Showing papers on "Leadership development published in 1978"

Statewide Academic Planning for Social Work Education: A Case Study

Abstract: Statewide and regional educational planning has become a necessity in the light of budget cutbacks, mal-distribution of manpower and pressures for accountability. This case study describes one statewide planning experience and identifies implications for academic outreach, faculty organizing, faculty leadership development, educational planning, developing common language between academic and human service agencies, and projecting manpower needs. A profession which fails to plan for the future educational needs of its members will suffer from both confusion and public suspicion. The time has come for social work education to recognize the need for statewide and regional planning for the future education of social workers and related personnel at all levels of the educational continuum from high school through graduate school. These observations are based on both national trends and statewide issues affecting higher education and the demands of our human service delivery system. We must recognize our involvement as one profession in a large human service industry. On the national level, we in the social work profession must come to grips with the fact that the growth of social service program will continue at a very slow pace for the foreseeable future. We are moving from a period of domestic program expansion of the 1960's to a period of significant program consolidation in the 1970's and 1980's. This era of consolidation can either mean an improvement of existing services or it can mean a radical curtailment of services through social program extermination. The future of both social services and social work education rests in the hands of the Congress of the United States as well as the state legislatures around the country.