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_____________ Margaret E. Adamek, PhD, Professor and Editor, Advances in Social Work, Indiana University School of Social Work,

Indianapolis, IN 46202, [email protected]

Copyright © 2016 Author Vol. 17 No.2 (Fall 2016), i-iv, DOI: 10.18060/21452

Editorial: Together We Are Strong

Margaret E. Adamek

We are pleased to bring you this issue of Advances in Social Work presenting

innovations in emerging areas of policy advocacy, community organization, research,

teaching, and clinical practice. This collection of papers includes the results of eleven

empirical studies and five diverse conceptual pieces that offer new insights and strategies

to assist social work students, educators, practitioners, and policy advocates. We offer these

contributions to the field with the hope that the advances shared here will ultimately benefit

and empower those we serve.

In light of the perpetually negative reports of worker turnover in public child welfare,

Willis, Chavkin and Leung recommend a new approach to calculating turnover that

considers different types of staff turnover and the possibility of a desirable level of

turnover. By critically questioning how turnover is socially constructed, measured, and

addressed, and integrating seminal management principles, Willis and colleagues propose

an alternative metric that may result in more accurate perceptions of the public child

welfare workforce. The proposed changes to conceptualizing and calculating staff turnover

ultimately have the potential to reduce the impact of dysfunctional turnover within public

child welfare systems.

Four articles spotlight increasing social work involvement in various aspects of

interprofessional education and practice. In a survey of 157 graduate students in four health

care disciplines, including social work, West, Miller, and Leitch examine the impact of

professional socialization within one’s discipline on attitudes toward interprofessional

collaboration. Their results point to a potentially problematic connection between

professional socialization during graduate study and students’ views of interprofessional

collaboration. Unless managed strategically, professional socialization may diminish

positive perceptions and attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration. West and

colleagues caution social work educators to pay careful attention to the role of professional

socialization and how it is manifest in both the explicit and implicit curriculum.

In a second study addressing interprofessional education, Rishel, Hartnett, and Davis

present data from a federally funded Integrated Mental and Behavioral Health Training

Program (IMBTP) within an MSW program emphasizing rural practice. The shift to

integrated models of service delivery that emphasize preventative services prompts the

need for providers who understand the interrelationship among physical and behavioral

health and who are prepared to practice using a team-based approach. Results suggest that

an intentional focus on fostering relationships may enhance the knowledge-building and

skill development that are inherently emphasized in most training programs. Rishel and

colleagues recommend offering multiple opportunities for relationship-building among

trainees and program faculty, clinical supervisors, and interprofessional colleagues in order

to improve learning outcomes in behavioral health training programs.

ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Fall 2016, 17(2) ii

The third paper addressing interprofessional practice highlights the crucial need for

school-based professionals to work with a specific high-needs population: culturally and

linguistically diverse foster youth with disabilities. Green and Mathiesen enumerate a set

of interprofessional competencies for school professionals developed based on the lessons

learned in the first three years of a federally funded grant. Recommendations to improve

practice with diverse foster youth with disabilities include increasing the number of

Culturally Affirming and Responsive Education Specialists (CARES) who are trained to

respond to and advocate for the educational and mental health needs of diverse foster youth.

To address the multiple and sometimes complex needs of this student population, CARES

work in collaborative interdisciplinary teams. Green and Mathiesen advocate for school

professionals to receive early training in culturally competent interdisciplinary practice.

In a fourth paper involving interprofessional practice, Desrosiers, Mallinger, and

Bragg-Underwood highlight patient navigation as an emerging area of health care practice

aimed at reducing health disparities and improving patient health outcomes. Based on an

integrative review of literature, Desrosiers and colleagues offer a clear definition of patient

navigation and delineate social work competencies with patient navigator requirements.

They further argue that social workers are well-equipped to carry out a variety of patient

navigator responsibilities buttressed by their social justice advocacy skills. Through

involvement in patient navigation, social workers can promote the development of socially

just healthcare systems that respect the dignity and worth of all patients.

Six empirical studies explore emerging and diverse practice arenas including teen

dating violence (TDV), the use of social media in child welfare, school-community

partnerships, screening for post-partum depression, dispersed social work, and foreclosure.

In recognition of the prevalence of teen dating violence (TDV), Rueda, Hawley, Black,

and Ombayo examined graduating MSW students’ preparedness to work with adolescents

affected by TDV. MSW students responded to two vignettes reflecting various types of

violence among a same-sex and heterosexual couple. The two most commonly proposed

interventions were education and counseling. Students’ recommendations for education

and counseling rather than safety planning or multi-level interventions indicate that social

work programs need to provide specific content in MSW curricula on evidence-based

interventions for TDV.

In a national survey of public child welfare training administrators, Stott,

MacEachron, and Gustavsson examined issues related to the use of social media in child

welfare practice. Despite the ubiquity of social media, few state agencies who responded

to the survey had comprehensive policies on the use of social media for case management

or for connecting with youth in out-of-home care. Stott and colleagues suggest that

agencies would reduce their liability risks and benefit their staff and clients by developing

policies aimed at protecting agency and staff privacy and safety, as well as client privacy

and safety. Agencies may promote the well-being of youth in out-of-home care by

providing guidelines to staff and caregivers regarding the safe use of social media.

Baldwin-White and Elias-Lambert designed a study to examine social work students’

acceptance of various rape myths based on four vignettes that portrayed different patterns

of alcohol consumption of the victim and perpetrator. Their descriptive analysis showed

Adamek/EDITORIAL iii

that social work students were willing to accept certain rape-supportive beliefs, but not

others. Based on their results, Baldwin-White and Elias-Lambert call for social work

students to be educated about how endorsements of rape myths can affect their interaction

with survivors and perpetrators.

Blitz, Yull, Solá, and Jones describe a faculty-led experiential learning project aimed

at teaching macro practice skills along with research methods. As part of a grant-funded

school-university partnership, MSW field students participated in collective family

engagement in diverse, low-income communities, using community organizing skills and

community-based participatory research methods. Blitz and colleagues discuss MSW

students’ learning in the context of CSWE’s 2015 EPAS competencies. This project

illustrates the potential of school-university partnerships involving MSW field students to

help bridge the gaps between schools and families, particularly in diverse and low-income

communities.

Spurred by reports that up to 1 in 4 new mothers face post-partum depression (PPD),

Rouland Polmanteer, Keefe, and Brownstein-Evans conducted a national online survey

to examine perinatal social workers’ screening practices with new mothers. Despite the

ready availability of PPD screening instruments, only one-quarter of respondents indicated

they used formal screening instruments. Based on their survey results, Rouland Polmanteer

and colleagues recommend that social workers integrate relevant findings from evidence-

based research about PPD into their practice, and that BSW and MSW curricula also

incorporate research and practice information addressing PPD.

In light of the growing practice of social workers working outside of the traditional

workplace, Allen Milton, Sinclair, and Vakalahi interviewed dispersed social workers to

understand how interactions via new communication technology impacts organizational

identification. Their findings revealed that although dispersed social workers perceive

themselves as having more autonomy and flexibility, they can sometimes feel socially

isolated and disconnected from their peers and supervisors. Allen Milton and colleagues

note that despite the enhanced efficiency that technology can bring, human service

organizations should carefully consider the unintended consequences of a dispersed

workforce.

In the under-explored area of housing foreclosure, Murphy-Nugen and Hensley Beck

examined the lived experiences of former homeowners who faced foreclosure. Themes

from in-depth interviews revealed the intersection of the hopes and dreams of

homeownership with the grief and loss of foreclosure. This polarizing experience points to

the need for innovative policy and practice interventions. Murphy-Nugen and Hensley

Beck recommend strengthening the bridge of micro- and macro-level interventions to more

effectively address former homeowners’ grief and loss along with their hopes and dreams.

In recognition of the emerging need to develop and implement succession plans for

leadership in human service organizations, Gilliam, Chandler, Al-Hajjaj, Mooney, and

Vakalahi call for schools of social work to prepare and encourage their graduates to seek

such leadership roles. To fill the expected gaps left by retiring administrators, leaders must

be cultivated through intentional recruitment and continuous training of social workers in

human service leadership and administration. Adopting the type of succession planning

ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Fall 2016, 17(2) iv

that is common in the corporate world would help to ensure the continuous availability of

competent and visionary leaders for human service organizations.

Due to growing concerns about student incivility, Wahler and Badger surveyed a

national sample of social work instructors about their experiences with social work student

incivility in both undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Some behaviors often deemed

disrespectful or inattentive were reported, more so in undergraduate than graduate

classrooms. Openly hostile behaviors were rarely reported. Wahler and Badger offer

several recommendations for addressing incivility, conceptualizing such instances in the

classroom as opportunities to prepare social work students for professional practice.

Given that most adults spend some or nearly all of their lives in a romantic couple

relationship and that such relationships are critical to well-being, Chonody, Killian, Gabb,

and Dunk-West sought to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used

to assess the maintenance of healthy adult relationships. With data gathered online from

participants from 60 countries, Chonody and colleagues assessed the measurement

properties of the Relationship Maintenance Scale (RMS). This brief measure of relationship maintenance (8 items) has great promise for enhancing practice with couples

and families.

Acknowledging the centrality of empathy to effective social work practice, VanCleave

articulates the connection between empathy and neuroscience, offering an epistemology of

empathy and a synthesis of literature from diverse fields that extends empathic practice

theory. After explaining the neurobiological foundation of empathy, VanCleave offers

several recommendations for empathy training of social work students.

In the process of preparing this overview of the 16 articles published in this issue of

Advances in Social Work, I could not help but notice that 15 are collaborative projects,

involving a total of 47 scholars. It is interesting to note the growing extent of collaborative

work in the field---a welcome trend indeed. Together, we are strong.

Finally, I would like to extend our sincere appreciation to all of our reviewers from

near and far who make the work of publishing scholarship possible. I believe it takes a

scholarly village to produce such a varied and cutting edge body of work. Starting in

January 2017, each year we will publish a list of all of our reviewers for the preceding year.

Our initial list for 2015 and 2016 includes 283 individuals from 17 countries and 45 states

in the U.S., representing 180 institutions. We are pleased that our “scholarly village” is

both global and diverse. More evidence in my book that together, we are strong.