[Slide stating, "UB School of Social Work, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, www.socialwork.buffalo.edu"]
Hi, I'm Nancy Smyth and I'm Dean at the University of Buffalo School of Social
Work. Thanks for taking some time to hear more about our new masters curriculum,
one which, uh, integrates a trauma-informed and human rights perspective throughout the
masters curriculum. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about why we
decided to make this change, um, why I think it's important and then you'll be
hearing a lot more from other people, um, about the details of the changes. Um, let me
start first with the concept of trauma-informed. Um, here at the school we've
had a trauma counseling certificate for, uh, many years actually since 2000 and we
found a lot of feedback from people in the community who've gone through that
program about what an important difference that perspective made in the
work that they were doing. These are not people who were doing trauma counseling
per se, I'm talking people in probation, people in domestic violence shelters, um,
people who were doing prevention and planning and policy work. We began to
listen to that and, um, take that feedback, um, and started to think about it a little
bit more because one of the things that we've learned from research is that by
and large the populations that social workers serve are people who've been
exposed to at least one type and often multiple types of trauma. And that it's
really the rule and not the exception, um, in those agencies so that frequently
we're looking at prevalence rates of three-quarters to ninety or a hundred
percent for many of the agencies and yet the identification and assessment, uh, and
understanding about how trauma affects people, uh, those issues are not still
something that you can find uniformly available throughout social work and
throughout the human service profession. Um, so we really got feedback that we were
doing something important and that people thought it needed to be done even
more so. Um, so we really started to look to inform our curriculum based upon this
information, but in a very broad way to really say what kinds of policies and
programs when we develop if we really are
stood how trauma affected people? And, uh, if people can bring this perspective to all
of the types of social work that they do and then there may be people who choose
to become trauma counselors per se, but this is really about bringing that lens
in a very broad way to understand the work that we do. Uh, what's really important
about a trauma perspective, trauma-informed perspective, in
particular is that understanding that most of what we call "problems" or
"symptoms" in the people who've been exposed to trauma are really almost
better seen as strengths as as things that, um, people, um, are doing, um, have done in the
past that really were helpful to them in situations where they were traumatized.
And that really make a lot of sense when you understand what people live through.
So in that way it's very similar to a strengths perspective that social work
has held for many years. Um, to paraphrase, uh, Ann Jennings, someone who's written about
this, um, it's not about what's wrong with you it's about what happened to you. And
that's really the essence of a trauma-informed perspective. Also, very
consistent with social work perspective that really focuses on depathologizing
and understanding people's strengths. The other important thing about trauma that
I try to, um, teach and have always worked with my clients on is that it really to
be traumatized involves a loss of power, a sense of helplessness in some way and
therefore recovery is always, uh, about empowerment. And again empowerment is a
very core value to the Social Work profession and it really harkens back to
our very beginning days and so, uh, an important value, uh, that we've always talked
to students and that every other School of Social Work, um, has taught. But
understanding in terms of power and trauma that's a lens that's a little bit
different in terms of what we bring here. That leads me to the next piece which is
the human rights. Um, almost all the trauma survivors that
I've worked with also had their human rights violated in the process and so
those things often go hand in hand. The human rights is a much broader
perspective than this and human rights is in fact really a global perspective
and that was one of the reasons that we really tried to settle on it because it
has global implications it brings the global lens, uh, and yet it's very relevant
at a very day to day level of the individuals that we work with. And so
bringing in that perspective I think helps to both connect our local and
individual issues to larger global perspectives. I think it integrates well
with trauma in the sense that there is overlap between the areas but the beauty
of the human rights perspective is it really allows us to bring in social and
economic justice issues. Uh, which are again very core to the Social Work profession
and, um, which are very much part of a human rights perspective and in this way Human
Rights perspective will focus also on the need for action and some larger
level, um, in the community at a program or policy level and for empowerment and for
trauma survivors action at a larger level is often a part of a recovery
process. So again, there's overlap between these perspectives, but I don't want to
give the impression that we see these two perspectives as being the same or
even that they always fit together there are some natural tensions between them
and we actually think that's a good thing. Um, this is about bringing these, these
two themes together in the ways that they fit, highlighting some of the ways
that they may not fit, the ways that help us to really understand the world that
we're in, um, the world that we live in and then that we work with, um, our clients and
client systems in, it's not a world that fits easily into little boxes and into
one way of seeing things. And so in places where we see discrepancies and
contradictions those actually can enhance our understanding and help us
develop a stronger sense of what it means to work with people to how
them to bring about change in their lives. And so we're very excited about
what these perspectives bring. What we're really doing here is adding some lenses
to what we've already been doing we're still teaching the in-depth knowledge
about specific populations and practices, practice methods, um, that people are looking
to get from an MSW program. In addition to that we've integrated these
perspectives because we think it brings about some paradigm shifts that will be
really essential to being successful, uh, social workers in the next century,
um, really helped to make that social workers with a global perspective and a
perspective that really works to help people make fundamental changes in their
lives. So, thanks again for taking the time, uh, I think as you listen more to the
details about this that you'll be excited as well. And we're always
interested in your comments about what we're doing. Thanks!
[Slide stating, "UB School of Social Work, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, www.socialwork.buffalo.edu"]