Publications

The following is a list of research reports and papers addressing some of the issues social workers face, including: What competencies must social workers possess in order to work with older adults? How can social work better prepare itself for the graying of American society? Provided courtesy of the Council on Social Work Education Gero-Ed Center.

Advanced Gero Social Work Practice Guide
The Advanced Gero Social Work Practice Guide (Practice Guide) links gero competencies to select 2008 CSWE Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) practice behaviors common to all social work practice. The Practice Guide includes Resource Examples such as class exercises, assignments to measure student attainment of gero practice behaviors, and research articles providing evidence-based social work practice.

Textbook Reviews
Aging must be part of required texts just as it must be a part of social work curricula. In 2004 and 2009, the CSWE Gero-Ed Center conducted Textbook Review Projects of widely used generalist texts to analyze the quality and quantity of gero content. The Center found an increase from 3% to 5.5% in terms of pages that including aging content. An Executive Summary (PDF) summarizing the two reviews is available. The full-text article from the 2004 review, "An Analysis of Social Work Textbooks for Aging Content: How Well Do Social Work Foundation Texts Prepare Students for Our Aging Society?" (PDF) is available with permission by the Council on Social Work Education © 2006.

Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce
The Institute of Medicine's Committee on the Future Health Care Workforce for Older Americans sought to determine the health care needs of Americans over 65 years of age and to assess those needs through an analysis of the forces that shape the health care workforce, including education and training, models of care, and public and private programs. The resulting report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, reveals that in order to deliver high-quality care to older adults, the development of a health care workforce that is sufficient in both size and skill is essential. While the impending demands on the health care system have been recognized for decades, little has been done to prepare for the years ahead. The report strongly emphasizes that the nation needs to move quickly and efficiently to make certain that the health care workforce increases in size and has the proper education and training to handle the needs of a new generation of older Americans.

Qualifications for Nursing Home Social Workers Vary Enormously, Study Finds
Research conducted by the University of Iowa found the qualifications for nursing home social workers differed radically across the country. According to the research, only half of nursing home social workers have a degree in social work. Twenty percent do not have a four-year degree, and merely 38 percent of nursing home social workers are actually licensed in social work. Under federal law, only homes with more than 120 beds are required to employ a full-time social worker, and a “qualified social worker” is defined as anyone with a bachelor’s degree in social work or any human service field and one year of supervised experience. Seventy percent of nursing homes have less than 120 beds. According to Dr. Mercedes Bern-Klug, who led the study, standardized regulations across the board would help ensure that nursing home social workers are prepared for their tasks and that residents receive the quality care and attention they need. The University of Iowa’s School of Social Work has started a national listserv about nursing home social work and has resources available for nursing home social workers on its Web site at www.uiowa.edu.
Source: Kansas City InfoZine, January 6, 2009

Attention Researchers: 2006 Workforce Study Dataset Available
Data from the 2006 NASW National Study of Licensed Social Workers is now available. It summarizes and interprets the responses of social workers serving older adults obtained through a national sample survey of licensed social workers in the United States conducted in 2004.

A Blueprint for the New Millenium
How can the social work profession be prepared to meet the challenges of a growing aging population and build on the opportunities of these changing demographics? To answer this question, the former CSWE Strengthening Aging and Gerontological Education for Social Work Project (SAGE-SW) developed A Blueprint for the New Millennium to guide efforts to train social workers with geriatric competencies.

Transforming Social Work Education: The First Decade of the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative, edited by Nancy Hooyman.
Celebrating a decade of funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation, each chapter of this book highlights various aspects of the Geriatric Social Work Initiative (GSWI), including competency-based education, faculty and doctoral student scholarly development, models for curricular and organizational change, community partnerships, and strategies for sustainability. This book is available through the CSWE Press Bookstore.