CRISP: Nancy Humphreys Urges Political Activism for Social Workers

Many students and alumni of the University of Connecticut School of Social Work gathered to pay tribute to Nancy A. Humphreys, who is retiring from her tenure as founder and director of the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work. During the celebration, she reminded students on why political social work is essential to the field.

Her message: social workers need to be involved in all phases of the political process. She gives three reasons. One, political activity is part of the profession’s mission to be both about helping people to change and working to change society. Second, she believes social workers are uniquely trained to serve in the political arena. And third, because federal, state and local policy-making and legislation increasingly has to do with social services issues, social workers’ knowledge, experience, and understanding of the social welfare system are essential to effective policy making. The bottom line is that if social workers are not willing to participate in politics we forfeit our right to complain about the fairness of the system.

Related Article [October 2015]: Legislative Field Placements & Social Work's Impact on Policy