PSU Magazine Fall 1994

Teresa Taylor is program director of the Community Resource Center at Portland Impact, one of the county's shelter agencies. 'The level of stress in a family who's homeless is just phenomenal," Taylor says. "I've seen parents who handle it absolutely as well as they can for the children. I've seen a lot of really great parents come through homeless programs, but even in those families the children are experiencing high levels of stress." Taylor says there's been a shift in the last few years in the philosophy behind public social work in Multnomah County, away from handing out elitist and patronizing expertise and toward "strength-focused case management." Strength-focused case management is "about helping a family identify what their barriers are to stability and helping them address those barriers," Taylor says. The Impact staff helps clients remember times in their lives when they were coping well and identi– fy the factors that enabled them to do so. These could range from having relatives providing child care to having a steady job. Focusing on social support systems and qualities of personal strength helps clients create a plan of action to become housed and stable. According to Taylor, the EIP program is a major asset to the county's family shelter system. "Our only hangup with that program is that we can't get more kids in faster," she says. "When the Early Intervention Program is on board, we trust that that piece is being handled well." Impact staff work most closely with EIP outreach worker Kaye Exo MSW '89. "She is fantastic," Taylor says. "She has this nice balance, both very compassionate and very professional." Exo has worked in mental health for 11 years and says she finds satisfaction in "working alongside families and not for families-helping people to see what their resources are within themselves." The EIP team members work closely together and provide each other with the support that makes it possible to work "in the trenches" with highly stressed families. Along with Exo, the EIP team includes PSU social work graduates Lorraine Rowlette MSW '91, Deb Stone MSW '90, and Debbie Moussa MSW '90. Also with EIP are recreational therapist Angi Garnett, registered nurse Marsha Knutson, and movement therapist Lynne Phelps. They acknowledge that the problems of such a vulnerable population can sometimes seem overwhelming. Yet they maintain hope. "I have a strong belief in families," says Rowlette. "The interventions are small but they can make a shift. If I adjust my lens, I usually can see changes." Stone finds satisfaction in "relation– ship building with homeless adults. It's the quality of the relationship that matters most to me," she says. EIP director Anderson echoes these ideals. After working for ten years in parent education with relatively table families, she "kind of got bored with A shift in practice it," she says. Now she enjoys working with more challenging problems, but acknowledges that this kind of direct service can stir up painful conflicts that don't come up in more detached work behind the lines. "You can touch the child. If that child cries, the rears are going to be on your hand," Anderson says. Faced with seemingly incurable problems, she asks her elf, "What' one thing that's doable? If that doesn't work, I'll try to do something else." The social workers are committed to reweaving a raveled social fabric to keep parents from feeling isolated and children from being lost. D (Valerie Brown, a Portland freelance writer, is a frequent contributor to PSU Magazine.) The PSU Graduate School of Social Work has sent nearly 2,500 graduates into the profession since its founding in 1961. Each year about 300 students are enrolled in the master's program and about seven in the three-year-old doctoral program. Nearly half the students go into agency work with children and families after graduation. About a quarter work in mental health programs, and smaller percentages work with elderly population and in health care delivery systems. The last few years have seen a shift in the direction many students want to take, away from private clinical practice and toward working with vulnerable populations. "We have been working on a strong agency-ba ed emphasis, particularly emphasis for moving people into the public sector," says Dean James Ward. 'That's where many of the problems are, where a great need is." Joy Rhodes MSW '76, director of the school's practicum program, says "We've been really impressed with how many of our students want to work with poor people. We thought they all wanted to get clinical training and do behavioral medicine in a managed care environment. We do have lots of students who want to move into those career paths, but we were pretty surprised at how many students wanted to be at Sisters of the Road Cafe, or at Mental Health Services West." When the school realized the direction its students wanted to go, it had to revise its practicum sy tern to accommodate them. This was difficult at first, Rhodes says, because "students have to be supervised by an MSW with at least two years of experience, and not many homeless services have those qualified supervisors." The solution was to develop a pro bono program in which qualified social workers would "partner up with an agency that had somebody with a lot of knowledge of people who were living in the streets but didn't have the graduate degree." It has turned out well for all concerned. About 20 students a year are placed in practicums at such agencies. Mental Health Services West has been a strong supporter of the program, hosting seminars, making special presentations, and taking three to four interns a year. D FALL 1994 15