What do taxicabs, Girl Scouts, and Breast Cancer Have in Common? They are all part of the community impact of social workers.
Jennifer Thompson grew up in a household that valued service. Volunteering, giving back, and working with people were highly regarded in her family. Entering college, Thompson wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted to do for a career, and ran through several majors.
“I always felt siloed,” Thompson said.
During a work-study assignment at a homeless shelter, Thompson found her calling. She immediately fell in love with the environment and the opportunity to help an entire population of people.
“I loved working with clients, drawing on all my skills, and being able to help others. I knew then that I wanted to focus on a social work career,” she said.
Social workers work in most areas of society: education, law, entertainment, family, childcare, and transportation, to name a few.
“When people hear ‘social worker,’ they usually think of a stereotype — that we all work with kids, or child protective services,” said Thompson.
If Thompson’s career, and the career paths of thousands of other social workers, are any indication, social workers are ingrained in nearly every segment of the global community. Often, they are the hidden heroes that advocate for the disenfranchised, support social programs, and start initiatives that change lives.
Social Workers Everywhere
Sometimes, social workers can be viewed unfavorably in this vein, as if they break up families and take children from their parents. This scenario, however, could not be further from the truth.
While many social workers work with children, or other specific communities that need assistance, the varied talents of social workers seep into most areas of life. They are often working behind the scenes, stepping in to support people, communities and event companies. Social workers work collaboratively with the communities, helping them assess their own needs, identify solutions and support the creation of action plans to address those needs or challenges. They’re facilitators, helpers and trusted agents of change who can help piece together complex puzzles.
Thompson began her career with the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission, diving into the need for accessible transit, community mobility, and regulation of for-hire vehicles. During her tenure at the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission, she helped develop systems that connected users of wheelchairs with accessible taxicabs and brought induction loop technology to the vehicles. Giving people easier and faster access to a means of travel is just one way social workers operate behind the scenes to make people’s lives better.
Thompson later served as Senior Advisor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg on several citywide initiatives, including homeless services, affordable housing, and transportation and infrastructure plans. In the nonprofit sector, she developed programs funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for young breast cancer survivors at Sharsheret. Most recently, Thompson was the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer for Girl Scouts. With the Girl Scouts, she led advocacy initiatives that included a collaboration with the office of the First Lady, Michelle Obama and her initiative, Let Girls Learn.
Social workers like Thompson work diligently to support the needs of the community and help identify resources in every facet of community living.
“Social workers are on the front lines, in hospitals and doctor’s offices. They are in schools, helping kids and parents both,” said Thompson. “Social workers are in your company’s human resource department — managing employee assistance programs and hiring managers. Social workers are in technology companies, managing programs, and services, helping large corporations understand the needs of diverse populations.”
Companies interested in bolstering their diversity and equity programs are hiring social workers to institute diversity training, and promote policies for the betterment of companies through inclusiveness. As communities grow, change, and adapt, the need for social workers becomes more clear.
Social Workers Behind the Scenes
There are thousands of social workers in New York City working behind the scenes to improve people’s lives. In response to the global pandemic, NYC planned to hire 500 additional school social workers to help children transition back to in-person learning, and deal with any trauma and mental health issues from the unprecedented shutdown. Although, the proposed hiring initiative still fell short of the actual need in the NYC schools. The pandemic has made the demand for skilled social workers pronounced in areas of mental health, the workplace, education, and family groups.
Social Work, as a career, has traditionally suffered from low wages and high incidents of burnout. Lack of funding for programs and initiatives that employ social workers can lead to much of the work that social workers do going unrecognized, or worse; not coming to fruition. For Thompson, funding social work only makes sense to build a healthy community.
“When we think about the things we need as a community to remain strong and healthy, and the resources we need if we’re struggling, social workers step in and help address these things,” Thompson explained. “It seems logical that we’d invest in supporting those who do such challenging work.”
Logical or not, funding and pay raises for social workers have remained slow to grow, and even utterly stagnant in some areas of the field. Social workers often face disparities from insurance companies and have to fight to be reimbursed at the same rate as some of their counterparts in similar professions. Many social workers moonlight in various roles. Some write grants that help support the nonprofit field, others work PRN roles at hospitals. Many will do consulting work on the side.
“Almost every social worker I know, including myself, has held multiple jobs throughout the majority of their career,” said Thompson. “Often out of financial necessity. It is not uncommon to leave graduate school with six figures in student loan debt as a social worker, and our entry salary, in New York City, is roughly $45,000. It’s not sustainable and many of the student loan forgiveness programs fall short in helping. Social workers need support.”
Support can include re-assessing access to school tuition reimbursement, and elevating the profession’s status, so that social workers are paid on par with other occupations essential to the community’s health, safety, and wellness.
The way social workers help the community is varied and far behind the scenes. By supporting community social workers and the good that they bring to society, we can all help foster a better New York City, a better nation, and, eventually, a better world.
