I am filled with excitement and anticipation as I begin my two-year NYC Chapter presidency along with my board colleagues, diverse and experienced leaders. We are committed to protecting, promoting, and advancing our profession and at the same time addressing social injustice. Together, our Association can build our future, grounded on the NYC Chapter priorities that include continuing education, loan forgiveness, licensing, clinical development, and private practice mentorship. We chose to practice social work in New York City - a city that is characterized by its density and diversity. Almost eight and a half million residents makes us the largest and most populous city in the United States. We are 44 percent white and 56 percent people of color and are the most linguistically diverse city in the world with as many as 800 languages spoken. We are also listed among America's 10 most segregated cities with high poverty levels in racially segregated neighborhoods. What comes with all of this humanity are challenges of living for all of us. Choosing to practice Social Work in New York City is not for the faint-hearted.
With this said, I would like to introduce myself and share my commitments and passions. I am a clinical social worker practicing for 34 years with individuals and families recovering from the disease of addiction. As a clinician in Hell's Kitchen, I have worked with clients who are famous as well as those who are homeless; in Westchester, individuals and familes who are wealthy and poor visit my office; students formed my client base when I served as the Director of Substance Abuse Prevention at Barnard College, Columbia University; as Executive Director of The Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in Rockland County, I worked with virtually all members of the community.
It has been an honor to work with people who have lost their sense of belonging and connection to themselves, others and the world. Many have seen heaven and hell and now live transformed lives. I have been moved and inspired by their journeys.
This has led me to a deeper concern for all people whose dignity and humanity are left out of the decision-making process of the larger community. The NASW-NYC Chapter acknowledges Mayor de Blasio for naming the disparity between rich and poor that has become blatantly visible in New York as a "Tale of Two Cities." Our Chapter has taken a strong stand to support the social work profession and the welfare of people who live in our City. I will share a number of our campaigns that begin to build our focus.
The Chapter's Social Work Equity Project is committed to economic equity for ourselves and our clients and to improving working conditions for social workers. The Equitable Salaries Campaign and the Human Resources Workforce Survey substantiate the reality that social workers are underpaid and over worked. In an effort to achieve professional equity, I have widened our reach by contacting Chapter presidents nationwide to join us in this effort and to share a common voice.
The Poverty Toolkit: "Worse Than You Think: The Dimensions of Poverty in NYC spearheaded by Martha Sullivan, past NASW-NYC President, is a powerful document intended to lift voices and design policies and programs to reduce economic inequity in our City. I encourage you to use it often to inform your work, to validate your clients' experiences and to help shape the decisions you make. In addition, Mimi Abramovitz's "Place Matters, The Community Loss Index: A New Social Indicator" demonstrates how health and social problems amass when large numbers of people, living in close proximity, regularly suffer multiple, persistent losses at the same time due to multiple social systems failures in NYC's racially segregated geographic hotspots. Together, the Poverty Toolkit and Community Loss Index call upon us to address these social injustices and become agents of institutional change in this City.
An important part of our work together will be to draw from the enormous well of resources and commitment in the Social Work community to identify root causes of our city's social problems and take the lead in building cross-systems alliances that align expertise to find lasting solutions to these social exclusions and disparities. Neuroscience research explains that social exclusion provokes pain similar to physical pain. As social workers trained in social systems thinking we can only infer that helping individuals find personal power is insufficient in the face of persistent social pain and that people cannot be separated from their place in the political and social landscape.
There are many who are colorblind and believe that we live in a post-racialized society. However, the need for continued focus on race is supported by data. While we would like to believe that race no longer matters, evidence supports that outcomes for every institution in America disproportionately and negatively impact the same poor communities of color. Since this holds true across all institutions, we can neither blame those most affected, nor think that in "fixing" them, we fix the problem. When every institution disproportionately and negatively affects the same group of people, we must have an honest conversation about the behavior of these institutions and work for institutional change.
Social problems in our society, whether evidenced through separate 'Poor Door' entrances for low-income renters in luxury high-rise apartments in Manhattan or the police killing of Staten Island resident Eric Garner by chokehold, create deep personal and social pain. This issue has finally captured mainstream attention as the United Nations calls for an end to police brutality in the US after the Ferguson shooting. Social and economic disparities often, though not always, follow racial lines in NYC, whether we look at health care, education, criminal justice or housing.
I am a founding member of the AntiRacist Alliance. Its vision is to build a social work movement to achieve racial equity in our lifetime. Since 2002, more than 8,400 human service providers from all fields of social work practice and community members have completed the Undoing RacismŽ workshop. An article, "Think Creatively and Act Decisively: Creating an Antiracist Alliance of Social Workers," written by members of this alliance, was recently published by NASW. We also maintain a social work race equity column in The New Social Worker online magazine.
The AntiRacist Alliance worked with NASW National to plan a NASW Think Tank on Achieving Racial Equity, held in November 2013 in D.C. It was attended by sixty-five leading national race equity experts and key social work stakeholders from all facets of the social work profession; practitioners, policy makers, organizers, administrators, researchers, academicians, funders, and community organizers-all committed to undoing racism and achieving racial equity. This work will continue.
In March of this year I facilitated a Congressional Social Work Caucus Briefing sponsored by NASW in conjunction with the Congressional Social Work Caucus chaired by Congresswoman Barbara Lee(D-California). She supports the establishment of race competencies for the profession to achieve racial equity. The proposed interventions benefit everyone. For instance, data taken from child welfare indicates that when we implement accountable institutional change committed to racial equity, outcomes improve for all race groups, including whites.
In June 2014, The AntiRacist Alliance submitted a Grand Challenge concept paper to the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, who seeks to identify ambitious yet achievable goals for the profession. An excerpt states: "As of 2014, there is not a single profession in the US that requires its professionals to demonstrate an understanding of structural racism and its impact on its citizenry nor has a single association established an official base of competencies to address race and racism."
We must be the profession to establish race competencies. We will be the first to generate a professionally trained body to embrace set principles towards achieving racial equity, address colorblindness, develop equity expertise within our profession and lead institutions that partner with vulnerable neighborhoods for cross-systems transformational work.
It is time to move forward as the bold and audacious profession that we are. While we are delivering excellence in clinical and human services to individuals and families, we must move beyond solutions for the individual and look deeper into root causes of the problems and move to resolve them.
We are in great hands. NASW staff are vibrant, creative and competent new professionals. Our Executive Director leads one of the largest chapters in the country. He is a community organizer with human service connections and relationships with gatekeepers throughout the City.
We want to learn about the contribution that you want to make to our profession and look forward to meeting you at committee meetings and the upcoming NASW Conference of the Profession to be held on April 8th, 2015.
I used to throw stones at Institutions, now I've become a part of them. Please don't throw stones. We have a future to build together where we are paid salaries commensurate with our education and expertise and work in environments where we are respected, valued and appreciated.
Grounded in trailblazing successes, NASW is now called to be bold; to galvanize the spirit and gifts of our profession for institutional equity, to capture the participation and energy of new professionals and expand NASW-NYC membership. We are the hope for fair access to a better future!
Sandy Bernabei, LCSW