29:18-04:00March 22nd, 2017|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: |0 Comments

March is Social Work Month, and today’s post was inspired by a comment left on the article “I am Getting in MSW, but I Do Not Want to be a ‘Social Worker‘” on the Social Work Helper. The comment reads:

“Although trained to think in a multi-systemic way, many of us choose to specialize. I do a great deal of mezzo and macro work; however, I chose to concentrate on clinical practice when completing my master’s in social work…Outside of our profession, there are some practitioners who do not understand what social work is. When I’ve testified on legislation and engaged in policy making, people assume I don’t have the skills necessary because I am not a lawyer or didn’t major in criminal justice. I can’t help but wonder then if this is why some social workers impose practice goals and assumptions on others (or upon students) as a part of assuaging the anxiety produced by how our profession–as a whole–is undervalued and misunderstood by society.”

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, social work is one of the fastest growing careers in the United States. The profession is expected to grow by 19% between 2012 and 2022, and more than 650,000 people currently hold social work degrees. If you’re not in the profession, chances are you know someone who currently is or who currently studying to enter the field. And there are some common misconceptions about the field. The biggest misconception about social workers is that they only work with individuals and families, provide therapeutic counseling or link clients to programs and services via case management, or that our days only look like Mrs. Weiss’.

The foundation of social work rests on social justice, with social workers like Jane Addams in the late 1880s dedicating their career to taking action against the injustices of sexism, racism, classism and poverty, taking the approach of addressing these through research, reform, and building up urban areas.

And then professionalization happened 

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