by Veronica Hardy, PhD, LCSW, NCC
The 2024 Social Work Month theme was Empowering Social Workers, with a sub-theme of Inspiring Motion, Main Change. This theme was influenced by the elevated demand for social staff in response to societal challenges. As famous by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), “by 2030 there shall be greater than 782,000 social staff in the US,” which “makes social work one of many quickest rising professions.” The Social Work Month theme was additional influenced by advocating for the help wanted to satisfy the elevated demand for social staff, together with wage fairness.
Social Work and Earnings
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook identifies the 2023 median yearly revenue for social staff as $58,380. The BLS additional notes that the lowest 10% earn less than $38,400 and the upper 10% earn more than $94,910. With a broad variety in wages, social employee revenue is affected by a number of elements, together with kind of place, instructional degree, years of expertise, geographic location, and employer kind—together with group meals and housing, household providers, and federal authorities. Nevertheless, you will need to acknowledge that roughly half of degreed social staff are incomes lower than the median yearly revenue. Consequently, quite a few social staff reside beneath the living wage wanted to help a family of two or extra individuals.
Empowerment, Advocacy, and Wage Fairness
Jennifer Luna maintains a video sequence, Conversations on Social Work Careers, with The New Social Employee journal. Within the March 2024 episode, Dr. Erlene Grise-Owens served as a panelist in celebration of Social Work Month and said the next in reference to self-care: “One of many many struggles in our career is our battle round energy and, specifically, our personal energy…. The essence of empowerment is to know our personal energy and perceive the best way to attend to our personal selves.”
Dr. Grise-Owens additional highlighted that the underlying issue that permits social staff to offer providers and reply to numerous wants is self-care. Consequently, selling change and revitalizing the monetary circumstances of the social work career require an empowerment-based holistic method. This would come with mutually supportive efforts wherein social staff can collaborate to encourage motion and lead change.
Encourage Motion and Lead Change
There are quite a few methods social staff are collaborating and pursuing efforts to advertise wage fairness and monetary functionality throughout the career. A couple of examples embody the pursuit of paid internships for college students, confronting monetary methods that impression pupil debtors, and the pursuit of laws that helps wage fairness. An outline of every is described beneath.
- Advocating for Paid Internships: In a 2023 Social Work Information opinion article titled U.S. Social Workers Are Fighting To Be Paid: It’s Time Social Workers Advocated for Themselves!, Taylor Gilbert stresses the continuing problem of social staff being pinned between the choice of pursuing this profession and abstaining to keep away from incurring important debt. Gilbert additional notes the advocacy efforts going down by organizations comparable to Payment 4 Placements (P4P). This motion was developed by college students in advocacy for paid internships to lower socioeconomic challenges skilled by social work college students.The P4P motion has chapters spanning throughout states and universities. Pupil voices are important and an vital part towards constructing a holistic method towards revitalizing the monetary circumstances of the social work career. Constructing methods to advertise monetary functionality of social workers-in-training teaches college students actual world advocacy expertise in relation to their very own conditions and the best way to transition this studying to the broader career and society post-graduation.
- Addressing Monetary Techniques: In the course of the 2022 NASW nationwide convention, the plenary session included Sarah Christa Butts, the NASW Director of Public Coverage. Throughout her presentation, advocacy efforts relating to pupil mortgage debt reduction had been recognized. These efforts included collaboration with the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), which is designed to guard individuals experiencing the dangerous practices of sure borrowing and lending methods. Efforts used to handle instructional monetary methods recognized by the SBPC embody: (1) offering coaching concerning the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, (2) facilitating States for Student Borrower Protection with connections to pupil mortgage ombudsman and advocates to confront predatory mortgage practices, and (3) creating consciousness about processes workplaces implement to carry staff in low-wage positions by way of finance-based contractual obligations.
- Wage Fairness Advocacy: In 2021, then NASW President Dr. Mildred “Mit” Joyner was a visitor on the “Kelsunn-On-The-Air” Social Work Podcast based by Silas Kelly. The podcast sequence titled Raise the Wage for Social Workers highlighted that decrease salaries in social work are usually within the psychological well being area. Dr. Joyner talked about the significance of “studying what your price is after which selling your price” when offering providers to organizations who’re paying to entry your expertise. Selling social employee price consists of self-advocacy.
As well as, Valerie Arendt, Govt Director of NASW-NC, was interviewed by ABC11 throughout a faculty social work convention. Arendt took the chance to advocate for pay fairness for varsity social staff. Additional, the NASW-NC 2023 Legislative Agenda consists of enhancing the social work workforce by way of advocacy items together with ample pay, sign-on bonuses, mortgage compensation, and retention efforts comparable to elevated salaries. Participating in collaborative advocacy efforts to boost consciousness of the worth of social work and the significance of wage fairness is a key step in revitalizing the monetary situation of the career.
Social Staff and Monetary Literacy
Complementary to advocating for paid internships, addressing monetary methods, and selling wage fairness is the pursuit of economic literacy training as a type of self-care. A 2022 article in The New Social Employee journal, 4 Steps to Your Financial Makeover: An Overlooked Aspect of Self-Care for Social Workers, recognized the worth of analyzing your monetary historical past, figuring out your monetary priorities, and enhancing monetary literacy. Additional, there are a number of efforts led by social staff in relation to monetary wellness.
In 2023, the Social Work Wealth Convention was launched to help social staff and numerous professionals in studying monetary administration expertise, together with investing, retirement planning, budgeting, and strategies for selling consumer monetary wellness. A part of the convention was the Social Work Wealth Magazine, which featured an article by Reeta Wolfsohn, founding father of the monetary social work self-discipline and the Center for Financial Social Work. The article, Reimagining Social Work Through a Financial Health and Wellness Lens, communicates the worth of private {and professional} monetary wellness, which incorporates wage equality and paid pupil internships.
Now that you’ve additional details about collaborative advocacy efforts and the significance of economic literacy, think about to steps you could possibly take to encourage motion and lead change relating to pay inequalities. What’s going to you do to advertise social justice?
Veronica L. Hardy, PhD, LCSW, NCC, is an writer, speaker, and social work and counselor educator. She serves on the coverage board and board of copy editors for the International Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, printed by The Worldwide Federation of Social Staff. She volunteers as an expert marketing consultant for the North Carolina-based nonprofit, Doing It for the Kingdom, which works to forestall human trafficking. Additional, she is the inaugural editor of the Social Work Wealth Magazine.
To handle the necessity for ongoing cultural competency processes and international views in training and observe, Dr. Veronica Hardy, LCSW, NCC, and Dr. Cathy Lee Arcuino (Govt Director of World Engagement at Wilkes College) have partnered to develop a digital workshop titled Internationalizing Psychological and Behavioral Well being Training with World Views. By integrating international concerns, cultural relevance, and consciousness of numerous contexts into their educating, educators can higher put together college students to navigate the intricacies of psychological well being on a world scale.
To advertise truthful entry to training, she created The Dr. Veronica L. Hardy Legacy Scholarship, the primary scholarship established for the Raleigh/Durham Chapter of the Nationwide Black MBA Affiliation’s Leaders of Tomorrow program. She is a columnist for The New Social Employee journal, consults for social work applications on accreditation points, is a visitor speaker for the Heart for Monetary Social Work, and is the writer of quite a few publications, together with Becoming Untangled: 8 Simple Strategies to Refresh Your Life, Mind, and Habits (2nd Version) and Impact Your Income: Tips for Financial Wellness and Empowerment.
