The New Social Worker Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2013 | Page 11

Still, Susan realized she had better
look for steady ways to make money.
She became a counselor in a residential
treatment center for kids with emotional
problems and did child care, not considering social work until she was 23. “Mom
was working on me behind the scenes;
she is ‘sneaky,’ ” Susan says with a laugh.
“Since she’s a social worker and my late
father was an independent insurance
agent, I guess I was predisposed to be a
case manager in health care.”

A life-changing event occurre d when
Susan’s grandparents—with whom she
was very close—got sick in Florida, and
she went down to help. She had been
working part-time for the Jewish Child
Care Association, where one of her responsibilities was running a kids’ theater
program. That made her valuable at
Florida’s Department of Child Welfare,
which eventually paid for her to attend
social work graduate school.

After receiving her MSW from
Barry University, Susan reached the
conclusion that it was “neat” to be in the
same profession as her mother, although
they are in different subfields. She did
health care social work, then transitioned
to child welfare and child/family mental
health—in direct practice and supervisory
roles.

Susan also worked full time at the
Robert Stempel School of Public Health
and Social Work at Florida International
University, where she is now an adjunct
faculty member. She has taught child
welfare policy and practice and interventions in child maltreatment, among other
courses.

Last year, Susan started a business
called “Sweet Grindstone,” a professional development company for social
workers and human service workers. She
supervises clinical practitioners and does
agency consulting and training and licensure prep—particularly for social workers
struggling to pass the ASWB exam.

When her mother went to social
work school, there were essentially two
choices—group work and casework.
Selma chose casework, which involved
going back to a client’s early childhood
to seek solutions. The social worker was
the expert, “fixing things for people,”
says Susan. This is very different from
the training Susan’s cousin Kryss received, focusing on “points of strength
and empowerment.”

“I think the social work my mother
learned was about social diagnosis, understanding how to assess and work with

people who had mental health or medical diagnoses,” she continues. “She was
heavily influenced by thinkers who were
popular then, like Freud and Skinner. It
wasn’t until the 1950s that the ideas of
Carl Rogers emerged.”

Although the model used when
Susan was in grad school was also diagnostic, it was very humanistic and client
centered. Strength-based models didn’t
enter the picture until after she got her
MSW, in 1989.

But social work (and other mental
health professions) doesn’t necessarily
develop in a linear way—some people
who did Freudian therapy still do. “It’s
more that the focus within the field keeps
shifting,” Susan adds.

Another change is the development
of formal professional ethics. Selma
went to social work school prior to the
first code of ethics. “Although there
were some attempts to flush out professional ethics and values in the 1950s, my
mother didn’t have the same advantage
of entering into a profession with an
articulated code,” Susan says.

Kryss Shane

Kryss, 30, is Susan’s first cousin once
removed. (Her grandmother and Selma’s
mother were sisters.) Like Susan, she obtained her MSW from Barry University
and also a B.S. in human development
and family sciences, specializing in family studies, from the Ohio State University.

But her pull toward writing was
stronger even than toward client-based
social work. And write she does: Kryss
has a column, does professional book
reviewing, is a blogger, and contributes
to this publication.

Her focus on writing, editing, speaking, and blogging is representative of the
field’s expansion to include all sorts of
“nontraditional” activities. But above all,
Kryss considers herself an activist, with
an emphasis on promoting equality.

“I understand there are so many
avenues of the equality movement,” she
says. “I guess I’ve just always wanted to
have a hand in each of those metaphoric
pots.”

Becoming a licensed social worker
allowed her, as a straight ally, to pursue
her interest in counseling and working
with LGBTQ people and their families.
She is also an educator who goes into
businesses, universities, and other
groups to teach them how to make their
organizations and lives more inclusive

of the needs of that population. As of
January, she is providing counseling and
animal assisted therapy services at Core
Cognitions-Integrated Holistic Health in
Ohio.

Whatever influence her older social
work relatives had on her was peripheral at first. Kryss had little contact with
Selma and Susan as a child and was not
in touch with their family for a number
of years.

“But Susan was always my favorite
cousin, who took an interest in me,”
Kryss says. “I was a bookworm, an oddone-out age wise. I thought she was the
coolest grownup ever; I wanted to be
Susan.” She is also a theater lover.

When Kryss was in her early 20s,
she and Susan got back in touch via the
Internet. At the time, Kryss had her B.S.
and was working with children. “So accidentally, I did become her,” she says.
“No one celebrated my getting into grad
school more than Susan. I typically call
her about a difficulty at work or when I
feel burned out or overwhelmed, and her
advice is invaluable—she knows me really
well. It allows me as a colleague to be
better. And sometimes she tells me that
I should take a break, but that this is my
field, what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Despite her other interests, there
were early signs Kryss might end up in
social work. When she was student teaching in Columbus, Ohio, students would
come over in the lunchroom to tell her
their problems. Many of her long-term
friends have been asking her for advice
since childhood.

Changes have taken place in social
work even during Kryss’s brief, by comparison, career. These include serving
new populations, who were less on the
radar screen in the past. The needs of
LGBTQ people have changed, as have
the perceptions of others.

“When Ellen de Generes came out,
it was a big deal,” Kryss says. “Some advertisers pulled ads from her show. Now
she is a celebrity spokesperson for J.C.
Penney, one of those stores,” she says.

Despite greater acceptance, the
LGBTQ community still faces challenges. “People come out earlier, and the
statistics show that [about] 25 percent of
kids who do to their parents are kicked
out and become homeless,” Kryss says.
“They lack life skills and can’t get a job.
Survival sex is huge, and they’re exposed
to violent situations and to drugs and
alcohol.”
Three generations—continued on page 18

The New Social Worker

Winter 2013

9