Social Work News

Student Practicum Stories

A Capitol Time

It’s not common for interns or fellows in the national Office of the Surgeon General to come from a social work program, but BSW student Jessie Welch-Stockton’s understanding of mental health, substance misuse, and the opioid crisis were part of the reason she was selected for the internship, and expanded the breadth of her responsibilities. “Social work gives such a great perspective of people’s actual needs. It’s a perspective that gives you a base from which you are able to create deep, meaningful relationships with people,” she said. Because of her background, Ms. WelchStockton was asked to do significant draft work for then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams. “A lot of the presentations Dr. Adams does are meant for mental health workers,” she said, “so I was asked to help shape those remarks.”

Jessie couldn’t say enough about encouraging other social work students to get involved with macro practice opportunities like this. “The social work perspective is so needed in discussions of health,” she said. “I think it’s important to realize that, early on in your career, you can start to be an advocate, even as a budding social worker.”

Dani CARES: Expanding Homeless Services during COVID

The Road Home hadn’t done Housing First street outreach before this last year. However, when CARES Act dollars came through, it made sense to direct funding to meet clients where they were—on the streets. MSW student Dani Nives started the program from the ground up during her practicum—writing policy and procedure that met both the administrative guidelines of the grant and the needs of the clients, implementing policy, running the program, and now supervising case managers within the program. Ms. Nives recognizes the boon her education has been in this process. “Having the foundation of always using evidence-based practice and understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing has been a huge transformation for me,” she said. “Before, I would just do whatever plan was in place. To be in the supervisor role now, and to start implementing evidence-based best practices I’ve learned from my MSW Program has been invaluable. It’s been a really humbling and beautiful experience to be able to acknowledge there’s always more learning to do and always better practice to be utilizing.”

A Tale of Two Prisons

MSW students Lu Smith and Rhiannon McDaniel spent their 2020-2021 practicum placements helping men and women incarcerated at the Utah State Prison access treatment, learn new skills, and think differently about themselves. Working on the women’s side of the prison, Ms. Smith ran a skills-based program for women with a substance use-related charge. The men’s side of the prison, where Ms. McDaniel worked, was more heavily impacted by COVID-19, so her work with the mental health team meant donning masks, goggles, and gloves for brief visits with clients. On days Ms. McDaniel couldn’t visit, she worked on developing a training for officers on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Though the pandemic presented different practicum challenges for these two women, both found their experiences strengthened their perception of the importance of social work within the criminal justice system. “For me,” said Ms. McDaniel, “one of the main takeaways of this experience is asking myself, ‘How can I call people in, instead of calling people out in every part of this?’”

Experiencing Nature Virtually Anywhere

Many days see Adam Hanley, assistant professor in the College of Social Work, out biking on the trails near his home. He tends to go in the middle of the day; it’s hot, but no one else is out. He loves this time of day in part due to the unparalleled view—everything vibrant and clear, brown waves of long grass moving in the breeze, a far reaching view of both the city and the Wasatch Range. “That view puts things in perspective—it changes my outlook on my relationship to the world and to the planet. I think slowing down to feel all the sensory connection is important—the warmth of the sun, the breeze against my skin, the smell of the grasses and the dirt. There’s a level of connection and solidarity in the moment when you slow down and really feel the earth and the natural world around you.” For Dr. Hanley, these experiences are a big part of why he does the research that he does. “That’s what we’re trying to give people a taste of with the virtual experience, it’s maybe not that full sensory moment, but the potential for it.”

Wait—virtual experience?

Dr. Hanley and Anthony Deringer, an assistant professor of Recreation Administration at Texas State University, have completed several studies on the intersection of technology and nature connectedness. In the latest study, participants were divided into three groups. The first two groups were recruited at a trailhead and randomly assigned to either don special goggles and have a virtual experience of the trail, or to actually hike the trail. In an effort to find a population of people with similar outdoor recreational interests, the third group was recruited from outside a local (to Colorado) outdoor store. With all three groups, researchers took a measure of the person’s nature connectedness and then asked if they would sign a petition to a local political representative in support of protecting threatened lands. Compared to the participants at the store, both the folks who hiked the trail and virtually viewed the trail were more likely to sign the petition. “What’s really motivating these projects is land preservation efforts,” said Dr. Hanley. “The health of people is dependent on the health of the planet, and the health of the planet is dependent on the health of people. There’s a real circular relationship there.”

Due to socioeconomic status, local environment, and a variety of other factors often outside of a person’s control, some people simply do not have the ability to access nature.

Mind the Gap: Implementing a Trauma-Informed Approach

Even before the pandemic, Utah’s Department of Health had long recognized the level of trauma in Utah communities constituted a public health crisis. However the stresses of the last eighteen months have expanded this understanding Mary Beth to a much broader populaVogel-Ferguson tion. “So many more people have realized that when you’re talking about trauma, you’re not just talking about people from vulnerable populations,” said Mary Beth Vogel-Ferguson, a research associate professor at the College of Social Work. “You’re not just talking about abused children or those living in poverty; you’re not just talking about survivors of domestic violence. You’re talking about the widely shared experience of anxiety and fear of going out and engaging in the world. You’re talking about not being able to visit elderly parents or gather to celebrate weddings, birthdays, and graduations. COVID touched everyone.”

Dr. Vogel-Ferguson underscored that though the impact for some has been increased stress and discomfort rather than trauma, every person has been affected in a way that has not been experienced in our lifetimes. She hopes this opens the door for greater understanding of how trauma-informed approaches can help everyone.

As the pandemic continues, Dr. Vogel-Ferguson has become even more committed to establish a center where organizations and individuals could find evidence-based resources, support, and sector-specific information regarding resources available in Utah to support the trauma-informed approach. “We need to keep this going—we can’t let the current crisis cause us to lose sight of our long-term goals,” she said. “Hard things are going to continue to happen to people and we need to be better prepared as a society to support our community in managing through difficult times. What better way to do that than to have people already trained and aware of the trauma responses so we can mitigate the impact? We can do this—together!”

Trauma-Informed Teachers for Tots

Alysse Loomis, assistant professor in the College of Social Work, didn’t start her career in research. She started with trauma care. Initially she trained to work with adults, helping them come to terms with trauma they had experiAlysse Loomis enced. Then she had a realization—if we intervene earlier to treat trauma, perhaps we could have an even more profound effect in our treatment. This led her to focus her work on adolescents. And then at some point in her training she thought, perhaps if we intervene even earlier, we could have an even stronger effect. Eventually, this thought process led her to working with the youngest among us—kids from birth to age 6. Dr. Loomis’ latest research looks at how different types of trauma training for preschool teachers impact their trauma-informed attitudes and behaviors. The results from her most recent study on the matter offer encouraging insights and direction for the future. They suggest that many teachers already have some sort of experience with trauma-informed trainings, and that teachers who received any self-based training—that is training that helps teachers understand how their own trauma responses might come out in the classroom, or how a student’s trauma might impact them—are more likely to have stronger trauma-informed attitudes. Self-based training is also the type of training the teachers in her study were most interested in receiving, though it was the type of training they were least likely to have received. Because many schools are already doing trauma-informed trainings, Dr. Loomis is hopeful these changes will be relatively easy to implement. “A small shift to include a self-reflection element in these trainings could make a big difference for both the teacher and the kids in the classroom.”