Warning: objects in the post below may be less coherent than they appear. But I promise, it all makes sense to me!
I have to admit, as much as I resisted the whole concept of Twitter, it’s been a neat little world to explore over the past month or so. I get real time access to lots of stuff I hadn’t considered wanting real time access to in the past. While it’s another example of the technological encroachment on my life that I’m trying to give a little distance to, it’s a handy way to keep abreast of topics and websites that I used to cruise on occasion, and now can find the things that I’m interested in quickly and disregard the rest.
One of my favorite things on Twitter feed is my professional organization, the National Association of Social Workers. Social workers have a hand in a LOT of different areas, including all different phases of the lifespan, so it can be tough to sort through the geriatric stuff (Meaning about older adults, not that the material itselfis old enough for Medicare. Bad pun? Probably.) to get to the relevant material for a juvenile justice worker. But Twitter has proved to be an easy way to do that. Click the relevant links, ignore the rest. Voila!
This is all a very roundabout way of getting to my point: an interesting link came up on my Twitter feed today from NASW. Lee Baca, a sheriff in Los Angeles, was interviewed by the LA Times, and asked if his involvement in mental health and homelessness issues make him “sort of like a social worker in uniform.” He replied “I’m not sort of a social worker, I am a social worker.”
Forgive me for being proprietary, but he’s not. He’s a sheriff, which is a noble and necessary profession. And using his position to highlight issues of mental illness and homelessness is both rare and commendable. But I spent two years in graduate school, countless hours reading articles and writing papers, a ream of copy paper worth of applications and recommendations and a really, really high stress computer based test for the privilege of calling myself a social worker. I’m expected to adhere to a certain code of ethics, to have a particular framework from which I work, and to have a connection to the unique past while helping make a unique future for my profession. It’s hard work!
What burns my butt about it is that he wouldn’t say “I’m not sort of a psychologist, I am a psychologist.” He doesn’t have the training and licensing to call himself one. (You could insert any manner of profession here, like doctor, lawyer, insurance agent… but psychologists do similar work with a different theoretical orientation.) And social work ALSO has training licensing and standards that we have to adhere to. But we’ve, for whatever reason, never had that kind of proprietary control over who uses the term, and how they use it. I can venture that Mr. Baca probably wouldn’t be down with me referring to myself as a sheriff, despite the fact that I work in the correctional system.
It really makes me wonder why I’m so bothered by this, because when you get right down to it, it’s a label. And as a rule, social workers are sort of conditioned to think that labels are bad, and reduce complex people and problems into artificial categories that may or may not be accurate. The “what” of the work is so much more important than the name one might slap on it. It seems contrary to our own values to be concerned with it.
But in other ways, it’s bigger than that. It’s not about labels, but about legitimacy, and having a sense that we have a professional identity that’s distinct and apart from others in the field. For a field that has been so heavily dominated by women since its inception, that struggle for legitimacy is tied up in the complexities of gender and value of work. Nursing has had a similar uphill battle, though pay and prestige are approaching catching up with the work that nurses do. Social workers are lagging a little behind.
And all of it comes back to thinking about how we language our lives. As both a social worker and a writer (however precariously that label might be able to be affixed to me at present), I’m surrounded by reminders of the power of language. As a social worker, talk isn’t just how we communicate, it’s how we help heal. Labels, whether they be helpful or harmful in how they’re employed, are linguistic short cuts to get our point across. How impossible would it be to explain what a mother is to her child every time we used the word? And the sense of power in those labels is something to be aware of for both its utility and its danger.
Do you ever have moments where you just think about how incredible our brains are that we can take what are really just abstract symbols and sounds and make them into things that not only make sense, but connect us with other people? I’m having a “marvel at the wonders of the human mind” kind of day! Whether or not this is influenced by a group therapy session I ran today on changes that marijuana use causes to the adolescent brain and the complete lack of cooperation I got from my clients, I couldn't tell you. :-)
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