The pandemic. January 6. Climate disaster. Inflation. Gas is how much right now?! No wonder data shows the U.S. in the middle of a growing mental health crisis. One result of that crisis has been an increased reliance on social workers and greater recognition of the critical role they play. As more people turn to social workers for help, who is helping the social workers, people doing some of the hardest jobs around, often for notoriously low wages?
The New York Community Trust, one of the largest funders in the social work arena, recently announced new grants to 17 organizations. The round of funding, totaling $4.5 million, has three main focuses: building the capacity and stature of the social work field; facilitating collaboration between community groups and academic institutions; and expanding the pipeline of students of color and from low-income backgrounds into social work graduate degree programs. “The common theme is that they all help support social work policy, practice and education,” says Irfan Hasan, deputy vice president for grants at the New York Community Trust.
Among the largest grant recipients are Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, with $500,000 to train bilingual social workers; Samaritan Daytop Village, with $475,000 to train social workers to practice in residential drug treatment programs; Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, with $500,000 to fund social workers serving older adults facing homelessness, incarceration, mental health problems and substance misuse; and Herstory Writers Workshop, with $425,000 to recruit and train social workers for school-based counseling and written narratives.
To cover the cost of these grants, NYCT combined a handful of funds specifically earmarked for social work, then added money designated for related issues, such as behavioral health. This strategy allowed the foundation to scale up the total amount of available funding in order to better suit the need, and ideally, make more of an impact.
I was particularly interested in this round of funding because next month, I will finish up a master’s degree in social work myself. My experience in the field so far — especially during such an emotionally challenging period — has made it clear to me that supporting social work is an urgent, laudable endeavor. The person-in-environment approach to problems, the emphasis on the dignity and worth of the individual, the therapeutic practice of supporting people’s strengths, and caseworkers’ skill at resource linking all make social work ideally suited to address the complex issues of the moment. It’s also a field that just doesn’t see a lot of high-dollar philanthropic support, which makes NYCT’s grants all the more encouraging.
At the same time, I’m skeptical about whether this money — and the good intentions behind it — will succeed in its goals in the long term, given that this funding is not also concretely focused on making social work an economically viable field for those interested in pursuing it. Efforts to build up the stature of the field and the pipeline of students of color, in particular, will face hard limits as long as many social workers are barely making ends meet. This strikes me as a missing component in the aim of supporting social work, and an opportunity for grantmakers interested in bolstering the field.
None of these grants raise social workers’ salaries, nor will they put much of a dent in the cost of pursuing a master’s degree in social work, which costs $60,000 at Columbia University, another NYCT grant recipient. While some of this funding goes toward scholarships, two years of full-time study along with three semesters of concurrent, unpaid or low-paid field work will still have many students taking out large loans. MSW graduates must then work for 36 months to obtain licensing in New York State. These pre-licensure clinical hours are often compensated barely above minimum wage.
In addition to Columbia University’s $200,000 grant from NYCT, the social work schools at Touro College and Adelphi University are also receiving the same amount. These three grants are for programs supporting students of color and/or those from low-income backgrounds. But does routing minorities and those from low-income families into student loan debt, followed by a professional life in a field that promises little hope of real economic ascendency, truly represent “good giving?” Other universities in this round of funding include Hunter College, Yeshiva and University of Maryland.
“None of these will pay full freight for any individual,” Hasan acknowledges, adding that the foundation could spend its entire endowment on tuition and still not graduate many social workers. Instead, the goal is to fill in the gaps that make it difficult for people to complete the degree, pursue credentialing in the field, and/or access mentoring and support. “We hope that since about $1.5 million is to pay for some form of scholarships, social work students will be graduating with less debt burden, making the salaries go a little further.”
The NYCT also emphasizes the fact that this is just one round of grants in a decades-old practice of funding social workers. While this latest round doesn’t address salaries, other grants could. And according to NYCT, helping turn more social workers into leaders may be the best way to create real economic change for case workers on the ground — by shrinking the historical divide between service providers and those drafting laws, writing curricula, and setting budgets. Since social workers are largely paid through government contracts, empowering more social workers to move into policy roles will hopefully translate into the crafting of policies that account for the importance of social workers and compensate them accordingly.
This will take time, and I hope future grants in support of the field will address the high cost of education and the low wages head on. I’m not sure how this will happen, but perhaps by creating full-tuition scholarships, directly funding licensure hours and social worker positions, and even creating heavily subsidized housing for those in the helping professions in high-rent areas.
Another idea would be funding advocacy to lower the number of years of nonprofit employment needed for student loan relief from 10 to two. I might stay at the aging agency where I’m doing my field placement for the next two years, contributing my skills, if this would lead to student loan relief. But 10 years feels irresponsible to my own life and my child, considering that after taxes, the salary on offer is less than my annual rent in Los Angeles. Surely, I’m not the only MSW graduate scanning job postings at tech firms. In fact, there’s a movement among social work professionals and educators in Southern California to route low-income graduates into HR and similar fields in the for-profit sector as a way to shore up their own economic stability.
Still, the growing recognition of social workers’ real value is reflected in these grants. “Our last category, which is focused on stature, really speaks to the fact that social workers are skilled professionals, and the roles that they occupy are important for society,” says Hasan. “Social workers are the fabric that keeps society functioning.”