CA EE
BERNARD GOTFRYD-NEWSWEEK
Serious business: Shefelman with Pat Maloy, Dow Jones employee-services manager
child-protection agencies or government
antipoverty programs. A growing number,
however, work in business or private prac-
tice, where salaries are higher and case-
loads less taxing. In 1972 only 3 percent of
America's social workers served in nontra-
ditional, for-profit settings; in 1987 the fig-
ure stood at 20 percent.
Minding business: Carolyn Shefelman
counts herself among the nontraditional-
ists. She works in the burgeoning field of
occupational social work at New York's
Brownlee Dolan Stein Associates, which
runs employee-assistance programs for
more than 90 U.S. corporations, including
Ford Motor Co., Dow Jones and NEWS-
WEEK, Inc. Shefelman, 29, earns nearly
$30,000 a year counseling em-
ployees with family and drug-
abuse problems and running
corporate workshops on stress
management and AIDS. The
number of U.S. companies with
such programs more than dou-
bled between 1975 and 1984 to
more than 5,000. The reason:
"Businesses are beginning to
realize that what happens to
their employees affects the bot-'
tom line," says Nancy Ran-
dolph of the Council on Social
Work Education.
Perhaps the biggest force be-
hind the profession's recent re-
covery is the entry of social
workers into psychotherapy-a
specialty that in most states re-
quires an M.S.W. and two years
of supervised experience. Al-
most two-thirds of social work-
ers did full- or part-time thera-
py in 1986, up from one-quarter
just four years earlier. Sever-
al developments have helped Playing by
40 NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS
clear the way. Patients' disenchantment
with drawn-out, expensive Freudian anal-
ysis has led to a boom in the short-term
therapies that social workers practice. And
22 states now require insurers to pay social
workers for therapy, allowing them to com-
pete with psychiatrists and clinical psy-
chologists. "If I can do the therapy just like
a psychologist, why should I be paid less
because I'm a social worker?" says Carolyn
Lim, 24, a graduate student in social work
at the University of Chicago.
Many therapists work in public pro-
grams or nonprofit mental-health clinics.
Butforotherstheultimategoal issettingup
their own private practice. More than 15
percent of the National Association of So-
cial Workers' 113,000 members now have
full-time private practices, with another 15
percent in private practice part time.
Among young social workers, the draw of
private practice is even stronger. A 1984
study found that 86 percent of entering
M.S.W. students in direct services-a cate-
gory that encompasses about two-thirds of
all social workers-wanted to go into pri-
vate practice. The appeal is no mystery to
Marshall Feldman, 34, a Columbia student.
"In an agency, you're expected to see 25 or
30 clients a week," says Feldman, who in-
terns at a nonprofit mental-health clinic.
"Multiply that by $50, and you get over
$1,200 a week, over $50,000 a year. In an
agency, you might make $25,000-if you're
lucky. Naturally, you start thinking . . "
Deny the needy? That sort of thinking has
some observers worried. In the rush to cash
in on private practice, they fear, social
work may be abandoning its commitment
to the disadvantaged-a commitment go-
ing back to its roots in 19th-century chari-
ties for paupers and the mentally ill. Statis-
tics back up that fear: from 1982 to 1987 the
percentage of NASW members in public
agencies fell 20 percent. "I get very upset
when I hear students say, 'I'm going to
come here and then go into private prac-
tice'," says Danna Wood, director of job
development and information service at
the Columbia School of Social Work.
"Those who have the least are the ones who
need us the most."
In the face of federal budget reductions
and the lure of lucrative private practice,
however, the most surprising thing may be
that so many social workers retain their
commitment to helping the poor. When
Regina Medina graduated from California
State at Chico in 1986, she
knew she wanted to work with
disadvantaged youth. Now, as
an M.S.W. student at the Uni-
versity of Southern California,
she interns at a clinic for emo-
tionally disturbed and sexually
abused children in Los Angel-
es's depressed Watts district.
"There's such great potential
in this population, but so often
it's misdirected," says Medina,
% 27, who works with children
four to 16. "They're deprived of
the education they need, and
they can get involved with
gangs and drugs. To neglect
them is unfair." As long as
that attitude survives, the
boom in nontraditional social
work won't see the profession
abandoning its old constituen-
cy but broadening its base to
include new ones.
STEPHEN WEST with
EVELENARD NOELLE GAFFNEY in Chicago,
EVE LEONARD TERRY ALLEN in Los Angeles and
Lim DAVID BARBOZA in Boston
U
I
J
ST
new rules: University of Chicago's Carolyn
MAY 1988