Jane well Vogel and Heidi Alan looked at the status of the profession and

scholarship around to Social Policy so thank you mark thanks to all of you for

coming after a long conference and I hope that what we present will make your

Wow so the paper that I'm doing is social policy and Social Work in the

21st century and with two co-authors Jane wall Fogle and Heidi Allen neither

of whom are here but they have expertise in areas that I don't and made it very

important contributions so our charge is to assess the condition of social policy

research in social work at the dawn of the 21st century we also say a little

bit about the state of the profession in terms of influencing policy just

focusing on the scholarship for a moment it's a daunting challenge to and Markin

it at this and his comments to assess the role of social policy research and

social work because the field is so broad including includes obviously

poverty anti-poverty research tower welfare health aging housing

neighborhood and Community Development anti-discrimination policy some would

say still criminal justice policy of they were not intimately involved in

that any more tax policy is relevant as well and

gender policy so and I could go on that's a partial list so the question

that we face the first question was what do we talk about so our solution was to

focus on only three areas and the criteria for choosing the areas one that

the areas be everyone would agree that the areas we choose are central to

Social Work a second and more pragmatic was that we have some expertise in this

area and that's why we have three of us I have expertise in the broad area of

anti-poverty policy or generally social economic well-being a chain waffle who

has expertise in child welfare and Heidi Allen expertise in health policy the

method which I'll come back to at the end you should think of what we're doing

it's a in some ways novel I hadn't thought of initially but what we do is

focus on what we think are really seminal contributions coming from people

in social work and we so we focus on just leading research in these three

areas I'll come back to that and say the limits of that and to summarize the

findings Social Work scholarship is remarkably strong and I'm an optimist by

nature but I think I hope to convince you that that's not just the reflection

of my personality rather it's a reflection

the evidence so I'm gonna begin with anti-poverty policy or economic

well-being or generally again the vastness of the literature just in this

area requires narrowing and we've narrowed to four areas core poverty

research child support asset development and comparative research cross national

comparative research with respect to core party research I'm going to begin

with overarching research on poverty and here the first thing I thought about was

the Institute for Research on poverty has published I think it's now four

volumes on fighting poverty confronting poverty understanding poverty there was

a fourth but two of those three were edited by Sheldon Danziger who was a

member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and these are my

these were at the time they were published must reads for people who took

seriously scholarship we're interested in overall scholarship in poverty and

here I'm gonna divert a little bit to the state of the profession so again I

think very impressive four of the 13 directors of the Institute for Research

on poverty came from Social Work I've the only profession that has a stronger

representation economics same thing with respect to there's now a National

Academy of Science Panel charged with coming up with how do we reduce poverty

child poverty by half in the next ten years

again four of the 15 National Academy of Science members are

social work come from Social Work the

again the only profession that has stronger representation economics

poverty measurement I'll just talk about two contributions there

one is the as I think probably most of you know that in 1995 the National

Academy of Science recommended that we adopt a new measure of poverty as

opposed to the official measure lots of weaknesses of the official measure I

will focus on only one which is the official measure doesn't count the

benefits from the programs that we have actually expanded the most especially

with respect to child poverty so food stamps is not counted the Earned Income

Tax Credit is not counted public housing is not counted in the official measure

finally in 2011 or 2012 the Census Bureau published a supplementary measure

of poverty the SPM and I'm gonna talk about the OPM that's the official

measure of poverty they didn't replace the official measure

it's called supplementary measure D and lots of differences I'm just focused on

one it counts all these benefits cats all these benefits and a group of us at

Columbia University myself Jane wall Fogle a student at the time Liana Fox

and a research scientist Chris Weimer and there are two or three others the

co-authors what we did was to publish take the SPM back in time historically

so the Census Bureau only published data for the teens

I think they go back to 2011 but we took it all the way back to 1967 and the

difference in the reduction in poverty is dramatic if you look at the official

measure the trend in child poverty is actually child poverty goes up a little

from sixty-seven to the current period if you use the SPM we reduce child

poverty by more than forty percent that's a very different narrative the

first narrative is we threw money at problems that didn't work the second

narrative is that money was well spent it was very effective in reducing

poverty a second area I'd cousin and by the way that was cited in the

president's annual economic report of the president on the occasion of the

50th anniversary of the declaration of war on poverty there's a chapter in that

report of the president economic report of the president that looks at a 50-year

look back on the war on poverty and our work is central to that material

hardship social workers have made seminal contributions on material

hardship I remember when I first the the concept was invented by said the

measurement was first done by sandy Jenks the first couple of times I saw

and I had a student in class that I poo pooed the measure and said well I'm

skeptical about it I was that wrong about that and a number of people from

Social Work have published very convincing papers of why this is a good

measure five minutes I thought I had 30 minutes oh my god okay well

enough Santa biding economic insecurity is perhaps a better measure so alright

Chuck I'm gonna go through this quickly child support

I've made some contributions in that dan Meyer and Maria cancion at the

University of Wisconsin have made seminal contributions in this area in

child support I would say that contributions from social workers

dominate the literature and moving ahead quickly to asset development so

yesterday we gave an award to Michael Jordan for his work and asset

development as I've said to friends and colleagues he makes me look like a piker

in terms of what he's done and asset development I don't want to say he's he

and his students and colleagues are the entire literature but it's pretty

remarkable pretty remarkable contribution comparative research icon

and cameramen using the Luxembourg income study again social workers have

made incredible contributions their modern case studies we have some

remarkable examples chin gala sitting in the audience there has done a study of

China China's the bowel system it's the largest public assistance

program in the world and Jane waffle goes book on child poverty Britain's war

on poverty again remarkable important study a child welfare this this is our

area we have the professional it's like maybe we should curse God for giving it

to us it's the hardest area but we haven't we have it and the scholarly

contributions have been remarkable

they're people sitting in the audience here

Jane wall Fogle you can look down the list this is just child maltreatment and

child protection but also if you look at foster care guardianship adoption and

independent living again very impressive a couple notes on the current state of

scholarship we'll come back to them if you have questions aren't the health

policy well health policy is an area which we literally chose because it's

not an area where we've had this kind of influence but it's an area where Social

Work is playing a incredibly big role and a growing role and scholarship now

is beginning to emerge so especially in the area of one way I think about health

policy and the role of Social Work is that a lot of health problems are not

best addressed by health professionals they're actually best addressed by

social workers because a lot of the issues about health are not just health

profession related quickly and so I think two interesting developments in

health is that we now have a chance that there may be a National Academy of

Science panel created that would be take a look at the role of Social Work in the

conclusions so a scholarship is strong in

anti-poverty research and child welfare promising and health policy in terms of

policy influence I would say the professional role is mixed we have a

very prominent place at the table but what we've actually achieved if we

should only view it as limited it's not that we've not achieved anything but

we've not achieved what we aspire to and we need to work on that with respect to

pass the future success I would say the keys are and if you go back and look at

the slides you will see one is to remain up to date in research skills second to

hire scholars from different disciplines and I would say especially economics I

had a little bias I'm a half economist myself but I think it's not just bias I

think if you look at the contributions working in interdisciplinary teams I

think that's essential and if you looked at the items that are listed you'd see

an enormous amount of interdisciplinary cooperation creator played leading roles

in research institutes and laboratories I think it's I began with the Institute

for Research on poverty I think you will see Institute's scattered across the

country that social workers are involved in I think that's essential for our

continued leadership and second I think and this is something we are very good

at comes naturally to us which is collaboration with government and also

with foundations but I think the collaboration with government us being a

practice profession makes it a knack even when we have better so limitations

then that methodology is unique you could say for focusing on first-rate

papers to make the claim that Social Work research is strong is it some way

there's an element of tautological but here's the thing we could have come up

empty that is there could you know if we use that as the test there could have

been no papers and the contrast between health where we have less and

anti-poverty research we have more is an second the focus on our own expertise

question raises the question is are our findings generalizable I think the

answer is yes I think all across the country in different areas you will find

first-rate contributions from Social Work but that's a hypothesis I don't

have the evidence I didn't present the evidence lastly let me say it's a

preliminary draft and look forward to feedback first Mara

thank you

thanks much or yes we have Maura Curtis from one of the institutions that the

rivers talking about as the Institute for search on poverty as they're

discussing

hi so I had the benefit of reading the whole PowerPoint slide so maybe you'll

get some of it in the context of of my comments so this was a fun and

interesting task what Earvin colleagues were charged with doing and so in

thinking about providing comments on something like this about the nature and

state of a Social Work research and policy in particular and areas of

competence in areas moving forward it's a big question yeah so I thought about

it in this way policy practice in historical context that's what I craved

I craved that it create a bit of historical context and I kept thinking

about the fruit the fierce urgency of now like the times were living in now in

reference to where we have expertise historically so what was the author's

charge what they were charged with doing was to assess the conditions of social

policy research in social work at the dawn of the 21st century and make

recommendations for future success it's daunting I agree with herbed at all it's

a hard thing social policy research is very broad poverty child welfare health

aging housing neighborhood and Community Development anti-discrimination criminal

justice tax and gender and others and so their approach as Earth outlined was to

focus on three areas that are central to social a society and social work and I

would add existing expertise and developed infrastructure structural

relationships trust and historical practices okay and so they came up with

these three pots poverty child welfare and then health with newer research

focusing there okay so it's a big test so then I wanted to restate it okay so I

would restate the challenge a bit more broadly I think there's a number of ways

to approach thinking about this task both both conceptually and practically

so it's overwhelming and it's overwhelming for what I think is a good

reason the breadth depth and function of Social Policy Research and Social Work

it's conducted by Social Work scholars or in and on systems delivering Social

Services and by a wide range of actors within allied with or produced by an

agency or governments we'll need for policy research finding so that function

of how folks are doing their work determines in part the the questions

asked in the policy process so let's think about those three core areas