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New initiatives are being developed at the Council on Social Work Education as your membership organization responds to
changing environmental conditions impacting social work generally as a profession and social work education in particular.
While the primary purpose of the Council on Social Work Education is the accreditation of social work programs in the United
States, the mission of the organization also speaks to being an advocate for social work education and research. A new office
has been created in order to give focus, definition, and staff attention to this component of our mission. At the present
time, the Minority Fellows Program funded by NIMH and SAMPSA, and the SAGE-SW project funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation
are structurally located under this office. Dr. Aracelis Francis is the interim director of the office.
In an effort to address the needs for transforming curricula so that the growing numbers of older adults in our society
are well served, we are in the final stages of proposal development to the John A. Hartford Foundation, to create a National
Center for Gerontological Social Work Education, located at CSWE. This proposal has grown out of the highly successful SAGE-SW
and Gero-Rich Projects that are the subjects of other articles in the Newsletter. Nancy Hooyman and Anita Rosen are primary
contributors to this new initiative.
CSWE SAGE-SW
The CSWE SAGE-SW project is funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation with a goal to help ALL social work students - BSW and
MSW - gain basic competency in gerontology in order to meet the needs of a growing aging population. SAGE-SW has worked to
develop curriculum resources and opportunities for social work faculty to infuse aging content into the foundation curriculum.
Our website www.cswe.org/sage-sw/ contains significant curriculum resources - Power Points, exercises, case studies, annotated
bibliographies - and a great deal of information used by both BSW and MSW faculty. CSWE SAGE-SW has had a strong relationship
with both BSW faculty and BPD since the inception of its funding. Among the many partnership activities of CSWE SAGE-SW and
BPD, are that we:
. Helped create and support the BPD Aging Committee;
. Brought two successful National Faculty Development Institutes to BPD;
. Conducted a National Competencies Project and survey that actively included BSW faculty and BSW practitioners;
. Supported BPD special projects in gerontology including the Intergenerational Advocacy Project and the very successful
BPD Aging Resource Fair and awards luncheon in Reno; and
. Through Faculty Development Institutes and our Teaching Resource Kits, reached at least one faculty member at 216 BSW
programs in the U.S.
Our Second National Gerontological Social Work Conference (NGSWC) held in Anaheim, CA in 2004 has had major impact on BSW
faculty. A joint roundtable discussion and reception with the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGE-SW)
brought over 100 conference attendees together, and the announcement of the Mit Joyner Award for acknowledgement of an undergraduate
faculty person's dedication to teaching aging and social work was a tremendous recognition of the importance of BSW education
in gerontology. Both the BPD Aging Committee and the NADD Aging Committee met and worked hard on their agendas during the
conference as well. There is great momentum to infuse gerontological material - "gerontologize" - social work
education. Our current and future projects include:
. Continued active support for the BPD Aging committee;
. Continued collaboration with the BPD Aging committee for additional FDIs at BPD, special events at BPD and the NGSWC,
and other projects;
. New opportunities for faculty and field supervisors to strengthen the role of BSWs in service to older adults and their
families.
The CSWE SAGE-SW project is keeping up with the momentum by providing new resources and dissemination opportunities. Work
is progressing on a special publication of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work that resulted from the first NGSWC in
2003 and has provided an opportunity for many BSW faculty who presented to submit articles for publication. In addition work
continues on a special aging section of the Journal of Social Work Education and we expect that there will be both well underway.
The analysis of textbooks used in the foundation courses for aging content is a project that is producing preliminary results
that will have real impact for BSW education. Regional and national faculty development institutes continue are still going
strong! With future plans with the Hartford Foundation and CSWE for a National Center for Gerontology and Social Work Education,
the excitement and energy for every social work student to have a basic level of competency in aging prior to graduating with
a BSW or MSW degree will continue.
Click here to visit the CSWE SAGE-SW web site:
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