As Social Work Month comes to an end for 2025 we are left to reflect on how we can continue to live out the theme of “Compassion + Action” beyond March and in all the unique settings that we work as social workers. Currently, alongside my continued work on licensure modernization I am working with our partners and colleagues to strengthen our supervision standards in the state of Michigan. While NASW does have the Best Practice Standards in Social Work Supervision, there are no consistent licensure and training requirements for supervision across the United States. In Michigan specifically, we have absolutely no training requirements for licensure supervision, which leads to inconsistent mentoring for our next generation of practitioners.
This presents us with a unique and exciting opportunity to develop more enhanced supervision requirements in Michigan. Our next step in this project involves an ask from fully licensed social workers in Michigan who are currently or recently have been supervisors. We will be sending out a survey where we hope you will share your experiences and opinions. We will use this as we continue to develop recommendations for supervision standards and work with our coalition partners and LARA. Watch for this survey over email and on our socials on March 31 - or reach out to me directly at jfreeman.naswmi@socialworkers.org, and I will personally make sure it is sent to you by email.
I hope that you have taken the opportunity over the course of the past month to reflect on what “Compassion + Action” means to you. I have reflected as well on the importance of putting this into practice in the ways that I serve the larger social work community. Through the workforce lens, I think that “Compassion + Action” relates to taking opportunities that present themselves for:
Connection with other social workers to offer enthusiastic support
Engage in often hard conversations related to ethical dilemmas
Advocate with our employers and agencies for fair compensation and improved working conditions
Get involved with workplace unionization
Participate (not just clicking through online learning) in continuing education that energizes you
Take any extra time you have to mentor younger social workers at your workplace
Stay up to date on the political battles that are being fought for social justice, human rights and workers rights and engage in advocacy work whenever you have the capacity
NASW-Michigan hopes to support you in these efforts and there are a variety of opportunities that are available to you as members:
Join one of our many committees of Board of Directors
Attend any of our numerous and ongoing networking or continuing education programs
Participate in advocacy work by following our action alerts
Share your story
Nominate yourself or a colleague for a future award
Compassion is part of our Social Work DNA - at NASW-Michigan we are committed to continuing to give you opportunities to put it into Action - long past Social Work Month!
If you are going to be attending the upcoming NASW-Michigan conference on April 3 and 4 in Novi be sure to stop by and say hello! I would love to connect!
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