The training that geriatric social workers receive makes them uniquely qualified to play dynamic roles in improving the health and well-being of older adults and their families. Through focused courses and relevant field experience, they excel at care coordination, emotional support, advocacy, and helping older adults modify their behavior to adopt healthier and more fulfilling lifestyles. Nearly three-quarters of all social workers will work with older adults in some capacity during their career. Yet only four percent of social work students specialize in geriatrics. Most won't receive even one course on caring for older adults. Furthermore, the general public and even other health care professionals are often unclear about what sort of assistance a trained and experienced geriatric social worker can offer a family or health care team. Therefore, their specialized skills are often underutilized.
The Hartford Foundation understands the unique benefits a cadre of skilled geriatric social workers can provide in the health care arena, and has been tackling the problem of too few geriatrics-specialized social workers for nearly a decade. We have been focusing our $70 million investment on improving academic leadership in geriatric social work, infusing schools' curriculums with geriatric-focused content, and providing practicum experience for social work students.
We have seen real progress: graduates of our Faculty Scholars program serve at 60 schools in 34 states; 47 former Doctoral Fellows hold full-time faculty status or post-doctoral appointments; and more than 180 schools used our curriculum grants to adapt our new aging curricula for their social work programs.
Yet in order to achieve our ultimate goal--making sure that the social workers of the future have the information they need to help our country's growing population of older adults live healthy, fulfilling lives--we need to do more. Here are five key ideas for foundations, grantees, universities, and the field at large:
- We can all support efforts to educate the public that social workers are effective, critically needed partners in the care older adults.
- The field of social work can unite and call for greater geriatrics training and educate social workers themselves to see the common human needs that cut across all age groups.
- Social work can continue to seek new ways to integrate policy and practice and learn to rigorously evaluate its approaches and programs.
- Schools of social work can forge partnerships with other health professions, leading to greater interdisciplinary training among doctors, nurses, and social workers.
- Schools of social work can think and plan for the future and ensure that their curricula, faculty and students are prepared for the impact of the growing number of older adults on their profession.
Other ideas I've missed? We would love to hear about them.