What have you learned being a Social Worker for 53 years?

 Topic One

What have you learned being a Social Worker for 53 years?

David Markham at Park Ridge Mental Health Center in Brockport, NY on 12/07/1988

When I graduated from SUNY Albany in 1972 with a Master’s Degree In Social Work, students were expected in the second of their two years of study to concentrate in casework, group work, or community organization. This was the standard way of organizing graduate social work education until the 80s when Social Work education shifted to a generalist model emphasizing the major competencies as assessment, service planning, implementation, and evaluation at three levels of social organization, individual, group, and community, This led to practice at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels.

The career path I have followed has taken me through all these methodologies and levels. I have provided individual, family, and group counseling as a clinician and also systems management as a supervisor, program director, deputy director for programs, and finally as an executive director. I have also functioned as an adjunct college professor in Health Sciences and in Social Work.

Some people might say cynically that I have been a “jack of all trades and a master of none.” I certainly have been a generalist with wide ranging career experiences but I have mastered some of them and consider myself to have some knowledge, expertise, and skills that are valuable to the right people, in the right places, at the right time, delivered in the right way.

I am very grateful for the career I have engaged in and all the mentors and teachers who taught me along the way. This blog will, hopefully, capture some of this knowledge, experience, and practice wisdom that has been accumulated over 53 years of practice.