Question: How does a behavioral health worker differ from a social worker? –unknown Response: There are certainly a lot of commonalities. However, depending on where you are trained, there may be a different mentality among social workers than with the behavioral health worker. Social workers seem to be trained to work more as solo practitioners rather than team members. Of course, there are social work programs that are adapting and becoming more oriented towards medical settings, but others are not. Rawson, UCLA ISAP –Richard Response: A lot of that role is really dependent on the location of where they’re working as well, and what their interest is. There’s such a vast diversity of social workers, as they’re trained and as they’re employed. I see them as an important component of this larger workforce that we will build, but the programs need to tailor- like they tailor social work programs for clinic or for ministry type of aspects- they need to tailor their programs to really make sure that people are coming out ready to meet the needs of this new behavioral health issue. I think they’re an integral member of the team, as are probably a number of MFTs, as are some psychologists, nurses, and certainly many people in the addiction workforce, but it’s really about how we take each group’s specialty skills and propel those who are interested into this new kind of activity. Freese, UCLA ISAP –Tom Response: Being a social worker myself- also a PhD- I can tell you that the council on social work education would disagree. UCLA may be unusual in that it is still pushing private practice because I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but private practice social workers are going out of business at an incredible rate. I would suggest that they are at least 10 years out of date in terms of the market for individual therapy, and there are probably a lot of social workers in this room. Every school has multiple tracks. Medical social work is a long-recognized track, and it would be perfect for an integrated care setting. Social workers are going to move into the tracks that are viable where they can have a career- including the people in independent practice, who are losing patients at a great rate or getting paid $15/hr by managed care companies. UCLA may not have gotten to that yet but they will. They’re an outlier. –unknown
Question: How does a behavioral health worker differ from a social worker? –unknown Response: There are certainly a lot of commonalities. However, depending on where you are trained, there may be a different mentality among social workers than with the behavioral health worker. Social workers seem to be trained to work more as solo practitioners rather than team members. Of course, there are social work programs that are adapting and becoming more oriented towards medical settings, but others are not. –Richard Rawson, UCLA ISAP Response: A lot of that role is really dependent on the location of where they’re working as well, and what their interest is. There’s such a vast diversity of social workers, as they’re trained and as they’re employed. I see them as an important component of this larger workforce that we will build, but the programs need to tailor- like they tailor social work programs for clinic or for ministry type of aspects- they need to tailor their programs to really make sure that people are coming out ready to meet the needs of this new behavioral health issue. I think they’re an integral member of the team, as are probably a number of MFTs, as are some psychologists, nurses, and certainly many people in the addiction workforce, but it’s really about how we take each group’s specialty skills and propel those who are interested into this new kind of activity. –Tom Freese, UCLA ISAP Response: Being a social worker myself- also a PhD- I can tell you that the council on social work education would disagree. UCLA may be unusual in that it is still pushing private practice because I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but private practice social workers are going out of business at an incredible rate. I would suggest that they are at least 10 years out of date in terms of the market for individual therapy, and there are probably a lot of social workers in this room. Every school has multiple tracks. Medical social work is a long-recognized track, and it would be perfect for an integrated care setting. Social workers are going to move into the tracks that are viable where they can have a career- including the people in independent practice, who are losing patients at a great rate or getting paid $15/hr by managed care companies. UCLA may not have gotten to that yet but they will. They’re an outlier. –unknown
ILC%20Summary%20Report%2021.docx