Profiles in Social Work

Promoting Gerontological Social Work on a National Stage

Betsy Clark, Ph.D., ACSW, M.P.H.

The National Association of Social Workers, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the largest professional organization of social workers in the United States, with more than 150,000 members. Headed by Executive Director Dr. Betsy Clark, the organization's mission includes setting standards for social work practice, providing social workers with continuing education, and actively promoting the practice of social work.

One of the NASW's most important current missions is to address the growing shortage of social workers trained in gerontology. "In 1987, the NIA predicted that we would need 70,000 gerontology-trained social workers by the year 2010," says Dr. Clark. "But we currently have fewer than 30,000 social workers working full- or part-time with the elderly, and of those, only about 3,000 are professionally trained in gerontology."

Dr. Clark joined the NASW as Executive Director in 2001 after a career in oncology social work and cancer care. She was eager to work on a national level to bring about broader change. Although cancer continues to be an ongoing focus for Dr. Clark, who recently introduced programs on cancer awareness and cancer care to NASW members, she has also retained a decades-long interest in working with older adults. Her first job as an undergraduate B.S.W. candidate was to collect social histories of residents in a local nursing home. "At that time," says Dr. Clark, "residents were viewed as a homogenous group of elderly. The more I worked with them, the more I realized how unique and different each person was. Since then, I have always kept an interest in gerontology."

Under Dr. Clark's leadership, the NASW has been very interested in gerontology as well. As part of an internal initiative on aging, the organization is attacking the shortage of gerontological social workers on several fronts. Members already working in aging can stay up to date by joining the Specialty Practice Section on Aging, which provides a website, newsletters, and other publications on trends and news in gerontological social work. Social work professionals who work with family and professional caregivers have access to a web-based continuing education project jointly sponsored by the NASW and the American Society on Aging. The NASW also sets standards for practice settings relevant to aging, such as Long-Term Care Facilities and Palliative and End-of-Life Care. To recruit more members to the practice of gerontological social work, the NASW provides published information, such as the upcoming book Productive Aging, a planned book series on gerontological issues, and a brochure outlining job opportunities in gerontological social work, called "Gerontological Social Work: Aging in a New Age."

On a national level, the NASW is closely engaged in the struggle to convince policymakers of the need to address the upcoming inadequacies in care for our booming population of older adults. In addition to employing six full-time people in lobbying and political affairs, the NASW participates in more than 50 coalitions among social work, social justice, and health organizations.

"There are 48 professional social work organizations in this country," says Dr. Clark. "We need to coordinate our efforts better, and if we can do that, I think we'll start making the progress that we need. When you bring different groups and professions together, you have much more impact." Key coalitions include Patients in Peril, which works to alleviate upcoming shortages in health professionals trained in aging, as well as groups working to improve psychosocial care within long-term care facilities, such as the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, Campaign for Quality Care, and the National Coalition on Mental Health and Aging.

Recently, the NASW has taken an active role in the National Leadership Coalition, a new, informal coalition working to win public funds for social work education in gerontology. To help bolster the coalition's case, the NASW is conducting a workforce study of practicing social workers. "We are very interested in surveying the social work workforce, not just our members," explains Dr. Clark. "We want to understand where people are working, what they see as the issues that are coming, and how they think we should prepare."

NASW also played a key role in bringing the shortage of gerontological social workers to national attention by working with Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) to insert language into a Senate appropriation bill encouraging the Department of Health and Human Services to study and report on future needs for social workers in long-term care services. Dr. Clark has also testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging on the key role scholarship, stipend, and loan forgiveness programs can play in recruiting students to gerontological social work. "It's no secret that young social workers think they do not want to work with the elderly," she says. "That's a perception we have to change."

Dr. Clark believes the importance of gerontology training for all social workers cannot be overstated. The Age Boom looms. "Social workers," she says, "are not going to be able to practice in the future without understanding the special issues of older populations. We need to take action now."

Updated on November 18, 2010

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