Continuing education
Surviving in Challenging Times: Assessing, Sustaining, and Changing Programs and Organizations
A continuing education activity presented by the VCU School of Social Work. This program is designed for social workers and their community partners.
- Course description and objectives
- Agenda
- Program session
- About the facilitator
- Cost and registration
Course description and objectives
Human service programs and organizations are caught in the midst of a rapidly changing economic environment that often challenges our basic assumptions about who we are as professional social workers within a complex service delivery system. There is little time for social workers, much less clients, to step back and assess what is happening in the environments we work in or where we interact. Yet, this is a time in which it is critically important to understand change, to be able to assess the environment in which we work, to focus on what needs to change and to be able to strategize how to survive. This workshop is designed for professional social workers who need to know how to handle tough situations that impact their work in human service programs and organizations, whether it is through staff cutbacks, increased use of volunteers, rationing of services or a variety of other changes. Participants will gain tools to use in understanding, assessing, sustaining, and changing programs and organizations. Most importantly, they will be provided with multiple strategies and activities they can use to survive (both personally and professionally) and to help their clients survive in challenging times.
Objectives
After attending this three hour continuing education event, participants will:
- Have a better understanding of programs and organizations in which they work
- Receive practical tools to use in assessing what they can change
- Identify at least one priority change they want to make
- Learn strategies and activities they can use to effect change, deal with conflict and take care of themselves
Category I contact hours: 3
Continuing education units: 0.3
Agenda
2-3:20 p.m.
Understanding
Participants will be introduced to a multi-cultural framework that includes different ways to view program and organizational cultures. Participants will identify the predominant culture in which they work and the underlying assumptions that guide behaviors within that culture. We will talk about the characteristics that make these cultures unique. Participants will be asked to identify those characteristics within their programmatic or organizational cultures that they want to sustain at all costs – that give that work environment its identity and keep that identity consistent with its image in the community.
Assessing
Two assessment tools will be provided as handouts: a comprehensive organizational assessment tool and a tool designed to assess culture. Just as individuals have unique personalities, so do groups, programs and organizations. Social workers are constantly encountering and interacting with diverse and rapidly changing programmatic and organizational cultures. Skill in assessing unique group, program and organization cultures is a precursor to determining how to sustain valuable cultural characteristics and how a professional can embed new cultural elements intended to either sustain a cherished culture or to effect organizational change.
3:20-3:30 p.m.
Break
3:30-5 p.m.
Focusing
Three types of variables will be identified: l) controllable variables over which one has control, 2) contingencies with which one can work to make change under certain conditions, and 3) constraints which one cannot possibly hope to change. Participants will be asked to write down the things they want to change, categorize them as controllable variables, contingencies and constraints. Focusing on at least one change, participants will identify the type of change this involves. For controllable variables, what does one need to do to make this happen now? If this is a contingency, does it involve a change in leadership/management, program design, or organizational culture? If this is a constraint over which one has no control, how can one maintain professional integrity under this constraint?
Strategizing
Different strategies can be used, depending on what type of change has been identified or what has to happen to sustain existing programs. Participants will be given a list of different types of evidence-based strategies and tactics used by human service supervisors, managers, and leaders. Cutback management strategies will be highlighted, including the importance of leadership and communication. Participants will chose strategies that they can use and share with their clients to cope individually and collectively in their current workplaces in challenging times.
Closure and evaluation
Program session
May 1, 2009
2 to 5 p.m.
VCU University Student Commons – Richmond Salons
907 Floyd Avenue
Richmond, Virginia 23284
Phone: (804) 828-1981
About the facilitator
F. Ellen Netting, M.S.S.W., Ph.D. is professor and Samuel S. Wurtzel Endowed Faculty Chair in Social Work at VCU’s School of Social Work in Richmond, Va. For more than 16 years, she has taught in the B.S.W., M.S.W. and Ph.D. programs, having previously taught 10 years at Arizona State University.
During her tenure at VCU she has received multiple awards for her teaching, research and service, including VCU’s Distinguished Scholar Award, the Council on Social Work Education’s Recent Achievements in Social Work Award, the Distinguished Faculty Award from the VCU Graduate Student Association, the Feminist Scholarship Award from the Council on Social Work Education Commission on the Role and Status of Women, Fellow status in The Gerontological Society of America, and election to the National Academies of Practice as a Distinguished Scholar of Social Work.
Netting received her B.A. degree in sociology from Duke University, her M.S.S.W. from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her practice experience includes directing a county office on aging and senior citizens center, directing a community-based Foster Grandparent Program, and serving as the evaluator and trainer in a 16-country area agency on aging. In the latter position, she helped develop the first long-term care ombudsman program in eastern Tennessee. She is currently on the Board of Directors for the Greater Richmond Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and on the State Long Term Care Ombudsman Advisory Council.
Her scholarship has focused on health and human service delivery issues for frail elders, as well as nonprofit management concerns, primarily in religiously affiliated agencies. She is the co-author or co-editor of 16 books and has published more than 160 book chapters and refereed journal articles. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Nonprofit Management and Leadership, The Journal of Community Practice, The Journal of Applied Gerontology, The Journal of Gerontological Social Work, and The Journal of Religious Gerontology and reviews articles for numerous journals in the areas of social work, nonprofit management and aging.
Cost and registration
Regular: $55
Student: $30
Senior (65 years old and older): $45
VCU faculty and field instructor: $45
VCU Alumni Association member: $45
» Join the VCU Alumni Association
Agency group of three or more: $45 each
Agency group of 10 or more: Contact Linda Gupta at (804) 828-3405.
*Lunch is not included. The event begins immediately after the VCU School of Social Work’s
Community Partners’ Appreciation Luncheon.
Registration opens April 1, 2009.
Registration closes April 28, 2009 at 5 p.m. Payment must be received by close of registration.*
*Please print a copy of your online registration. Regular attendees may pay by credit card. Other attendee types must follow the directions for their attendee type at the bottom of their printed registration. In order to be eligible for a discounted rate, you must mail or fax the requested documentation. Please mail your check along with requested documentation to the address on that page. Alternatively, once requested documentation has been submitted, call Angela Basmajian at (804) 828-0403 to pay by credit card. Please be advised that refunds will not be processed until after the event. Refunds may take up to four weeks.
Register online at www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/conf/socialwork/register.asp?cid=89.
Participants may register for CEUs by completing a CEU registration form and making a check payable to the VCU School of Social Work in the amount of $15 on the day of the event. No cash or credit cards will be accepted for this purpose.
Questions?
Contact Angela Basmajian at (804) 828-0403 or sswce@vcu.edu.