Published on : December 17, 2020
CSWE President and CEO Darla Spence Coffey, PhD, MSW, spread awareness of a key finding from CSWE’s recent National Workforce Initiative report on podcasts and interviews in major markets across the country. CSWE, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and George Washington University Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity released findings from social workers completing their master of social work degrees that detail key facts about the social work profession.Listen to the Texas State Networks interview, which aired on 130 stations in the Lone Star State.
Listen to a clip from KNX in Los Angeles, the top news radio station in the city.
Coffey appeared on radio stations in Los Angeles and throughout Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and spoke with Inside Higher Education’s The Key podcast. It’s estimated that CSWE reached more than 848,000 listeners with the interviews.
The report, The Social Work Profession: Findings from Three Years of Surveys of New Social Workers, presents a comprehensive view of where and how social workers are serving clients and communities across the country. Due to new questions in the survey, the report shows that respondents who identified Black/African American reported $21,000 more debt than their White counterparts. The report also provides insights into new social workers’ demographic and educational backgrounds, the types of jobs they are taking, the populations they are serving, their experience in the job market, and their satisfaction with their new jobs.
“This statistic just leapt out at us… and this is something that’s very concerning to all of us,” said Coffey. “CSWE will continue to focus on supporting programs to provide financial counseling and financial literacy services to students so they can understand the decisions they’re making about taking out loans. There are also really important income-based repayment plans and public student loan forgiveness programs, but it takes a real attention to detail to maintain eligibility for these programs. So our educational programs can provide that kind of guidance to our social work students.”
CSWE also continues to advocate at the federal level to increase opportunities for grants, including Pell grants, so that students are not required to take out loans.
Additionally, the findings from the report will be used by CSWE’s Anti-Racism Task Force to craft recommendations for social work education to improve the ways students are prepared to dismantle racism in their practice. The Task Force was convened in the Summer of 2020 and anticipates releasing recommendations next year.