From the Editor—Forbidden Words

It sounds like something out of the dystopian vision of George Orwell’s 1984. At both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) more generally, the following seven words or phrases are banned (or are rumored to be banned) from use in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget:

“Vulnerable”

“Entitlement”

“Diversity”

“Transgender”

“Fetus”

“Evidence-Based”

“Science-Based”

This news item from The Washington Post (Sun & Eilperin, 2017) was what finally shocked me out of my current events-induced depression and writer’s block to write this editorial. The article goes on to explain that CDC analysts were offered substitute language for some of these terms, such as “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” There were no substitutions proffered for other forbidden words.

HHS spokesperson Matt Lloyd told The Washington Post that the Department “will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans” and “encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.” However, there seems to be little hope that the current administration will continue the Obama administration’s commitment to diversity, fairness, equity across race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender.

Social workers, social work educators, and the social work profession as a whole should be alarmed by the banning of language that is central to our code of ethics, educational standards, and mission. I hope my colleagues will join me in using these words, all of these words, in our scholarly communication, in our teaching, in communication within our communities, with government officials and elected representatives, and in advocacy for the populations we serve. Please join me in resisting attempts to control the use of language so central to our profession. Please work these forbidden words into your daily conversations, lectures, and writing.

This issue of JSWE offers a collection of conceptual pieces, empirical studies, and two teaching notes. In the first of two conceptual pieces, Knight and Gitterman (“Merging micro and macro intervention: Social work practice with groups in the community”) describe how micro and macro interventions can be integrated through social work practice with groups and assert that such interventions are ideally suited to promote both individual empowerment and community change. In the second conceptual article, McLane-Davison, Quinn, Hardy, and Smith (“The power of sum: An Accountability Sistah Circle”) use duoethnography to provide a narrative of first-generation Black women scholars’ creation of a virtual peer mentorship and scholarship support.

There are seven quantitative studies: Fedina, Lee, and de Tablan (“MSW graduates’ readiness to respond to intimate partner violence”) examine the relationships among factors associated with social workers’ preparedness to respond to intimate partner violence. Pitner, preparedness, Lackey, and Duvall (“A dedicated diversity course or an infusion model? Exploring which strategy is more effective in social work pedagogy”) use a quasi-experimental design to explore whether a dedicated diversity and social justice course or diversity and social justice curricular infusion are more effective in achieving diversity and social justice competencies. Held, Cuellar, and Heffron (“A study of social work students’ knowledge and perceptions of stages of Latino immigration”) explore social work students’ experiences with and perceptions of Latino immigration and analyze how students’ perceived preparedness to work with Latino immigrants corresponds with their knowledge of hardships during each immigration stage. Kodaka and colleagues (“Current implementation of and opinions and concerns regarding suicide education for social work undergraduate students in Japan: A cross-sectional study”) explore current implementation status of and opinions and concerns regarding suicide education at schools of social work in Japan. Fortune, Rogers, and Williamson (“Effects of an integrative field seminar for MSW students”) use quasi-experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of seminars intended to help students with the difficult task of integrating learning between field and class. Granruth and colleagues (“Changing social work students’ perceptions of the role of government in policy class”) explore changes in social work students’ perception of a supportive role of government and their beliefs in a just world after one policy course. A final quantitative study by Doran and Bagdasaryan (“Infusing financial capability and asset building content into a community organizing class”) presents a community organization course redesigned to include finances and evaluates changes in students’ comfort with finances.

This issue of JSWE also features three qualitative studies. Mehrotra, Tecle, Ha, Ghneim, and Gringeri (“Challenges to bridging field and classroom instruction: Exploring field instructors’ perspectives on macro practice”) aimed to gain perspectives from field instructors regarding macro social work and the integration of macro practice into their work with practicum students. Liechty (“Exploring use of self: Moving beyond definitional challenges”) used focus groups of BSW educators toward development of a definition for “use of self” in social work. And Grady and colleagues (“Recent social work practitioners’ understanding and use of evidence-based practice and empirically supported treatments”) evaluated the effectiveness of CSWE’s emphasis on research on newly trained social workers’ use of evidence-based practice and empirically supported interventions/treatments in the field.

Wrapping up this issue of JSWE are two excellent teaching notes: Grise-Owens, Miller, Escobar-Ratliff, and George (“Teaching self-care and wellness as a professional practice skill: A curricular case example”) describe an MSW program’s implementation of teaching self-care as a core practice skill. This curricular innovation stems from the increasing literature documenting the deleterious effects of burnout in professional helping and the need to address this concern in educational curricula. And Kang and O’Neill (“Constructing critical conversations: A model for facilitating classroom dialogue for critical learning”) present the critical conversations model for facilitating difficult classroom conversations about issues such as power and privilege, oppression, and structural inequities. The model provides flexible scaffolding for instructors to navigate through classroom tensions and capitalize on spontaneous learning opportunities.