The New Social Worker Vol. 20, No. 3, Summer 2013 | Page 23

Keep Calm and Advocate—A Social Work Month Idea by Ashley Miller
• According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), social workers are the nation’s largest group of clinically trained mental health service providers. • Social workers provide more mental health services than psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurses combined. One of the social workers we interviewed works for children and youth services. She has been in the field since 1972. One of the most common myths she has heard about her area of practice is that the main goal of social workers is to take children away from their families, when in reality, social workers are protecting the safety of the children and trying to preserve the family. The other social worker works in a school setting and has been in the field since 1993. When asked what this year’s Social Work Month theme means to her, she responded, “It means meeting clients where they are, using the strengths perspective. I believe in clients. Raising awareness that clients have more strengths than they think they have. Advocate for clients. It goes hand-in-hand for being a role model. Giving systems the tools they need to overcome their challenges. Giving power to the clients and being respectful of the power they have, weaving that power into the clients and our practice. We help uncover unique qualities to maximize or create strengths in clients.” Our event name was “Keep Calm and Advocate.” We had certificates for students to fill out that said, “I advocate” and space for them to hand write what it is they advocate for, because we all advocate for something. We also sold buttons that say, “Keep Calm and Advocate” for $2.00 to fundraise for our university’s social work organization. We handed out stickers that said, “I support social work,” as well as cookies and candy. Flyers about the social work major on campus were passed out for those interested. We also posted in our university’s newspaper as well as our Social Work Organization Facebook page every week. Our post was called “Did you know.” We took facts from the NASW website and posted them to spread more knowledge about the social work profession. Through this event, my group members and I have learned that there are a lot of misconceptions about the social work profession and that getting the facts out there is important. One piece of advice that the interviewed social worker gave was, “Don’t box yourself in,” meaning social work is a broad and diverse profession and we should take advantage of the diversity and different opportunities available to us. Overall, our event was successful and we were able to accomplish our goals of raising awareness on our campus about the social work profession, as well as raising money for our social work organization on campus.

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ello, future social workers! I am a senior social work student at Shippensburg University. In my “Practice with Organizations and Communities” social work course, I was given a group assignment to spread awareness on our campus about the social work profession. March is Social Work Month, so we decided to have our event on March 13. For our event, we interviewed two Shippensburg University alumni. We asked them what they do, how they started in the profession, some common myths they have heard about their area of practice, and what this year’s Social Work Month theme “Weaving Threads of Resilience and Advocacy: The Power of Social Work,” means to them. Before we conducted the interview, we asked the social workers to fill out a consent form to allow us to display their information. We presented their information on a poster board, along with facts about the social work profession that students on campus may not know. The facts, which came from NASW’s (2013) “Facts About Social Work,” included the following: • • More than 600,000 professionals in the United States hold social work degrees. You can find social workers in hospitals, schools, police departments, mental health clinics, private practices, military facilities, and corporations.

Reference
National Association of Social Workers. (2013). Facts about social work. Retrieved from http://www.socialworkers.org/ pressroom/swMonth/2010/facts.asp.

The New Social Worker

Summer 2013

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