Announcer:
This episode is sponsored by Connect to End COVID-19.
Cat McDonald:
Hi and welcome to NASW Social Work Talks. I'm Cat McDonald, and today we're speaking with Dr. Yvonne Chase. She's an Associate Professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and she will begin her three year term as NASW president on July 1st, 2023. Dr. Chase has been president of NASW's Alaska chapter. She's been a board member of NASW and of NASW Assurance Services. She's a Social Work Pioneer, so she's long been a champion and co-creator of NASW. So thank you so much, Dr. Chase, for joining us today.
Dr. Chase:
Thank you for having me.
Cat McDonald:
So please tell us, why did you enter the social work profession and why are you passionate about it?
Dr. Chase:
Well, I have heard many social workers through the years say that they knew from the very beginning as children that they were going to be a social worker. I can't say that. I think I sort of fell into social work in a way. I finished undergraduate work in sociology and realized that I needed a job, and someone told me, I was in Chicago, Illinois at the time, and someone said, "Well, I think they're hiring at Cook County Department of Public Welfare." And I thought, "Well, okay. Let's see what that's all about." And so I was hired along with a person who had also just finished a four year degree in English which tells you that back in those days, they were hiring individuals who did not have a social work degree.
Cat McDonald:
I have one of those.
Dr. Chase:
So you understand. So I thought, "Okay, well, let me see what this is all about." And I was put into the... after three hours of training, one day I was selected for the foster care and adoption unit, and the only thing I think that saved me in that process was an incredible supervisor, one who I was definitely afraid of I think at the time. Everyone was just sort of in awe about her. She was very tall as in over six feet and sort of had this aura about her.
But as I look back, she was best supervisor I think I ever had, and looking back now at some of the research that has been done about why people either leave the field or stay in the field, has to do with that first supervisor and the kind of support that they received.
And as I think back on this supervisor, she did many things right. She made sure that I was paired up with someone else in the unit that, I went out with them, I saw how they conducted foster care interviews, updates with the foster parents, with the children. I went with them to agencies so that when I needed to call say public assistance for something, I actually had a name and a person, and they knew me then I didn't have to just have this cold call while I sat on the phone waiting to see if anybody would answer. And then she insisted on staffing cases every week, and she always told all of us that there's always a best approach and then there's always a second best because you may not be able to do everything that's involved in that best approach, so you need to think about the second best as well, and you need to think out of the box.
She reminded us that every child was different, every family was different, and there should be no cookie cutter approaches which, as I think back, was pretty revolutionary for her at that time, because we were still at a time and place where child welfare agencies were routinely separating siblings and really having no understanding of the damage that was being done to sibling groups in that process.
So I say I kind of fell into it because I really enjoyed what I was doing there, but I also realized that I needed some additional work, some training, in order to gain expertise so that I could really do my best in helping families, and that's what sent me on into the field of social work.
Cat McDonald:
So then you went on to get your MSW and all of the process?
Dr. Chase:
Went on to get my MSW at Howard University. I was working in the school system in Washington, DC as a, I think they were called pupil personnel specialist at the time, and they were temporary positions if you had a Bachelor's degree. So you may go on for years as a temporary, but not necessarily, so I decided it was probably a useful thing to look at getting a Master's degree. And so I did that while working, I must admit. I didn't quite say to Howard that I also had to pay my rent, but it was an excellent experience, and I learned a lot.
I had two very interesting practicum placements. The first one, actually I had one of my professors was Mark Battle, former Director of NASW, and one of the reasons that I joined NASW is because Mark said to all of his students, "Well, you need to join the profession if you're going to be a social worker." And it was just, "Well, okay, I guess if that's what we're supposed to do." So I joined it very early and then one of my field placements was in a consulting firm, Mark Battle Associates, and I really had an opportunity to see what macro social work was like.
And while I wasn't doing administration, I was doing evaluation of federal programs that were funded specifically, one that I remember particularly was one that was funded to look at assistance to Latino individuals in a barrio in Texas and what could be done in terms of community support and resources, so it was a fascinating way to really get a different understanding of how social work was really applied in the field on more of a macro level in terms of the evaluation of that project and what that meant to the individuals in that community.
And then my second field placement was at Lorton Prison in Virginia which I think still services the District of Columbia.
Cat McDonald:
Indeed it does. [Editor's note: Lorton Correctional Complex closed in 2001.]
Dr. Chase:
And it was at a time when, probably still is, when they did not want women's students, and I had a very persistent, and I'm very thankful for a faculty field instructor, Dr. Graham, Vanette Graham, who really pushed the envelope on that. I mean, she felt that if there were students that had some experience that weren't just students that were one straight out of college with no experience, women as well as men deserved an opportunity to really experience those placements.
And so the first thing the prison did was to move me to run a group in maximum security. I think they thought, "We're going to get rid of this one quickly." And it was interesting because I learned some things about group work that I probably wouldn't have clicked at a different place, and that was that individuals who were incarcerated in a prison setting formed their own groups for various reasons, security, et cetera. And so trying to pull individuals from different groups, which the prison did, to sit in my group was not a good idea.
And they tended to fill the group with individuals who really belonged in a mental health facility, but at that time they had no mental health treatment unit within the prison setting. So I had an individual in there who had murdered his child and always tended to sit next to me while I was trying to run this group with individuals who had all kinds of different issues, but it gave me a lot of understanding about what to do and what not to do in a group setting and where groups work more, where they're more useful and where one-to-one individual work is better with people based on their surroundings. So it gave me a lot of, I won't say expertise, but it gave me a lot of experience in that area, and I was appreciative of that, so it was a very good experience overall.
Cat McDonald:
It sounds like you got thrown into the deep end. How did you figure that out? You must have had very good supervision and support.
Dr. Chase:
I did. I had very good supervision from the faculty member in my program at Howard and met with her every week to talk about what was occurring including the fact that there was a hunger strike occurring while I was there. And at one point I was bringing in McDonald's hamburgers to the individuals that I was meeting with. Yes, it was a very interesting effort in advocacy as well.
Cat McDonald:
Wait a minute, there's a hunger strike and you're feeding people. How does that work? I just got to know.
Dr. Chase:
Well, it was interesting. I happened to be working with a number of them in individual interviews, and I have some hamburgers here because I really was concerned about some of them going on for several days with the hunger strike given some of the other issues that they were having.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah.
Dr. Chase:
But yes, it was definitely an interesting process, and had I not had really good supervision, it would've, I'm sure, been daunting at times.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. So your two placements were really very different. One was very macro and one was in the deep end. So what were your reactions to those two and how did that sort of guide your future career decisions?
Dr. Chase:
Well, I decided that working in corrections was not one of the areas that I was going into, but I did think about the importance of mental health. I also thought about the importance of you don't have to do just macro or just micro. You really can do a combination of those and working with some Master students now keeps reminding me that to do advocacy for individuals is also doing advocacy for a larger community at the same time.
And students were writing letters to their legislators about specific legislation which may have affected one client they were working with, but it affected many clients, not only the ones they were working with, but the others as well, so it really helped me understand that you could combine those. You didn't have to look at one area and you also... one of the great things about social work is that, as I tell my students, you don't have to decide what you're going to do when you grow up because you can change your mind along the way.
So if you're working in a particular specialty area, maybe that wasn't the best niche or maybe you just need a change, and so you have the opportunity with the background and training that you have to really work in another area as well. So I have done just that. I've worked in nonprofit. I've worked in mainly in government before I came to the university, and so I supervised mental health, child protection, juvenile corrections, and licensing, so I had quite a bit of contact, ongoing contact, with foster parents who were both happy about the services and those who were not, and really learned a lot in every one of the positions that I've had.
And coming to the university was a different experience as well, and I do teach at the University of Alaska Anchorage where I am full time in the Human Services Department which is a multidisciplinary faculty and really a multidisciplinary approach in human services. And then I teach at Walden University in their Master's and Doctoral program in social work. So I'm always interested in seeing the changes in students and the evolution and the excitement that students have in terms of what they're doing and going to do with their careers.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. So with your career, do you feel that you had a plan and you kind of went for certain experiences knowing or hoping to learn certain things? Or did you go from one thing and one thing led to another? Was it organic or was it sort of a plan?
Dr. Chase:
I can't say that it was a plan. In all honesty, I think it was more organic as opportunities came about that seemed really interesting to me. So for example, I was working in Washington, DC at a consulting firm shortly after I got my Master's degree, and I interviewed with a firm in California because it just seemed fascinating, palm trees. My parents said, "I think it was the palm trees that interested you." And so I accepted a job in a consulting firm in San Francisco, and they bid on a number of contracts, and they bid on one in Seattle. And I said, "Well, I just got here. I don't really want to go to Seattle." And the partner that I was working for said, "Oh, don't worry. We only get about 10% of what we bid." Of course, they got that one and off I went to Seattle if I wanted a job.
But the one in Seattle was actually as a Director of the Region 10 Resource Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. It was when the federal government set up these resource centers in every region. And so the one in Seattle involved Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska, so I had an opportunity to travel to those states, look at what the states needed, look at legislation, look at resource allocation, what was happening on the state level, and I became enamored with Alaska, and I said to friends in Seattle, "Alaska's just small population. We should be able to solve child abuse up there with no problem." Young and obviously naive about the problem. We still unfortunately have, I think, the largest number per capita in the country of child abuse and neglect.
So needless to say, we still have work to do, but I came to Alaska planning to stay a year, and 30 some years later, I'm still here. I met my husband up here, and we went out, Alaska's view of going outside, which is going as far as Washington state, so we went south for four years during a change of governors because we were both working for one administration and then came back to work for another administration, so I spent a good deal of my career in administration, but I do actually hold a clinical license, and I've had the clinical license for a number of years. It has helped.
Along the way, I did a small private practice at one point, but found that it was difficult with the kinds of administrative jobs. I had to make sure there was no conflict in terms of individuals that I might see in a private practice. What I still do are adoption studies through a contractor for the state, so adoption studies for the court, and that is, after being the Director of the Child Protection Agency in two different states and seeing all of the sad things that often occur with families, it gives me an opportunity to see the other side and to understand why workers in child protection often wanted to go from investigation into the adoption unit. So they could not just be handling the negative areas that they were seeing, but they could also see some of the positives that were occurring to children in that process.
Announcer:
Join NASW's national Connect to End COVID-19 effort. It's a CDC funded initiative to support social workers and their clients in informed vaccine decision making. NASW is collaborating with its partner, the University of Texas at Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work to provide national webinars, chapter trainings, tools, and information that promote vaccine confidence among social workers and equip social workers to support clients in informed vaccine decision making. Visit NASW's website to learn more.
Cat McDonald:
I'm interested to know why do you think Alaska has such an issue? Why do you think it has such a high per capita incidence of child neglect and abuse?
Dr. Chase:
I think there are a number of issues that make Alaska a little bit different. During the pipeline days in the seventies, we saw a lot of families, but generally two person, two adults and children come to Alaska. One would go to the slope and spend two weeks and do the off and on, and the other if, not if, he or she didn't have a job would actually be a house parent. Where we're located, it's often very dark in the wintertime, can cause a lot of depression, and so for people moving up here who weren't used to that huge change in sunlight or the lack thereof, found that to be really difficult. They also found that before the use of the internet in terms of cellular phones, et cetera, that they were really cut off from their family supports, and so calling home once a month was really different than having grandmother down the street being able to give you some relief once in a while when the kids were driving you crazy. And so I think that was one of the things for sure.
I think the lack of really training of child protection workers in the cultures that exist in Alaska. Since then, we've spent a lot of time talking about and training individuals in heavy cultural awareness and cultural humility. I don't like to use the word cultural competence because I'm not sure that we're ever competent in someone else's culture, but I think that we looked at Western approaches that didn't fit for much of the population, and then I think that we also had to realize that poverty plays a huge part in Alaska. I mean, we have villages where we still don't have running water and sewage, where people are hauling their water, and they're hauling their sewage, and life is difficult. Survival is difficult.
Cat McDonald:
I can't even imagine hauling water in Alaska in the winter. I don't see how that would work.
Dr. Chase:
You have to crack the ice to do that.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah.
Dr. Chase:
It makes it very difficult, and we have some excellent child welfare workers, don't get me wrong, because I still keep in touch with them many years after being the director of a child protection agency, but we also just have other issues to contend with. Alcoholism is very high in Alaska. Alcohol and other things like sugar was introduced early on to villages. We have a high rate of diabetes in villages. Just if you look at the medical services or the lack thereof, and the fact that individuals have to be med-evaced into Anchorage, for the most part, if they have a serious medical issue. We have healthcare clinics in most villages at this point, but it's just a different landscape in terms of how you address child abuse and neglect and how you support families at the beginning as opposed to waiting until there's a crisis. So I think we have, as do other states, but we have our share of problems which are unique to this state as well.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. So can you talk about your work at the University of Alaska? What's it like there?
Dr. Chase:
Well, it's a good place to be, and Anchorage has the largest population. University of Alaska is divided into three universities, University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and University of Alaska Southeast, which is located in Juneau, the state capital. Each has a slightly different emphasis.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks really focuses on a lot of the, what I would call, hard sciences and does a good deal of polar research kinds of things of they're very interesting.
University of Alaska Anchorage has a huge nursing program we have. My department's part of the Department of Health. I mean the College of Health, excuse me, we're the Department of Human Services. We also have School of Social Work, School of Education that's located in a different college, about, at last count, I think about 15,000 students at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
We have over, as I think other universities probably have as well during COVID, as they moved to really using the internet and using Zoom for classes, we've actually been using Zoom for longer than that because we have students all over the state, and we can't expect a student who lives on the North Slope to come to Anchorage for classes, but we should be able to make education available to them, and they should be able to do a practicum in their own community if we can manage that, and we have.
We also have a percentage of students who are military or military dependents, and we have, Alaska has, I believe, still the largest per capita number of retired military in the country, so we have a huge population there. Our students, I think they vary in social work, but in human services, we tend to get a lot of students who are working students and who have been working in a field for a number of years and now decided for various reasons that they want to come back and complete a Bachelor's degree. A number of the students who finish in human services now then go on to get their Master's in social work, and that's a good thing too.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. We did have an article in the NASW magazine, Social Work Advocates. It was written by a social worker in Alaska, and she just said it was a wonderful place to practice, and she encouraged people to, if they were thinking about coming to Alaska as social workers, that she encouraged them. So, yeah. It's good to hear.
Dr. Chase:
I will have to go back and look. I missed that. I do get that.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah, no. I'll link to it in the show notes. Yeah.
Dr. Chase:
That would be great.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. So can you talk about how you started to become involved with NASW and what you've done to sort of co-create this NASW community?
Dr. Chase:
Oh my. I have been in involved in NASW for longer than I guess I can even remember. So I joined NASW back in the seventies, and at one point, as you mentioned in the introduction, I served as the President of the Board of the NASW chapter. I've served on the national board. I served in what was called the Committee on Inquiry. I think they have now changed it and revised the name to a slightly...
Cat McDonald:
...less mysterious?
Dr. Chase:
Yes. Less mysterious and more comfortable name. But it really was looking at ethics complaints, complaints that would come to NASW, probably come to licensing, and sometimes have a legal path as well, so that was very interesting work. And I've continued doing, not on that committee, I served on the committee for about four years, but then I have served in the NASW insurance companies over the last 12 years and have been doing both in person as well as webinars with COVID on risk management and ethics.
So still looking at some of the ethical issues that we have, the most recent being some of the jump from clinicians who were working mainly in person to working in telehealth and some of the things you need to think about in terms of informed consent and changes. Which clients are appropriate for telehealth and which aren't? Those kinds of things. Served on a number of other committees in NASW. I guess I've just always kind of stayed busy with NASW. I served on a couple of the scholarship committees over the years. I also chaired the Modernization Task Force, which was not considered the most popular task force.
Cat McDonald:
I know. Controversial to say the least.
Dr. Chase:
It's very controversial. And we gave some recommendations. They weren't all implemented in the same way, but it was obvious that it was time for a change and for the association to evolve.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. That was actually my next question, which was: How have you seen the organization change over time? You've been with it for a while, so how has it changed?
Dr. Chase:
Well, I think technology has changed it for sure. I mean, as I go into the My NASW Community that comes up now, where clinicians are connecting and individuals working in agencies are connecting across the country asking questions. When I first came into NASW, one of the reasons for joining was that we didn't have access to materials, we didn't have access to, well, what was happening in terms of evidence based practice? What were other states doing? But now that information is all on the internet. You can find most of it.
NASW, I think, has moved ahead with making sure that technology's being used to get information out to members on a regular basis. In that process over the years, the other thing that came along as NASW was doing things including advocating for licensure, licensure began to occur in all of the states. Alaska was one of the first states to introduce licensure for social workers and was one of the last states to actually get it. We had a few barriers to eliminate there, but that made a difference, and I think that it also made a difference in terms of individuals joining the association.
I think people join now for different reasons. I think they join for the insurance, which is a good thing, and I think we have the best insurance that is there for social workers at the most reasonable price but also in terms of what it covers. But I think as NASW was evolving as an organization, in came licensure, and then one of the good things about licensure in terms of the protection of clients was that you had to be licensed to be called a social worker in the states that have title protection. Well, that is great, and licensure is, but then you have the new MSW who graduates and is faced with needing to get licensed right away, needing to work on their clinical license, if they're going into clinical work, so perhaps paying for supervision if they aren't at an agency that will cover that and paying for the licensure exam and then the regular licensing fee and looking at, do they still have money to pay for membership in an organization?
But I was talking about the evolution. And I think as we saw NASW and other associations actually struggling because of membership going down, it was going down because of some of those reasons. It wasn't going down because people didn't think membership was important, but they had to make a choice of what they were going to pay for, and in some states, licensing is reasonable, but in other states, Alaska being one, I just renewed my license this summer, and I think it was $325. I think it's gone down a little bit, but when you think about that, even though it's every two years, that's fairly stiff for a new MSW who's coming out, looking for a job, and faced with a number of other expenses, so I think that was one of the things that certainly occurred in that evolution.
I also think that the internet began to bring states and state chapters more in conversation with each other. And that's a good thing, but what I saw in the modernization task force was that they weren't ready for that change to occur, but it has made a difference. And again, I think technology has really been the driver in some of the changes that we've made.
And then if you look at some of the global crises, I think that has also moved us on both a national level and a global level. I mean, if you look at the issues around a woman's right to choose, if you look at some of the voting issues that have occurred, some of the laws to basically create barriers, mainly for BIPOC individuals to be able to vote, we've got to face all of those. And I can't leave climate change out because as I look at, we think about climate change in terms of the air to breathe and clean water, et cetera, but one of the things that we've seen in Alaska, for example, is one of the villages has almost washed away. I mean, they are having to be relocated because the change in the tides, et cetera. The change in the climate has caused an erosion of the ground that the village is built on.
So yeah, we're looking at all of those things in combination right now, and I think it's an important time in the field of social work, not just for NASW but for the profession. And I listened in this morning to a webinar, well, I guess it was a meeting on the test licensing exam that ASWB has released the report on, and the concerns that were voiced from social workers in a number of states, and then on a positive side, the Director of the Illinois chapter was part of that meeting, and he talked about a, and I wish I had gotten the number of legislation, but some legislation that was just passed in Illinois, and the governor signed which was actually to waive the exam and exam prep and allow for social workers in Illinois to be able to become licensed. And he said it's made a huge difference just in the number of licensed social workers since the legislation's been passed, and it's recent, and I'm thinking it's the last legislative session in that state, but-
Cat McDonald:
Interesting.
Dr. Chase:
Yeah, very interesting.
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. So I guess I wanted to ask of why you decided to become president of NASW and what you anticipate you will be focused on while you're during your tenure?
Dr. Chase:
Well, I had to give some real thought to why I put my name in. I was encouraged by some colleagues because they knew that I had continued over the years to be involved with NASW, and I think at a point for all of us in the profession, and there's a point where we need to pay forward and pay back. I've gained a lot of experience, I've had and still have a number of wonderful colleagues, and I just decided that it was time, if it worked out, for me to assist on a different level, and hopefully I can do that, so that was why. And what do I plan on doing?
Cat McDonald:
Yeah. Or your focus or anything that you'd really like to see happen?
Dr. Chase:
Well, we still have a president this year, and I think she's doing a tremendous job.
Cat McDonald:
Absolutely.
Dr. Chase:
And so I don't see that you go into an organization, whether it's as a member of the organization, staff member, or as a member of the board, and plan to make some kinds of massive changes. I think there are things that are being worked on that need to continue, that we need to expand our work on the Hill, we need to be vocal about the kinds of things that are affecting social workers in the field. I think we need to look at the whole licensure issue and the licensing exam, and that is being done now. I know that NASW has been looking at and has a grant to look at what it would take to have an interstate compact on licensing.
What I heard in the meeting this morning was some individuals saying that efforts should be suspended while this other piece was being worked on. I think you can look at more than one thing at a time. It doesn't mean that you progress at the same rate, but I think that we have to continue to move ahead, and as you probably know, our CEO, Angelo McClain, is retiring, and so that means a search for a new CEO. That will start just before I start my work as president, so I'm working on that with the current president right now and the Board of Directors.
I think one of the things that's important to me is making sure that communication is open, that it's open with the national staff, but it's also open with the EDs and members of the board in the different states because different states have different needs, and it's difficult when you have 50 chapters with different needs, and I know some of the states have really come together to look at how they can cooperate with each other, but what else is it that they need to really build and continue to build a strong organization?
Announcer:
You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visits 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 podcast. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.