Resilience & Renewal: A Year-End Recap for 2025 from Your Workforce Manager
Monday, December 22, 2025
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 As 2025 draws to a close, we want to extend our deepest gratitude to all of you who turned Compassion into Action this year. While our state has been facing critical behavioral health workforce shortages and shifting policy landscapes, your dedication has been the bedrock of our profession. We have been able to rely on each other throughout the year to process the good with the bad on both the micro and macro scales of our profession and that is truly worth celebrating! We are honored and excited to continue supporting the workforce development and advocacy work of NASW-Michigan, as the Michigan Health-Endowment Fund awarded us another two years of grant funding to develop licensure coalitions, expand research, and to create an alternative exam option. Before we dive headfirst into the new year I wanted to take this moment to reflect on the wins as well as the challenges that we all faced together in 2025.
Let’s Look Back
We started the new year with a new administration federally and a new state legislature. While we were disappointed that our licensure bills did not cross the finish line in 2024, we did not give up. On the micro level here at NASW-Michigan we spent the year working with our coalition partners at the Community Mental Health Association, the Deans and Directors of Michigan’s Schools of Social Work, and numerous other fierce advocates for licensure modernization strategizing the best path forward. Our Policy and Advocacy Manager and Executive Director had countless meetings with Representatives and Senators from across the state to provide context and education related to the importance of licensure modernization. Simultaneously Representative Edwards put up a bill focused on extension of the limited license renewal cap which we hope to see some movement on in 2026.
During Social Work Month in March we took the opportunity to reflect on the theme of “Compassion + Action” - something that we can continue to consider and practice past 2025. Around the time of social work month, Governor Whitmer and LARA came out with their “Cutting the Red Tape” Report on workforce and licensure reform. Much of their findings and plans for Michigan were aligned with our efforts - you can read the full recap here. We also published an update on the Scope of Practice for Limited Licensed social workers in Michigan that we hope to follow up with more similar content in 2026. If you have ideas or interest in helping with a blog series on these and other workforce related topics, reach out to Jordan at jfreeman.naswmi@socialworkers.org .
Another notable update from 2025 relates to the Social Work Interstate Compact. While we are putting the full-force of our efforts towards licensure modernization, NASW-Michigan continues to follow the movement of the commission for the Social Work Interstate Compact. The update that can be found here continues to ring true - while we do not have compact legislation introduced currently we have been having meetings in preparation for that in 2026. During 2025 we joined the National task-force that is working on a more uniform push towards an alternative pathway. With a unified recommendation for this it is our hope that the Compact will also incorporate an alternative pathway for compact licensure. This task force hopes to put out a survey in 2026!
The Workforce & Working Conditions Workgroup was busy in 2025 with a notable deliverable met with the spring 2025 Supervisor survey that went out. Over 200 social work supervisors completed the survey, providing us with a wealth of demographic information as well as insight and wisdom related to how supervision is being provided across the state. For the recap on this survey click here. Watch for more related to supervision standards and our hopeful push for more solid supervision recommendations in 2026!
In November, we had the privilege of hosting Dr. Tyler Gibb from Western Michigan University and his colleague, Nicole Alveraz (lead author on their project) to present on their research that focuses on ethical violations across the healthcare fields. Their ethics training they hosted for our social work community started a wonderful conversation related to how professionals are getting into disciplinary trouble and how social work matches up to some of our colleagues in other health fields. If you missed it you can watch the recording here. This connects closely with the work that we have been doing looking at disciplinary actions specifically in Michigan’s social workers. As a state that has about a third of social workers who were “grandparented in” and therefore did not pass the ASWB exam and are practicing alongside social workers who have, we are in a unique position to do some analysis. We hope to finish this research in 2026 with our continued funding award from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.
Looking Forward
As we start the new year we have a lot of work to look forward to! With the continued funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, we will continue to advocate and promote our Licensure Modernization work in the hopes of making Michigan a more equitable place for social workers. Michigan boasts over 20 schools of social work and we want to meet all of our new social workers with a process that is accessible, equitable and reasonable for them to enter the profession and be able to STAY in the profession through licensure.
We will continue to encourage and welcome engagement in our workgroups and have some exciting projects in the works in 2026. Workforce & Working Conditions Committee: This group meets on the 4th Thursday of the month and has workgroups for supervision, salary and working conditions. All three workgroups have special projects they are working on. Of particular note is a salary survey that will be coming out in the spring in collaboration with Ferris State. Private Practice Workgroup: This group meets on the first Friday of the month and is a great resource for clinicians who are working in private practice or who are interested in making this career shift. Legislative & Social Policy Committee: This group meets on the 3rd Friday of the month and recommends Board positions on social and legislative action and develops the Chapter’s legislative advocacy agenda. The Committee educates and engages the membership in the legislative process, administrative actions, and ballot initiatives that affect social workers and their client populations. NASW has a strong commitment to political action and advocacy and this Committee provides a way for the Chapter and its members to engage in critical political issues.
In addition to our committees and workgroups, we already have some great work-force related events on our calendar for 2026!
Additionally, we know that the state’s Board of Social Work has seats that are opening in 2026 and we encourage social workers who are interested in being involved in disciplinary actions to consider applying for a seat at the table. They are not currently listed on their website but check back here in the new year to apply!
We hope you take some time in the last few weeks of the year to do a similar reflection of the year we are ending and the one that we are welcoming in! Our hopes for 2026 involve connecting with all of you and helping further support, foster and cherish the social work profession - not only in Michigan but in our new chapter partners of Alaska and the International Chapter. We hope to learn more in 2026 related to how best to serve all of our members and look to the National office to provide that support and information. While transitions are often difficult we are hoping with optimism that we can use all of our social work skills and values to come together. Have a wonderful holiday season - see you in 2026!
Notable Resources and Reports from 2025
ASWB recently published their 2024 pass rate data Michigan Health Council - Behavioral Healthcare Workforce Comparison Report Utah is accepting public comment on their Mental Health Professional Practice Act Rule (R156-60e) that would be impacting their Social Work supervision requirements by expanding eligibility requirements for their supervisors, creating formal clinical supervision training pathways, requiring ongoing training for supervisors, instating an automatic loss of supervisor status for social workers who are disciplined, as well as more structured supervision contracts and duties for both supervisors and supervisees. This movement is validating as we continue to explore similar supervision standard recommendations for Michigan in 2026.
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