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Today's episode of Social Work Talks is brought to you by Illinois DCFS.
Mel Wilson:
Hello, my name is Mel Wilson, senior Policy Advisor for the National Association of Social Workers. I'm the lead person on issues related to criminal justice. In that role for many years, I've focused on the need for reentry policies and services for men and women returning to the communities after a period of incarceration. Since 2006, reentry services have been partially funded by the federal legislation called the Second Chance Act. Reentry Model has proven to be successful in reestablishing returning citizens as productive members of their communities and reducing recidivism. I'm happy to welcome key staff from the Maryland Office of Public Defenders, which among other things, coordinate the Office of Reentry Services. So let me introduce to you Melissa Rothstein and Joanie Schriver. I know I'm not pronouncing that right, Joanie, but Joanie Schriver and they're going to give you an overview and an explanation of what their program is. After that we'll go through a series of question answers and dialogue about the importance of the services and where NASW and social workers really fit in supporting these types of services. So I'll start, Melissa, I'll turn it over to you. Little overview would be great. And after you guys finish, I'll start the question and answers.
Melissa Rothstein:
Great, thanks. Well, I'm Melissa Rothstein. I'm the chief of External Affairs at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and in my role there, one of my key tasks is that I oversee our grants work and I try to leverage resources that can help expand our practice and a huge part of that work is securing funding for us to have additional social workers and peer recovery specialists than what our state grant provides for. While we are a state agency that covers the costs of attorneys for litigation, it doesn't generally sufficiently recognize all of the other experts that are needed to really both enhance the quality of our representation and to provide our clients with the services that they need. And so through grants including some funding through the Second Chance Act, we've been able to increase our social work division by about a third with outside funding and have a peer support unit. Actually, one of our permanent staff social workers is Joanie Shreve who is in our post-conviction division. So I'll let her introduce herself.
Joanie Shreve:
Sure, yes, I'm happy to be with you. My name is Joanie Shreve. I'm a social worker in the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in our post-conviction division, and I've been fortunate to be a permanent staff member for the last 12 years and my focus has really been on providing services to people who are incarcerated and represented by our post-conviction division. A lot of times that means trying to advocate for reduction of sentence, going back into court for a modification and hopefully advocating through reentry planning that this person is ready to be released into the community with support available. Our social work division is very broad. It gives us a lot of flexibility to fit into a lot of different types of work that our office conducts. The Maryland Office of the Public Defender is a very large state agency and we cover the entire state, so we represent youth and adults who are involved in the criminal legal system or in other areas such as in child welfare. We represent parents, we represent people who are involuntarily committed to state hospitals and so we have a wide variety of services and based on the mission and values of our agency, social work fits very nicely into that. I think that we offer a lot on multidisciplinary teams to try to cover and explore a lot of different areas of our clients' lives and our client really is at the center of that representation and social work fits very nicely into that model.
Mel Wilson:
Thank you. Joanie. Before we get into the question, Melissa, I would like to ask you in terms of the Second Chance Act, this is really an important piece of legislation and many folks may not know, but any ESW was involved in the very beginning in helping to advocate for passage of that over time. As I mentioned, it's been pretty successful. Could you talk a little bit about Second Chance and how that funding is important and that fact that it is a up for we reauthorization and we are all working trying to get reauthorized for another number of years, so could you talk a little bit about that?
Melissa Rothstein:
Sure. Yeah, so it is, as you mentioned, the Second Chance Act is pretty vital to just sort of encouraging successful reentry. It is literally for giving somebody a second chance after they have served their time. There are several different avenues of funding through Second Chance, so it really tries to target the full range of reentry services. The Maryland Office of the Public Defender, we are fortunate to have two Second Chance Act grants currently. One is with the Bureau of Justice Assistance in their community crisis response and community stabilization and those funds for us focus on our adult clients who are being released and return home. We actually, through that grant primarily focus on people who are still in pretrial and so that they've already spent a short amount of time in jail, but to get them home and back into a more productive lifestyle as soon as possible and having that sort of facilitated with what's happening on their case.
We also, and through that project we have a social worker and two peer recovery specialists. So the social worker primarily really focuses on clinical issues that somebody might have that have either, sometimes they've never been addressed before, sometimes they've been addressed inadequately or sometimes maybe there was a time where the person knows their diagnosis, they had received services, but there's been a break in time. So they're doing a lot of the sort of backwards looking of what the person's history is and what they need and sort of the clinical components of moving forward. And then we have the peer recovery specialists to, particularly for clients involved in this work who have a substance use disorder are people who have that lived experience and they can provide the support and sort of help facilitate some warm handoffs and some follow-up in case management afterwards. We also have a second grant through the Second Chance Act that focuses on children in the justice system through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
And that grant is pretty similar. It has for us a social worker and then a youth reentry specialist, so somebody who's an adult now, but they have some lived experience in the or actually we're going to have two people who've had lived experience in the juvenile system so that again, really focusing on getting kids out of state custody. In our state it's the Department of Juvenile Services, so getting people out of DJS custody and back at home, back in school, back to having the resources and services that they need so that they can continue their progress and develop into healthy adults.
Mel Wilson:
Yeah, that's interesting. That's the first I've heard of the juvenile piece of it and I'm assuming you're working in that context then with the parent or guardian, and many of 'em may have been in foster care or in foster care. Is that
Melissa Rothstein:
Yes. I mean sometimes we are, I because are part of the team that's representing the child, we are focused on the child and we work with their parent or their guardian when that is appropriate. Unfortunately, some of the children who we represent, and I would say probably part of why they're in the juvenile system is that they don't always have parents who engage or are supportive. And so a lot of the work is also in that context. And I don't know the numbers offhand. I would imagine that in terms of your point that many of them probably do have experience in the foster care system when we're first working with them, they're in state custody. And so some of it is then kind of seeing like, okay, what is it going to mean when they're no longer in the state's custody? Do they have family they're going to reunify with or is it a foster care situation?
Mel Wilson:
Yeah, that's a very important service which touches on something in terms of how individuals become identified as how do you outreach to them, the number of facilities that exist, of course folks have timing for they're going to be released, but what is that initial identifying who is, and I'll use the word eligible and that may not be an operative term, but who's eligible for reentry services?
Joanie Shreve:
So the social workers in our division, in our agency receive referrals directly from our attorneys who are actively working with OPD clients. And so our agency does a lot of outreach obviously to educate people about the public defender services who can be eligible, how to apply for an attorney, and once they are in our agency and represented by an attorney, we can accept referrals from those attorneys for a range of services. This may be doing those bio-psychosocial assessments providing a mitigation investigation to help with sentencing. Or if we're at the phase where we are putting together a reentry phase, any of our OPD clients can receive those services. So we receive those referrals directly from attorneys as they're actively representing our clients on our grant programs. There's I think a little bit of a different referral process to identify specific clients who are eligible for those grant services. And so Melissa May have more to add to that, but for social work services, any OPD client is eligible for our support and that could include reentry planning.
Mel Wilson:
Issa, you want to say anything on that?
Melissa Rothstein:
Sure. Yeah. And our grants and particularly our Second Chance Act grants do have a particularly defined populations. And so what we typically do is identify them from the referrals that come from the attorneys because that really is the primary point of contact and the initial touchpoint for our agency. Sometimes depending on how that process works in different jurisdictions across the state, sometimes it can be a little more proactive on our grants because we do have these additional services that are focused on specific populations. We can sometimes sort of have somebody who may join the attorney at their initial conversation with a client at a bail review or review kind of the list of new juvenile clients that we have in a certain jurisdiction so that we can really make sure to reach really as many of our clients as possible who are appropriate.
Mel Wilson:
The question, this is pretrial, do you do pretrial or is this is through the court? So once that case is being presented to the court or pre-sentencing, maybe that's the word I'm looking through, I'm looking for
Melissa Rothstein:
Yeah, I mean I would say mean we provide services to our clients throughout the entire process of their representation. So on our grants that focus on pretrial, it might be that is sort of from the time of somebody's bail review through the time of their sentence and possibly a little beyond where Joanie works and other places where it'll sort of be from the time that the person is sort of first involved in whatever their legal review is and so they have an attorney through when that legal case is resolved.
Mel Wilson:
Joan, that again relates to I think something that you would be doing. You mentioned about psychosocial assessments, but that whole assessment process and understanding what the needs, especially the needs assessment, how does that work? When do you do the face-to-face? Are you gathering information and then that assessment goes to the attorney who can present it to the court? Is that the process? How? Yes.
Joanie Shreve:
So when we initiate a referral, we'll do a consultation with the attorney about the history of the case, what they're looking for, what might be helpful in preparation for the hearing that's coming up, and we'll provide input about what things we might like to see happen. And really the heart of the work is face-to-face with our clients. So we might conduct multiple interviews with a person and not just focusing on that future planning, but spending time understanding both past and present experiences so that we are better able to plan for their future. The reentry planning is really collaborative with our clients and with our community partners. It's not just one document that the social workers deciding what should be in it. It's a collaborative document and it really starts with what our clients identify as their goals and identify as their needs. And identifying those things really comes through that prolonged engagement with our clients to really understand them.
So in addition to the face-to-face contact with our clients, we are also then really reviewing the whole range of records, especially focusing on health and mental health records while they've been incarcerated, recognizing the gaps in services or what might be better available in the community in terms of their mental health or medical needs. I work with a lot of people who are starting to age, they've been incarcerated long term and we're going seeing a lot of chronic medical issues that we want to make sure to flag and understand the symptoms and how is that person managing that chronic illness right now. So those are the gaps that we're looking for. It also includes doing a lot of interviews with family members or friends and trying to understand the network of support that may be already in the community, seeing what kind of support we can offer and reestablishing those relationships. And then also bringing on board our community engagement coordinator who is our expert in community resources. So she is a skilled community worker who keeps those lines of communication open with providers. What changes have happened? Well, how has funding changed for that provider? Who are they able to accept right now? So by having that resource as well, it's been really beneficial for that collaborative reentry process.
Mel Wilson:
Actually, that sort of me, some of the other questions I was going to ask, but that's important because you guys touched on a number of things that I think social workers certainly who understand working with transitioning individuals of how the transition planning works and how that gets identified. But that whole issue of gaps in services, and let me backtrack a little bit. You mentioned seniors, elderly transitioning individuals, and there's not enough information on that, on what their needs. And then that really gets into the issue of financial assistance and sometimes families don't exist anymore. So without throwing myself off on asking my question, so I'm very curious about that and connecting that kind of individual and it really is dependent on what age those individuals are and what level of functioning they are. That would seem to be a kind of very special need there.
Joanie Shreve:
And I think that is the need for that prolonged engagement with our client to really go through those records and understand the experience of incarceration because there are times that people have had identify family members, but because of the experience of incarceration, they may not have been in contact with their family for a number of years. So having time in the reentry planning process to reengage communication, see what the barriers were. Sometimes it's really just a matter of logistics and the difficulty with the institutions to maintain contact. There was no falling out, there was no conflict. It was just really a burden to try to keep communication open. So that's part of the assessment process is looking at those family relationships and the changes of their medical conditions over time. Part of that too is then their individual experience of the conditions that they're managing because of different roles in the institution, people may not have the self-management skills for diabetes or for something that they would be managing independently in the community, but because of restrictions within the medical system and the division of corrections, they're reliant on nursing staff to manage that care.
So that's one of the things that we want to flag as well is that education around chronic illness and how to manage it independently.
Mel Wilson:
And that's the really challenge of transition planning like this. And you guys also talked about the whole issue of behavioral health in particular. I sort of want to separate that into the mental health side and also the substance use side of it, but on the mental health side, as we all know that the person may be having some active, either not crisis, but certainly psychosis kind of needs and that transition and connecting that individual to a service once they are going back into the community, I'm assuming the coordinator, I forget the title for the person that you identify, the community person is working with various systems in Maryland, the mental health systems and helping to ensure first of all medication and that they're transitioning with the appropriate amount of medication and then reconnecting to some level required in essential services. So all my assumptions correct is that how that goes,
Joanie Shreve:
The timing of it is also very important. So the social worker will do a lot of upfront assessment of the client and identify the needs that we predict that person might need and support with in the community. So then we're doing a referral and a consultation with our community partners and with our community engagement specialists and saying, does this person need a residential treatment center for release or are they planning on going home with family members and then building out from that housing plan the additional support services. We have a few really strong community partners that have acted as sort of reentry hubs that once we know that if that person is receiving housing services from this partner organization, I know they're going to support that person in enrolling in a Medicaid plan. I know they're going to support that person in getting to their medical appointments and getting refills of their prescriptions and they know that they're going to help facilitate the conversations and appointments with parole and probation. So once we get that person connected to the services and have these reentry hubs, it allows for that work to happen immediately afterwards.
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Mel Wilson:
Visit. I didn't touch on, you probably need to make that differential a person incarcerated and the difference between jails and prisons. You guys, I'm assuming again, you're dealing both with individuals who may wind up in jail or may wind up or are in prison and transitioning. Am I correct about that? If the person is in prison as opposed to jail, do you work with that fabrication?
Melissa Rothstein:
Yes, I would say that, I mean Joanie predominantly works with people who are in prison. She's right Joanie, she mostly works with people who are in prison because those are people who have been incarcerated after they've been convicted for a significant period of time. But our work that is with people who are pretrial or individuals who are sentenced to a very short period of time, usually a year or less they'll stay at their local jail. And the two, I mean overall they're both correctional facilities, they're both very carceral in nature, but there is some significant differences between them. I would say. One is, I mean people in prison are generally there for a long time and so you both have some of the, I think I would say probably some greater reentry issues because the person has a greater gap from when they're returning home, but they also have more time to prepare for that because when that person's release is you have sort of the time to work with them in advance. The jail environment tends to be a little bit more chaotic because doesn't, its short term and it's often that somebody won't necessarily know whether they're going to be released at their next court date or if something is going to change. So you sort of have to be ready and do as much planning as you can, but it is sort of at a quicker pace, but with people who are a little bit closer to both where they're going and where they were before.
Joanie Shreve:
One of the big pieces I wanted to highlight too about our collaboration is, and the timing of this is working with the division of corrections and their treatment staff, their medical staff and their social workers to do as much pre-release services as possible. So they are able to put in applications for medical assistance before release and that just having that number in place allows our reentry partners to start services right away. So we're reducing sort of that gray area or that gap in services between the moment of release and when they're able to enroll in benefits. Some things cannot be applied for until that person is out on the street and in the community and can show up to an office. But whatever we can get in place before their release, we're trying to make sure that we're collaborating with the treatment staff in the prison as best as possible. And one of the biggest issues, especially for long-term incarceration is making sure that that person has a birth certificate, social security card and is ready to get stated. And those can be some really tricky issues to navigate if somebody's been incarcerated for 40 or 50 years,
Mel Wilson:
As you all know, there's a lot of advocacy going on there. There's a bill on the hill dealing with Medicaid in terms of being able to do assessments and eligibility prior to release of that individual that impacts jails a lot. A person may have been mentally ill wound up in jail, loses Medicaid, but have been in the system and ways of expediting so that when that person is transitioned, they can go directly into services. So it is a challenge and it is a particular challenge and as you guys are saying, it really requires collaboration with the local communities on making that happen.
Joanie Shreve:
I'll just add it also requires a lot of flexibility from our community partners. So we do want to advocacy there to say, here are our needs, here are the barriers, here are the challenges we're facing that I can't find a solution to, but can you still work with our clients even if they don't have insurance right away or whatever the issue may be. So our collaboration works best when we can all be a little flexible and understand those individual needs because every experience is going to be a little bit different.
Mel Wilson:
And that's the great job that you guys and programs like yours do. Now, the biggest thing I noticed as a challenge or the gaps, we keep on saying gaps, but there's some areas that are, I know are monumental gaps. I know we talked about housing as a probably usually the number one gap in getting someone who's leaving if they're not connected to a family, where do they get released to and what's the housing resources out there? And often the case, especially in my experience, I actually did stuff many years ago, this is not really new stuff we should do in a community over 20 years ago as try to connect people to housing. And it's always been a very, very difficult thing and we don't want to reach somebody to homelessness. So there is that one gap that I think everybody needs to talk about, certainly needs to think about. So I'm sure that you guys had some conversations about and probably some resources over that.
Joanie Shreve:
That's really the heart of the reentry plan where we start and making sure someone has a safe place to go. So if that's with family member, we're talking about their needs and making sure that the housing set up is going to meet that person's need. Again, working with older clients, I worked with a man who is in a wheelchair and he really planned on going home to live with his sister who unfortunately lived in a Baltimore typical row home with a lot of stairs and no facilities for him on the first floor. So we quickly recognized that that was not going to be at first an adequate placement for him and had to do some problem solving. So it's identifying those issues right up front so that there's not a crisis on the backend. Once again, we've identified several community partners who've been very flexible in placement and able to provide transitional housing for especially our longer term clients who've been incarcerated and are coming home. One of the big challenges after that, that's the initial plan. We've had a lot of trouble then with that second phase of moving from transitional housing to had pretty well coordinated at this point, but what's the next step in permanent housing and finding affordable rental units with a criminal record has been that second phase of reentry planning that has been also very difficult.
Mel Wilson:
What other gaps do you think that are priority gaps?
Melissa Rothstein:
Sure, yeah. And I'll say before then, I know Joni is really focused on that sort of long-term prison individuals who are coming back from a long-term sentence, which certainly housing is sort of a challenge for all of them. They don't have a residence that they've been in for some time at the pretrial level and people who are usually still at the local county jail, often there we're focused on getting people into whatever housing they had. Many of them were houseless and have those similar issues, but many of them it's because they have either a substance use disorder or other mental health issue that needs to be addressed before they can safely be at home. And so there's a kind of focus of making sure to find the right residential program for them. And that's where our social workers and our peer recovery specialists really are kind of focused there.
And I would say with all of that, and I think even for the people who do have a place that they're going, they do have a home and that they're going to, one of the biggest challenges is the literal getting somebody from the facility they're incarcerated in to where they need to be. They don't have a car. Public transportation is limited at best in most places and almost never will go to a jail or a prison. And this is again, sort of going back to where second Chance Act funding has been really helpful is that we have a client fund that includes an account with Uber. So we are able to, every day we arrange rides for people who are being released so that they can be picked up at the jail and be driven to the program that they're going to or their residents.
I would say particularly for people with a substance use disorder, probably one of the most important lifesaving things that we do because the risk of an overdose is higher among those first 48 hours of release among anybody, anywhere. I mean, it's just such a heightened risk time that if we can safely get the person from the jail to their treatment program, the likelihood of an overdose is just going to go down dramatically. And so some programs do have their own van service and that they can pick people up, but again, depending on where the person was incarcerated or the size of their program, that's not always as accessible.
Mel Wilson:
Well that's very good because one of the things obviously is getting back and forth now that sort of brings to mind the issue of parole and probation department and how that's coordinated and connect to that follow up services. So let me start with the parole and probation coordination. If the person especially has any kind of traditional release and has to get to appointments and transportation would seem to be one of the concerns, is there a good communication with parole and probation on these things? We don't want people to recidivate because of that violation, those kinds of violations.
Joanie Shreve:
With the housing programs we've been working with, there has been good collaboration, making sure people have transportation to their appointments. And once those initial visits are set up, sometimes then the requirements will drop down to weekly phone calls versus weekly visits. So getting those initial visits set up and coordinated is really important. And we've had a lot of support there from our treatment providers, but that's also education that we're doing with the client and with their family members prior to release to make sure that that piece is in place. If they are going to a family-based housing setting of their returning home and
Mel Wilson:
Follow-up services in general are usually something that the community, your community person would work with, the provider in the community is there less a time that the public defenders community person works with the individuals there, like a handoff and then once they connect with a service in the community, UFO sort of back away from it.
Joanie Shreve:
So the social workers do a lot of that upfront assessment and preparation for court. And hopefully when our release plan is put into place, our clients are well connected then to the community providers and our community engagement coordinator because they have such strong communication with those programs are providing that follow up as well and having that communication. But really once the case is over, we're hopeful that we're at that phase where we can close out and won't return back to our caseload.
Melissa Rothstein:
And I will add, I know Joni works very closely with the community engagement coordinator, but in other parts of our representation throughout the state, we actually, that's where our peer recovery specialists come in that we have that they've been part of the team, they have a relationship with the client and they also have relationships with a lot of the programs that people are referred to so that they can provide that warm handoff and then particularly if they're working in the pretrial setting. So our representation is continuing, they will continue to provide some light case management on that and coordination to make sure that the person is sort of receiving what they need in the community, following what they have to do for court and are also coming back for the court dates that they need to
Mel Wilson:
Takeaways into, and I got to Melissa on this into data collection and reporting and really looking at how well is the program working. There must be some analysis that you guys are doing either through the grantee grantor or through your own agency. So have you guys been doing that and are you seeing good data?
Melissa Rothstein:
Yeah, I mean, and I'll actually, I'll sort of joani start a bit because there's sort of a foundation. I can talk a little bit about the grant data, but I think the real foundation for that comes from what we call the UN case, which well we call ungar, sort of comes from a case that was decided some years ago that
Mel Wilson:
I know that case. I remember it just back
Melissa Rothstein:
Course that really provided the opportunity a number for individuals who had served a long period of time whose convictions were sort suddenly overturned for other reason. And then the approach that we came up with, which I think is probably, I mean I don't know if Joanie was central to that and sort of part of her job that really showed how this model could work. So I think she can talk a little about that and then I can apply it to our grants.
Joanie Shreve:
Well, in general, I think our data collection is really focused on specific slices of projects or grants or different types of cases that we work on. It's hard to capture it across the agency because there's so many differences in populations and representation. So the data collection really is focused on where we can limit the focus a little bit in the one specific project. So the under cases came about in 2012 and it was a group of 200 people who were impacted by a court of appeals decision that them new trials if they were convicted prior to 1980. So I meant there was a large number of people who had been incarcerated and instead of having new trials in all of these cases, we were able to negotiate agreements with the state's attorney's office and saying this person could safely return to the community and let's resolve the case that way.
So a large number of people were released in five or six years since that decision was issued. And there was some different programs or different foundations that were interested in doing some research on that group of people. So the Justice Policy Institute in particular did a great report on the younger success and the model that we use in providing reentry services and social work services to plan for somebody's release and the success of that project for people who were convicted of violent offenses and had been incarcerated long term and who are now older in age and very low recidivism, I think about 3%. So it was a huge success. And so that's an example of how we partnered with some different organizations that have then done that follow-up data on recidivism, which can be really hard to capture. And just then keeping my own case files and notes. I know people aren't coming back to me, so we do have, it's
Mel Wilson:
A limitation, isn't it? Right.
Joanie Shreve:
That regard as well. And I know Melissa has her process for the grant reporting and the different metrics that need to be included in that process.
Mel Wilson:
And you want to share that listening?
Melissa Rothstein:
Sure, yeah. And as Joni sort of pointed out, we have at this point, it's all kind of sliced and diced of different data collection on different projects in different jurisdictions. So I don't have as much sort of overall, but I do specifically on the Second Chance Act. And I can tell you even beyond that on our projects that pretty much all focus on this type of work, but some may focus specifically on people who have substance use disorder, others focus on some people who might have some complex mental health issues or some focus specifically on youth in certain parts of the state. All of our projects have very low recidivism rates, less than 5%, even though we're often targeting populations that have among the highest recidivism rates.
So on that, that's sort of one of those metrics that people often look at and we can consistently show that we're incredibly successful there. I'll say just on our Second Chance ACT grant, and this is looking specifically at the adult one because our youth one has just started up this year, so we don't have data for that just yet. But looking at sort of the 2024 information on our adult second ENC chant act, we served there over 180 individuals, 120 of whom were connected to drug treatment. 17 were connected to health insurance, 34 we're connected to permanent housing, and three had secured employment during that period where we work with them. That's usually something that comes a little bit later. So we see that as being very impactful for those individuals and for our practice overall.
Mel Wilson:
Right now my last question is at a SW, how can we as an association be helpful? I want to give some little background of that again, that we've been really, really involved with though issue broadly of the legal criminal system, specifically around reentry and identifying the roles and working with social workers about working in this environment. What can we do? And we do have some ability to get information out or just working with any agency if you want to just get your information out further. So any thoughts?
Melissa Rothstein:
I'll start. I have a few thoughts, but I think particularly I think a lot of NASW members are working at community agencies that may or may not work with people who are justice involved and really both encouraging for them to do so and to recognize that our clients are like everybody else and they deserve the same quality of services and the same level of dignity and that that's true regardless of what the person was charged or convicted of. I think sometimes we see a lot of distinction based on what somebody based purely on the name of an offense without necessarily both, not necessarily knowing the circumstances for that individual but also not allowing for them to ever have move on with their life in a way that's really good for safety and the whole community. So I think for me that sort of is the first thing.
I'll also, before I turn it over to Joanie, I'll make a little bit of a plug maybe for some of the student and a SW members in particular. One of the things for us that's also great about the grants, like the Second Chance Act are that our social work services that we provide there are typically for relative to other things we do in our agency. The grant work is often more at the entry level space so that people can get experience working with our clients and doing that work there. And then as they get more clinical expertise, they're also involved in some more complex cases and some mitigation and other parts of our practice that Joanie's also involved in and just not talking about as much here. And so encouraging people to consider this type of work and to connect with us, connect with their public defender office where they are to see what opportunities are available.
Mel Wilson:
Jeremy, you would add something to me?
Joanie Shreve:
Yeah, I think I touched base with my director about this and we again, have a passion for this work and it is a specialty area of practice and when it fits for you and you have starting at that entry level, there's a lot of room for growth. The possibilities in this work is pretty ed endless, and it's going from that direct community based engagement and potentially then doing expert testimony and providing that clinical expertise as we advance in our careers. So really is a specialty area of practice where there's a lot of opportunity and it really starts with having that ability to connect with clients regardless of their background. And I think that just being able to provide that technical support and assistance and plugging this field of work is a really great area of practice is where I'd like to see support. I also am really passionate about finding ways for social workers to sustain themselves and have longevity doing difficult work that comes from having offices that are fully staffed. It comes from having new people coming in, the ability to mentor new social workers. So models and support for that mentorship and longevity and practice I think are really important as well.
Mel Wilson:
Well, I'll do what I can on my part to share certain, the podcast should be helpful, but very seriously that any way I could help out or, because I often do blogs also for NESW and that should do social justice brief and had not done a really a briefing a long time on this. So if you guys would be interested in doing something else, I'm there. I'm down with that.
Joanie Shreve:
I know a few people who love to write, some former clients who love to provide some mentorship and talking about experiences.
Mel Wilson:
That would be a thought. I mean, if you knew someone or want to coordinate some other contact around putting something, especially those who are impacted that to have their voice in something that comes out of NESW would be really, really good and we'd be open to doing that. But thank you so much. This is really great. This is kudos to your office and the work that you do.
Producer:
You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW'S website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org and don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.