“History equips us not to predict the future but to meet it more wisely.” (R.T. McKenzie, A Little Book for New Historians, 2019, p. 30.)
With this quote, Dr. Justin Harty, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University, began his keynote for the first event in our new leadership webinar series The Hive. The event, titled Social Work Leadership in Challenging Times: Building Skills and Supporting Communities, brought together social workers in a wide variety of roles to hear about how we can learn from our history to support our work today and gain strategies for action. In sharing our history, Dr. Harty noted that examining how earlier practitioners navigated crises can reveal strategies (and missteps) that can inform our responses today. He highlighted how history illuminates clashes between prevailing social norms and the profession’s core values of dignity, equity, and justice as well as demonstrates how labor, civil rights, feminist, and disability struggles reshaped our practice. Further, history can clarify our stance on contemporary work and show us where reform or abolition is still required.
As an example, he shared that during the Progressive Era (1880s-1920s) social work won child labor laws and public health advances while it also enforced cultural assimilation, excluded Black communities, and absorbed eugenic ideas. From the Japanese American Internment (1940s) we learned that social workers must “confront institutional racism, defend civil liberties, and refuse participation in policies that criminalize entire communities during national crises (slide 11).” He then highlighted 5 lessons we can learn from our history – among these that “every crisis exposes social work as both caregiver and gatekeeper; the choice of alignment determines impact (slide 20).” He suggests that our current mandate is to lean into intersectional analysis; center the voices of those most affected; and shift professional authority into structural advocacy.
Dr. Harty concluded with a series of lessons, for leaders, for practitioners, for students, for agencies, and for communities. A lesson for leaders is to leverage our political capital by engaging legislators, media, and philanthropy to secure structural reforms that extend past our organizations. For practitioners, he recommended centering community leadership by shifting from “helper” to co-creator, letting affected communities define problems, solutions, and measures of success.
For students, a lesson is to anchor in the NASW Code of Ethics – letting core values be the guide when policy, funding, or supervisors pull in conflicting directions. A lesson for agencies is to share decision-making power by seating community members with lived experience on boards, hiring panels, and program-design teams. For communities, a lesson is to demand participatory power by pushing for community seats in budgeting, zoning, and service design so resources are matched to lived realities. All groups can pair elders’ wisdom with youth energy to sustain moments over time.
In closing, Dr. Harty shared recommendations for facing our fears, protecting mental health, and preventing burnout including; 1) acknowledge collective grief, moral distress, and vicarious trauma as normal responses to prolonged crises; 2) normalize help-seeking; 3) embed restorative practices into our work; and 4) foster collective care through shared meals, celebration of milestones, and creating mutual aid funds for staff emergencies. Ultimately, community is the antidote to isolation.
Want to hear more? You can watch his full talk here. You can view his slides here. Start at Slide #20 for lists of recommendations for what you can start working on now.
