|
Gathering Place
Jon K. Matsuoka, Mary Sheridan and Darrin Sato
|
Hawaii’s vulnerable need
trained professionals’ careThe Department of Human Resources Development recently announced it would eliminate the social worker series in Civil Service and replace it with a generic "human service professional" series. DHRD believes this action will help fix the current shortage of qualified social workers in state agencies.
We believe it will bring in untrained workers throughout the state. Social workers assist Hawaii's most vulnerable people, and clients in the public sector deserve qualified, professional social workers. Most studies show that social work vacancies and turnover are related to low pay, high stress, poor working conditions and high caseloads.
DHRD's action will permit people with only three courses in behavioral sciences and no social work experience to work with abused and neglected children, frail elderly, disabled seniors and substance abusers, to name a few. A bachelor's or master's degree in social work (BSW or MSW) will not be required at any level, even for social work administrators.
DHRD spent more than five years studying this problem without consulting or receiving input from the schools of social work in Hawaii or the professional association of social workers. Social workers are now licensed in the private sector, but public-sector social workers who do similar work are not required to have professional training. While the state (and the nation) struggles to provide qualified teachers for our children and qualified nurses for our hospitals, Hawaii is moving in the opposite direction to "de-professionalize" social workers. Untrained staff simply cannot provide the high-quality services that vulnerable people deserve.
This is a backward step for several reasons:
>> Child/adult protective services workers need all the education they can get because of their complex and difficult responsibilities. Wrong decisions can result in fatal mistakes.
>> The state of New Jersey recently settled a lawsuit that resulted in the total takeover of child welfare services by a private agency. The state agreed to pay more than $125 million and to increase the percentage of front-line supervisors with BSW degrees and INCREASE the percentage of casework supervisors with MSW degrees.
>> Hawaii's Child Protection Services recently failed its federal audit as well as its corrective action plan. It is facing fines. Is this the time to de-professionalize social workers?
>> In 1998 the Department of Human Services implemented a federally funded grant designed to increase the recruitment and retention of social workers in child protection. To date, 39 people have completed their MSW degrees at the University of Hawaii School of Social Work and are working at DHS. Another 10 will graduate next month. Professionally educated social workers are available for state positions.
Would you like your family to receive help from a "human service professional" who is not a professional? Would you like to be assigned to someone who has not been educated or trained in the field in which he or she is practicing? We do not want to go back to the days when a high school graduate was teaching our children or when it was believed that any kindly person could be a social worker. Today's problems of our homeless, our abused, our mentally ill are complex. At the very least, these problems call for people who are educated and trained.
Eliminating the social work series is disrespectful to those social workers who have completed their BSW and MSW degrees and are providing quality care and treatment for those in need in our communities. We cannot allow this to happen!
Jon K. Matsuoka is interim dean at the University of Hawaii School of Social Work; Mary Sheridan is director of the Hawaii Pacific University Department of Social Work; and Darrin Sato is president-elect of the National Association of Social Workers -- Hawaii.