Financial Social Work: Needed Now More Than Ever

By Reeta Wolfsohn, MSW

illiteracy, the current economy isn’t one most people can budget their way through. Today’s unrealistic and unachievable financial expectations leave too many people unable to pay their rent or mortgage, put food on the table, pay off credit cards, student debt, or other monthly living expenses. Additionally, they can’t afford healthcare, to save for retirement, or for their children’s education.

Without any money management training, Americans are expected to know what to do when they have more month than money, more debt than assets, and more financial problems than solutions. These conditions place them at perpetual risk for homelessness, food insecurity, low wages, no assets, domestic violence, and more.

It costs money just to wake up every day. If you are a woman, have an illness or disability, are older, uninsured, have a low credit score, or fall into any of numerous other negative money categories, it may be more expensive for you than for others. Money doesn’t grow on trees, it isn’t the root of all evil, and it can’t necessarily buy happiness, but money matters because financial health is fundamental to everyone’s physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being.

Too often, those struggling financially are categorized and labeled in ways that make their lives more difficult (often based on their credit score or lack thereof). They’re left on their own to cope with financial wreckage they didn’t know how to prevent and don’t know how to improve. At the same time, they struggle to ease the accompanying feelings of shame, hopelessness, helplessness, fear, frustration, anger, and the list goes on.

The “Theory of Relationship with Money and Self “is noteworthy to the field of social work because it shifts the perspective of money problems from concerns and comparisons about income, debt, and savings to one that makes the complex and emotional topic of money management less intimidating, more accessible, and somewhat more manageable.

Financial Behavioral Health™ (identifying, addressing, and reducing the stress, anxiety, fear, uncertainty, and other harmful feelings that result when money, physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being negatively converge) belongs in every social worker’s toolbox. Its practice requires going beyond dollars, cents, income, debt, and savings to engage clients in sustainable, long-term financial behavioral change.

Financial social work incorporates evidence-based practices (the transtheoretical model of change, the transformative model of learning, mindfulness, and self-care), which makes it a core competency applicable to all levels of social work practice. In counseling sessions, it’s used to reduce symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, suicidality, reoccurrence of substance use, stigma, trauma, and other manifestations of societal dysfunction.

At the mezzo level of practice, it contributes to greater understanding of human financial behavior and offers programs, staff, and agencies insight on how humans relate to money to strengthen client and community work. At the macro level, combining financial social work with theories of human behavior enhances the potential for developing more beneficial policies.

Understanding some basics:

• No one wants to have money problems, but most people do.

• To prepare your children for the real world, teach them about money.

• Everyone has a relationship with money and with self; most need them healed.

• Healing your relationship with yourself takes time, honesty, less self-criticism, and more self-love.

• Healing your relationship with your money begins with your thoughts, feelings, and attitudes about money.

• It’s time to stop raising generation after generation of financially illiterate men and women.

• No one needs to know everything about money, but everyone needs to know certain things about it.

• Suicide is too common a choice when debt becomes overwhelming. Debt shouldn’t be a death sentence. Always choose life.

• When you talk about money, you talk about survival, safety, security, and POWER. Those with money have the power.

• Money isn’t an enemy or a friend. It’s what’s used to get the things you need and want.

• Your financial future is yours alone to create and live with, regardless of who does or doesn’t support you.

Financial health and wellness work belongs in social work practices, workplaces, classes, conversations, and casework. As agents of change, advocates for marginalized groups, and proponents for social and economic justice, it provides social workers with a holistic process for supporting clients in making peace and making friends with their money and themselves.

About the Author:

Reeta Wolfsohn, CMSW, is the founder of the Financial Social Work (FSW) discipline. For over twenty-five years she has been creating original programs, materials, products, and services to expand the role of Financial Social Work in the field of financial health and wellness. Reeta was recently inducted as an NASW Social Work Pioneer.

Financial Social Work is an interactive, reflective, behavioral model focused on helping clients heal their relationship with their money and with themselves. In 2022 the Center for Financial Social Work introduced the Financial Health & Well Professional Community open to everyone interested in the opportunity to interact, learn, network, connect, expand client resources, and support each other across diverse client populations and financial challenges. Learn more at www.financialsocialwork.com

In August 2022, the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) published an indepth analysis of passing rates for its various Social Work exams. The report included an analysis of the Bachelors, Masters, Clinical, Associate, and Advanced Generalist exam pass rates between 2011 and 2021, with a particular focus on the data between 2018 and 2021. The results—which revealed a significant disparity in pass rates for BIPOC test-takers when compared to white test-takers—were not surprising to many, but still staggering to see. For years, social workers, particularly BIPOC social workers, have discussed the challenges associated with accessing the exam, preparing for the exam, and ultimately passing the exam.

Exam pass rates were reported by gender, age, first language identifiers, and race and ethnicity. While the entirety of the data is important to digest and should mobilize efforts for changes that address these inequities across all exam levels, it is the clinical examination data and the discrepancy amongst pass rates for minority test takers that deserves special attention. Between 2018 and 2021, first-time pass rates for the clinical exam were 83.9% for White test takers; 79.9% for Multiracial; 72% for Asian; 65.1%

The ASWB Exam Data Must Serve as our Call to Decolonize Social Work

By Tiffany Walker, LCSW

for Hispanic; 62.9%for Native American/ Indigenous; and just 45% for Black test takers.

Many of us have always suspected what the report revealed to be true; BIPOC social workers have a much lower clinical exam pass rate than their white colleagues and peers. This disparity results in a crucial deficiency in our field—a lack of BIPOC mental health clinicians to meet the needs of BIPOC clients and communities. As such, this data ultimately serves as a call to decolonize the profession of social work and explore how power, race, oppression, and privilege have been embedded in the practices we use to allow entry into and advancement within the social work profession, particularly at the clinical practice level.

Furthermore, we need social workers, particularly clinical social workers, to help mitigate the national mental health crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic has exasperated. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on both individual and community mental health, and it will continue to have residual effects for years to come. For some, COVID-19 revealed the mental health challenges faced by many communities, especially communities that are underresourced and have previously experienced high levels of trauma. Consequently, the demand for licensed mental health professionals to meet the challenges in these communities is high.

In fact, in 2020, Governor Murphy specifically called for the support of social workers to help provide critical services and crisis response to our state amid the pandemic. Based on the data in the ASWB report, it can be inferred that those who were qualified to answer the call were disproportionately white women, despite much of the need and most severe impact from COVID-19 being concentrated in communities of color.

We have a call to action to support our peers and colleagues and to make sure the social work profession lives its stated values by advancing equity within the profession. Below are a few questions I consider to be particularly urgent that I urge you to consider about our profession:

1. How do we advance social work practice and social work professionals in a matter that is ethically equitable and culturally sensitive?

2. How do we prioritize the decolonization of the profession and ensure that all accredited BSW, MSW, and social work doctoral programs examine the impact of privilege, race, oppression, and power?

3. How can I use my power and privilege to support this call to action?

These questions require honesty and vulnerability that should then ignite accountability and change. Social workers must move in solidarity to ensure equitable access to clinical exams which ultimately leads to equity in the availability and provision of clinical services to BIPOC individuals, families, and communities.

Social work licensure aims to ensure the competent, ethical, and safe practice of social work to support public needs. Additionally, access to licensure impacts social workers' employment opportunities and income potential. The disparity in exam passing rates continues to perpetuate the impacts of systemic oppression and racism within the social work profession. An inability to obtain clinical licensure presents a barrier for many BIPOC social workers who could otherwise earn better salaries and professional roles that advance their own lives and the well-being of the many clients they would be able to serve.

About the Author:

Tiffany Walker is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She currently serves as the University Director for Student Health Services at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is also the CEO of Journey Therapy Center, a company that provides professional development and coaching to schools and school social workers regarding best practices in school social work. Learn more at www.journeytc.org