From ACSWA board member Mike Brooks:

I’m in Calgary for the 24^th Annual Institute of the Employee Assistance Society of North America (EASNA), which is an employee assistance trade association. This Institute attracts employer representatives, employee assistance providers and other “human capital” experts to learn about and discuss issues relating to the well-being of those in the workforce. Clinical social workers are among those most prominently engaged in providing services to those in the workforce who experience mental health and substance use disorders. Speakers and workshops will cover the integration of wellness and EAP, evidence-based tools for return-to-work programs, psychological health and safety, and EAP consulting in a digital world. I’m looking forward to encountering and discussing new ideas and checking out the exhibit hall. Let me know what interests you, and I’ll try to address your queries and comments, as well as do some reporting by Twitter.

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ACSWA’s Mike Brooks talks about hot topics being discussed at the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare Conference, including the role technology is playing in healthcare reform.

The “healthcare revolution” is consumer – and technology – driven in using information to inform healthcare, says Linda Rosenberg, MSW, President/CEO of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

Healthcare is the least transparent industry in America, says former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Consumers have no idea what they are buying when they buy it, and have little or no idea upfront who will pay the bill and how much that bill will be.

Increasingly, consumers use info technology (IT) to access healthcare. They use the Web to research ailments before, or instead of, seeing a doctor. Entities using IT will be interfacing with the consumers; others won’t. Provider systems must increase transparency and communicate with caregivers. Community services using IT can coordinate care and create efficiencies. These changes will collapse the current healthcare silos and lead toward coordinated prevention and care.

3000 people are attending the National Council Conference to hear about solutions. In his keynote, Daschle said, “If healthcare reform were a football field, we’re on the 30 yard line, with 70 yards to go.”

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Mike Brooks, BCD, and ACSWA
Mike Brooks is a clinical social worker and ACSWA staffer. ACSWA, the brand new American Clinical Social Work Association, is the on-line home of Clinical Social Work nationwide, connecting you with your peers and helping you advance your career.

On behalf of ACSWA, I’m attending the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare’s 2012 National Council Conference & Expo, held April 15-17 in Chicago with 2500+ attendees getting the lowdown on community mental health and addictions. Broadcast live online are sessions keynoted by former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle; NIMH director Tom Insel; innovation expert Daniel Pink; Surgeon General David Satcher; and addictions recovery guru William C. Moyers.

ACSWA on the forefront of mental health and addiction issues

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From ACSWA board member Tom Kenemore, Ph.D., BCD.

I’d like to kick off a discussion about the most important role of clinical social workers.

We seem to have been trying to approximate the “high end” professional characteristics of psychotherapists and to set ourselves apart from colleagues who do “less prestigious” case management or child welfare work. I’d like to suggest that we need to change our approach and get more focused on the mission of helping oppressed populations and changing social conditions that negatively impact them.

Stay with me.

Putting aside status-seeking within the imagined psychotherapy community, clinical social workers can view certain approaches—clinical, psychotherapeutic, mental-health, and behavioral-health among them—as a few of many that facilitate empowerment. Since the days (1990s) of Specht and Courtney, there has been a fresh wave of progressive practice theory and practice-related literature that supports this mission in ways that are friendly to clinical social work, therapy, counseling, and behavioral and mental health approaches. Critical social work is one new movement that fuses the micro and macro. It places clinical practice in the context of helping individuals identify and overcome internalized oppression. Bob Mullaly has developed an interesting practice approach; another is a framework created by Stanley Houston. You may want to check them out.

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By Michael Brooks

The ACMHA (the College for Behavioral Health Leadership) conference theme is “Healthy Supports, Healthy Communities: Improving the Health of Communities Through Social Supports.”  This conference is different from the usual pattern of expert-audience talker-listener. Here, the keynoter (King Davis from the University of Texas at Austin) kicked off a two-day set of discussion groups. We are here to discuss, and absorb. The organizers put us into “working groups” focused on five areas of “community”: urban, rural, workplace, faith-based, and schools. Our task is to figure out how programs including mental health, social support, and interactions can create better health and wellness in our communities. There are no rules or leaders; the discussion goes wherever the group wants it to. I’m not sure where this will end up, but it seems like a good experiment which may foster some new thinking on these subjects. It is especially interesting to see all of us functioning at the same level, as discussants, regardless of our titles or institutional roles.

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Day 1 – Mental Health Insights

By Michael Brooks

Tue, 3/20/12 – I am in Charleston, SC, representing the Center for Clinical Social Work, attending my first meeting as a board member of ACMHA, the College of Mental Health Administrators. It is the day before the 2012 ACMHA Leadership Summit, the annual gathering of leaders concerned with mental health and substance use conditions. Attendees represent public and private administrators of services; national, state, and county government; professional organizations addressing mental health and substance use; managed behavioral health organizations; research and academia; and consumer and family organizations.

This year’s theme is “transitions and transformations…that is what health care is all about”. We’ll be discussing the movement from an individual perspective to a focus on the collective power of people living, learning, working, and healing together. Attendees come together at ACMHA to brainstorm, discuss, and find common ground. Here, these often-competing entities engage in productive dialogue. ACMHA has incubated important programs, including the Annapolis Coalition on Workforce Development and the Coalition for Whole Health. It’s exciting to be with such a vibrant group, and I’m hoping to make a big contribution at the board level.

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From Director of Policy and Business Development for the Center for Clinical Social Work/ABE, Michael Brooks, MSW, BCD

Supervision is Key for Clinical Social Work Training

Clinical social work has a long tradition of training via supervision. Every state in the U.S. requires that a new graduate to work under supervision for a specified period of years. Thanks to its codification in law, clinical training has survived the switch to the managed care and tight agency budgets that have, at the same time, nearly killed off supervision in the form of leadership training.

Leadership training is the process by which younger practitioners are identified and supervised toward assuming leadership positions in agencies, hospitals, and other such settings. But there is no financial reward for doing this, and little interest from the insurance industry or strapped agencies. Therefore, as large numbers of the baby-boomer generation retire, their places are not being filled by younger persons. This issue was the subject of a discussion sponsored by SAMHSA (the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Administration) in 2005, but lack of funding meant that no plan for resuscitation of “leadership development” was formulated.

Several national organizations have created mentoring programs, formal and informal, to attempt to identify and train future leaders, at a time that mental health leadership is aging. They advise that it is still possible and important to “succession-plan” and develop the next generation of leadership. This does not have to be an external, formalized, expensive project. Anyone in a position of authority can identify young leaders in an organization, agency or practice. The idea is to make time to cultivate them: talk about their futures, involve them in planning and leadership activities. Nurture their interests, listen to their concerns.

We can wait around for “someone” to set up trainings and programs, or we can just do it ourselves. Yes, it’s another thing to think about, to fit into a day that is already short on hours. But if what we do really has value and meaning, then we should be working to supervise a next generation of competent clinical social workers to take our place. ACSWA forums might be just the place to begin such an effort.

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Recent graduate of Salem State College School of Social Work in Massachusetts, Marisa discusses her education.


Marisa talks about some of the factors that led her to pursue a career in Clinical Social Work.

Marisa discusses an intervention that she led with a client.

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What Will the Affordable Care Act Mean For You?

In 2014 what type of work will you be doing? No matter where you are geographically or demographically, it’s a good bet that you won’t be practicing clinical social work as you are now. The federal Affordable Care Act guarantees that things will change—and so do the arrival of the new DSM-5, the new ICD-10, and the 2014 deadline for electronic health records (EHRs). All will bring big changes in how and where we practice.

The Affordable Care Act is intended to spread affordable health care to more of the nation’s populace. But wider insurance coverage is just one goal: the Act is also a “visions statement” about a new health care delivery system for America—one that will replace this country’s current “sick care” conglomeration of systems that may or may not work well together. To “bend the cost curve,” the Act aims to create a healthier population rather than treat sickness caused by factors that are largely preventable. This will have profound consequences for the delivery of and payment for health care.

Those who work for health plans like Kaiser have already seen glimpses of this future. EHRs are a standard at Kaiser, which has geared up to provide health education and early intervention. Kaiser doctors communicate with each other, and the pharmacy is included in the direct communication. Mental health services are delivered in the MH Clinic and also on the medical side of the operation. This sort of “Accountable Care Organization” (ACO) is being touted as the new “health home” for people (or “consumers,” “clients,” or whatever the term will be).

What will your relationship be to the “health home”? Will clinical social workers work in ERs, assessing for MH trauma, along with physical trauma? Or will they/you be working in primary care offices, doing screenings and making referrals for specialty MH care, and clinically case managing the MH aspects of a consumer? Will people still pay privately when all (or many more) have insurance? How will you get your electronic health record software? Will you be an independent practitioner, or will it make more sense to be an employee?

All of these issues are now in play with health care changes and the Affordable Care Act. ACSWA is informing the policy discussion about the role of clinical social work, but you must be aware of that discussion, the implications of new modes of delivery, and the ways in which changes will likely be customized locally. Get involved in health care delivery in your community now, for “those who are not at the table are often on the menu”!

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