Download the 2009 Hartford Annual Report pdf How Social Workers
Assist Older Adults
View the Interactive Chart
Strategy 2

Field Placements in Aging Settings

The Hartford Foundation and the project leaders of the Geriatric Social Work Initiative recognized the need to recruit more social workers to specialize in gerontology by providing a more diverse array of practical experiences in the field of geriatric social work as part of the curriculum. Many social work students are not aware of the range of settings and practice opportunities in gerontology, and they may reject this specialization due to misperceptions about working with older adults. When they are exposed to the variety of people within the aging population and educated about the many venues in which social workers can practice, students are more likely to choose an aging concentration. Students exposed to these settings also discover that working with older clients can be a professionally challenging and gratifying career.

(Above) Alicia Santiago and Mirza Lopez, master’s degree students and interns at Pacific Clinics, Pasadena, California, facilitate a support group among older adults who help each other to better manage life’s challenges.

Because of the wide range of services available to older adults, master’s level social work students who specialize in geriatrics must become familiar with an often confusing matrix of aging services.

To address these issues, the Hartford Foundation funded the Practicum Partnership Program in 1999 to focus on the advanced field curriculum for master’s degree students. This program evolved in 2008 into the Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education (HPPAE) www.hartfordpartnership.org. The program is administered by the Social Work Leadership Institute at the New York Academy of Medicine. Grants totaling $11 million have been awarded since 1999. As of 2009, the program has been implemented in 72 schools of social work in 33 states.

A master’s degree in social work requires two years of study, divided into two components: classroom work and field experience (practicum). Traditionally, the field experience has occurred at a single site. Field instructors, who are practicing social workers, supervise students working in their agencies. One field placement exposes students to just a single population of older adults in one setting.

With a planning grant in 1999, New York Academy of Medicine senior vice president, Patricia J. Volland, MSW, MBA, convened an advisory panel of social work educators and geriatric practice experts to improve the practicum training model. Their recommendations mirrored findings from a 1997-1999 study by Ms. Volland and Dr. Barbara Berkman, Helen Rehr/Ruth Fizdale Professor and Director of the Hartford Faculty Scholars program. The advisory panel proposed a multi-site field training model in which students rotate among local health and social service agencies.

(Above left) Erik Boggess, master’s degree student, School of Social Work, California State University, Chico, created a disaster plan and training for older adults in rural areas as part of a field placement at PASSAGES Adult Resource Center in Chico. (Above right) Members of the HPPAE Student Committee on Leadership in Aging gather at the annual Aging in America Conference to recruit new students to the HPPAE program.

“Students rotate among the various agencies that serve older adults so they can see the diverse nature of who makes up older adults and overcome the bias that older adults are just in nursing homes,” says Ms. Volland, who became Director of the Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education. Students have a different field supervisor at each setting. With this model, students become better prepared to confront the challenges of a complex service system for older adults. A variety of field placements exposes students to the diversity of the older adult population in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and sexual orientation and allows students to work with clients ranging from the well elderly to frail older adults.

“This makes the students more highly skilled,” says Jeannine Melly, Deputy Director of the Social Work Leadership Institute. “They learn how to do community outreach and they become familiar with a wide variety of community services like senior centers and Meals On Wheels.”

Rotating among field placements also informs students about the many ways in which social workers interact with older adults, such as organizing health promotion fairs for the well elderly or providing grief counseling at the end of life. This model also acquaints students with numerous social service agencies and programs and their attendant eligibility criteria, benefits, and administrative structures. Students also learn how to work effectively in multidisciplinary teams that may include nurses, doctors, rehabilitation therapists, psychologists, and others.

(Above left) W. June Simmons, LCSW, President and CEO, Partners in Care Foundation, San Fernando, California, HPPAE site sponsor for over nine years. (Above middle) Sal Perez, master’s degree student, California State University, Los Angeles, counsels an older adult during a field placement at the Huntington Senior Care Network in Pasadena. (Above right) Training session for the Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education held in New York City in 2008.

The rotational model of field placements is a distinguishing feature of the HPPAE model, and it is inextricably linked with a second component of the program, which is the development of strong university-community partnerships. The program model requires extensive collaboration between schools of social work and the local network of community-based agencies where students perform their field placements. Some examples of agencies that participate include hospital systems, senior centers and services, assisted-living facilities, skilled nursing homes, adult day health programs, nonprofit organizations with an aging focus, local area agencies on aging, adult protective services, and advocacy organizations.

As described in the section on infusing geriatric content into social work curriculum, social work education has moved toward what is called competency-based education. This means that social work students must demonstrate that they have acquired the knowledge and skills to be deemed competent in their profession. For example, a social worker specializing in gerontology must have the skills to assess older adult clients and must understand the network of services and benefits available to them. Field placements are an important aspect of competency-based education. The HPPAE created gerontology-specific competencies in 2001.

In addition to the rotational model, university-community partnerships, and competency-based education, the HPPAE model incorporates three additional components: 1) an expanded role for field instructors, 2) focused recruitment of students to the field of aging, and 3) leadership development.

(Above) Laura Long (in doorway), a master’s degree student at the School of Social Work, California State University, Chico, with residents at Stairways to Recovery in Chico. This HPPAE field placement site is a residential program for previously homeless older adults.

A Decade of Practical Training for Social Work Students

Over the past decade, the practicum-focused programs have successfully shown that by strengthening field education in master’s programs more students of social work specialize in gerontology. “There’s no doubt that students’ competency in working with older adults dramatically increases,” says Ms. Volland. “Students also report high satisfaction with the rotational model and feel they gained more knowledge and expertise.”

In a 2008 evaluation report of findings from 35 HPPAE sites, 80 percent of students intended to work in the field of aging after graduation. These students strongly agreed that acquiring work experience in more than one field agency was beneficial and that the rotations helped them learn about a range of services for older adults.

“After 10 years of experience, we’ve now embarked on normalization,” says Ms. Volland. The goal is to have all schools of social work put this program in place as a normal part of the academic program. So far, Ms. Volland and her colleagues have found that most schools are eager to implement the program with institutional support rather than external funding. The project leaders of the HPPAE identified 10 regions in the country to target for encouraging adoption of the program in this way. The response in the first region has encouraged them to duplicate the effort around the country. To assist these schools, a set of materials has been developed that includes a technical manual, a Web site, and marketing tools.

Next: Field Placements in Aging Settings: Profile of Michael Tiratira, MSW ›