Editor’s note: This is an article from the Summer 1998 issue of UCLA Magazine.
I arrived at UCLA in 1958, a newly minted assistant professor, to find the then-School of Social Welfare housed in a Quonset hut of uncertain age near Kinsey Hall. Only 10 years old, the program had seven full-time faculty, less than 50 master’s students (all of whom had to pass a physical exam prior to registration) and faced questions about whether a research university should be involved in professional degree programs. In fact, more than 80 percent of social workers in the field did not have a master’s degree. On the upside, tuition for California residents was free. And so was the plentiful parking.
Things change. The Department of Social Welfare is now housed in the School of Public Policy and Social Research. It has18 full-time faculty, 268 master’s and doctoral students and an international reputation in social gerontology, child welfare and mental health, as well as for policy research on families, long-term care, welfare reform and social service delivery systems. Gone for good are any questions about the role of teaching social welfare in the university. So too, alas, is the free parking — though no relationship between the two phenomena has been demonstrated.
But the changes that have overtaken social work education, research and practice extend far beyond the numbers. Then, as now, social workers dealt with a wide variety of societal problems — the causes, consequences and interventions needed to address everything from poverty, crime and mental illness to child abuse, terminal illness and disability. But what has changed radically is the teaching and research emphasis.
When I first came to UCLA, psychology had an important influence on social work. Freud was widely read. The “in” terms were ego, superego and id. The purpose of social work was to help individuals and families adjust to society, and there were constant, unresolved arguments concerning the role of social workers in psychotherapy, counseling and casework. The general consensus was working one-on-one was the most efficacious model, which meant that although many of our graduates went to work in social agencies (almost half the field agencies where students worked in mandatory internships were state and federal agencies), many others chose private practice. Less popular were community organization and administration.
All that began to change in the 1960s with the coming of the civil rights movement and the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty. Suddenly, discrimination, racism, disadvantage and oppression were major issues. The Watts Riots in 1965 not only caught most of us at UCLA by surprise, but they wrought major changes within the School of Social Welfare. Minority enrollment became a priority for the first time, encouraged by the availability of federal funding and the belated recognition that the university had very little knowledge and almost no contact with large segments of Los Angeles and surrounding communities.
There was a proliferation of conferences, “T-groups,” encounter groups and games such as “Star Power” to bring individuals and groups together to “dialogue” and gain new insights by airing out differences — with varying degrees of success. One memorable gathering held in Ackerman Union assembled a group of usual suspects — social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists and students — to address the theme of better understanding through the use of counseling, group encounters, education and research. The good feelings quickly evaporated when Berkeley sociologist Bob Blauner pointed his finger at the crowd and insisted the assembled experts, not the rioters, were the real problem. It was a dramatic use of his internal colonial model, which held that the establishment was the oppressor and that members of the audience benefited from racial stratification. His model — or accusation, you could call it — called for uncomfortable soul searching on the part of the audience, many of whom disagreed with him. But it made clear that blaming the victim was not the only answer.
Far more dramatic was what I refer to as the Mother of All Encounter Groups, a tragicomic effort by Dr. Alex Norman D.S.W. ’74 to bring together members of the Los Angeles Police Department and local black militants, with our faculty in tow to provide insight and direction. True to the hard-nosed stance of then-chief William Parker, who had branded rioters in 1965 as “monkeys in a zoo,” the LAPD participants arrived at the Santa Barbara hotel where the encounter was to take place in full uniform and heavily armed. The black activists took one look, headed out the door and returned some hours later with their own weapons. I was the uneasy and unarmed assistant professor who addressed the assembled firepower. I can’t remember what I said, other than I wanted to go home as soon as possible. The LAPD abandoned any further encounter groups shortly thereafter.
Changes in our curriculum and faculty reflected the needs and tenor of the times; we added courses in racism, group conflict and cross-cultural practice and increased the number of women and people of color on the faculty. But it was not enough. At one faculty meeting, students marched in and read a list of non-negotiable demands. Tensions ran high, even as a variety of ethnic student caucuses were organized for the first time — groups that helped recruit students, provided a mutual support system and were helpful in opening communication to local minority communities.
The legacy of those changes is the department’s continuing distinctive emphasis on cross-cultural practice — a necessity in a city of such diversity as Los Angeles, where social workers must routinely deal with scores of ethnic groups. Our students, about half of whom are people of color, reflect that diversity — a far cry from the monochromic classes of the 1950s.
Today, instead of its original focus on preparation for public social service, the department now trains students to work in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. The addition of a Ph.D. program has greatly enhanced our research capabilities, and among the program’s 2,600 alumni are many who have gone on to distinguished academic careers around the world. Department faculty edit major professional journals, including Children and Youth Services Review, and have been repeatedly tapped for service at all levels of government — Fernando Torres-Gil recently served as the first-ever assistant secretary for aging in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The department as a whole is the recipient of a special commendation from the California Legislature for outstanding contributions to social policy and welfare reform — a role we continue to play as chief evaluators of state welfare reform and family preservation programs.
Perhaps the best short summation of the changes that have overtaken social work over the past 50 years was one I overheard at a recent Council on Social Work program. “We knew psychotherapy,” observed one veteran. “They know computers.” The observation provoked a hearty laugh. But having witnessed the changes myself, I know there is more than a grain of truth in it.
But some things remain constant. The department’s focus on issues affecting the most vulnerable, disadvantaged populations is as strong today as it was in 1958. Social work is still a profession largely peopled by women, who make up about 80 percent of our current students. And despite the lasting impact of the upheavals of the 1960s, clinical practice remains the most popular course of study. The need for trained social workers is still great: The U.S. Labor Department projects there will be more than 650,000 social workers by the year 2005, an increase of more than 30 percent.
Regrettably, the challenges we face remain constant as well. I remember lecturing the entering M.S.W. class of 1995 on the first day of a class titled, appropriately, Group Conflict. Suddenly, in the middle of the session, word of the verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial arrived. Black students rose to their feet and applauded; other students remained in their seats, looking stunned, even shocked. It was clear the divisions of race and ethnicity raised more than three decades ago in the Watts riots were still very much with us.
But at least we are no longer surprised by them. And who knows, those students searching for answers within the Department of Social Welfare just may solve them.
