Category: Licensure & Workforce
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35 States Have Joined the Social Work Compact. Workers Still Cannot Use It.
The Social Work Licensure Compact has achieved an impressive legislative count. By July 2026, 35 states had enacted compact legislation. Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Alaska were among the latest additions, and bills remained pending elsewhere. For advocates who spent years persuading legislatures that social workers should not have to repeat the same licensing process every…
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Social Work Does Not Have to Own Every Form of Helping
Social workers are often described as the people who do everything nobody else will do. They counsel families, respond to crises, navigate benefits, advocate in schools, support patients, organize communities, investigate abuse, help people find housing, supervise programs, interpret policy, and repair failures created elsewhere in government. The description is intended as praise. It is…
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North Carolina Declared Child Welfare Workforce Development Month. Now Fund the Workforce.
North Carolina has paired a September workforce proclamation with a revived social work student stipend program. That is meaningful progress, but a pipeline cannot compensate for weak retention, unmanageable caseloads, or inadequate supervision. North Carolina opened September by declaring Child Welfare Workforce Development Month. Proclamations are easy to dismiss as ceremonial, especially in a field…
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NYC Probation Is a Community-Safety Hub: Its First Deputy Commissioner Is a Social Worker
New York City’s Neighborhood Opportunity Network shows what public safety looks like when supervision, education, food access, art, employment, and neighborhood participation occupy the same civic space. First Deputy Commissioner Robert Eusebio’s career as a master’s-level social worker also highlights a professional path that social work education rarely treats with sufficient seriousness. When social workers…
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The Education Department Is Appealing the PSLF Ruling. Social Workers Should Not Plan on Legal Stability
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness dispute moved back into active litigation on August 27, 2026, when the U.S. Department of Education filed notice that it would appeal a federal decision vacating its new employer-eligibility rule. The appeal, reported by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators on August 28, will go to the U.S.…
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Pennsylvania’s 41-Point Behavioral Health Plan Will Fail Without Workforce Reform
Pennsylvania released a statewide behavioral-health action plan on August 5, 2026, after nearly three years of work by a 33-member council, a 25-member advisory committee, and more than 100 consulted residents and stakeholders across all 67 counties. The plan contains 41 recommendations and roughly 200 implementation steps organized around integration, access, workforce, accountability, equity, and…
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The New BLS Outlook Projects 69,100 Social-Work Openings a Year. That Is Also a Turnover Warning
On August 27, 2026, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics updated its Occupational Outlook Handbook profile for social workers using 2025 employment and wage data and projections through 2035. The headline appears encouraging: social work employment is expected to grow faster than the average occupation. The details should unsettle the profession. BLS counted approximately 816,100…
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New York’s Missing BSW License: A Degree Without a Professional Home
August 2026 New York tells bachelor’s-level social-work graduates something unusually revealing about the profession. A BSW graduate may perform many social-work functions under supervision, but the state will not issue that graduate a social-work license. New York’s Office of the Professions recognizes only the Licensed Master Social Worker and the Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Its…
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New York’s $4,500 Field-Practicum Bill Is a Start—not a Wage
August 23, 2026 A New York bill now before the Legislature would create a four-year paid field-practicum pilot for MSW students. Assembly Bill A9379B, amended June 1, would provide a $4,500 stipend for the first 450 hours of required practicum to students attending CSWE-accredited programs in the state. The arithmetic is clarifying: $4,500 divided by…
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Social Work Put All Its Eggs in the Therapy Basket. Now What?
We Devalued the BSW For decades, social work has increasingly organized its professional identity around the MSW, clinical licensure and psychotherapy. In doing so, we have allowed something remarkable to happen: the bachelor’s degree bearing the actual name of our profession has become insufficient for social work licensure in jurisdictions such as New York. Think…