Next Chapter Profile

Retired Chicago Social Workers Return to Work

To Dolores and Nisson Pearl, co-founders of the Retired Social Workers Project, the concept made perfect sense. With the first of 77 million baby boomers approaching retirement, the need for a significant increase in the number of trained professionals to help address the challenges of this population explosion seemed obvious. Some will face health problems in aging; others may need help understanding the reality of a greatly increased life span. "We see retired social workers as an untapped resource," says Dolores Pearl. "They bring years of experience and a dimension of age and wisdom."

The Pearls founded the Retired Social Workers Project with the idea of recruiting retired social workers back into the field. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Illinois Chapter sponsored the project and provided the Pearls their extensive membership list. Several Chicago schools were also willing to provide alumni lists, enabling the Pearls to do an initial mailing to 1,000 local social workers over 50. The response they say was "uniformly enthusiastic." Gone from the field for a few years, "these retired workers missed the camaraderie, and they missed the exchange. They missed being on the cutting edge," says Nisson Pearl.

The Pearls began a series of professional development workshops, involving 18 Chicago agencies, offering seminars, workshops, and courses. The idea was to not only offer information about the latest developments in the field, but to provide tools for planning for future growth. "Most of social work deals with the problems that people have – sickness, poverty, homelessness, and in many cases, the problems that seniors face. But then there's this whole other group, the baby boomers, who are going to retire, many of whom are going to be active adults – not sick, not hungry, not homeless, but with the problem of not necessarily having planned to live 20 or 30 years in retirement. Helping them with this adjustment is what we call planning for future growth," says Dolores Pearl.

Meanwhile, another innovative enterprise was just getting started. Organizations in Chicago were coming together to help change the way both communities and individuals view aging – away from a period of decline and disengagement to a time of community involvement, volunteerism, and growth.

In late 2004, the coalition – named the Chicago Life Opportunities Initiative (CLOI) and led by Council of Jewish Elderly – began discussions with the Pearls about collaborating through this Next Chapter project, using the Civic Ventures framework to shape their initiative. Next Chapter projects help people in the second half of life set a course, connect with peers, and find pathways to significant service.

The Pearls responded enthusiastically. Aided by a grant from the The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust, here was a chance to put those retired social workers back to work.

In early 2005, CLOI began a 12-month pilot phase with the goal to mobilize people aged 50 and above to use their talents and expertise to address opportunities in the community by linking partners and resources. CLOI began "asset mapping" within four pilot communities in the Chicago area. The process was based upon an approach to community assessment developed at Northwestern University by professors John (Jody) Kretzmann and John McKnight. The two run the Asset Based Community Development Institute, or ABCD, at Northwestern.

Mary Baim, then the director of CLOI, explains the concept. "In this approach, you really go in and look at communities not in terms of the deficits in those communities, but rather the assets. That meant (people) going out and talking to people about what was positive in the community, by finding the informal assets of the community like block clubs and choruses that people don't think of when they think about the vibrancy of a community."

That's where the retired social workers came into the picture. The money from The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust provided funding to pay 10 social workers to go out within the four pilot communities – Edgewater, South Chicago, Pilsen, and Chatham – to talk to older adults, businesses, organizations, and institutions about the communities' assets. The communities were selected to reflect the demographics of Chicago, representing different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. CLOI also selected communities with strong social service agencies with whom the organization had already established relationships.

The teams used three different questionnaires to survey the communities. "The idea was to look into a community and find what you could build on. What are things in the community that older people use? What kinds of opportunities are needed to enhance them? What has worked? What didn't work?" explains Baim. "The retired social workers went out and talked to people and followed leads and filled out the questionnaires, but with the idea that the questionnaire served as a conversation starter, a means to engage people and find out what was really going on within a community."

Mary O'Donnell, Coordinator of CLOI, witnessed the results of the social workers' efforts. "The training and the experience they brought was incredible. They were so comfortable talking to the older adults because of their skills and training at pulling people out of their comfort zones. A lot of what they were talking about with the older adults concerned their skills, and interests and talents and hopes for the community, and a lot of that is very personal. Because of their professional skills they were able to initiate much more meaningful conversations and got some good responses."

The teams were interested in discovering both the assets the communities had to help older populations, along with the ways in which older people acted as assets for the communities. Some of that was a surprise for some within the communities, Baim says. In Pilsen, for example, many of those surveyed hadn't considered how the older adults within their community could be the answers in many ways to local challenges. The community is predominantly Latino, with many recent immigrants from Mexico. Their needs were primarily in literacy and job training. If education was a primary need to many new arrivals, older adults could provide the support to help them learn.

For much of 2005, Renee Sullivan worked as part of a retired social worker team in Edgewater. A lifelong Chicagoan, Sullivan lives in nearby Rogers Park and worked for 30 years in the Rogers Park Mental Health Center. When she heard about the Edgewater assessment project, she was intrigued, particularly by the aspect of community involvement. "In my work as a social worker at the Rogers Park Mental Health Center, I was a community activist, involved with community policing and with schools and engaged in social work that was always politically active. It (the Edgewater project) was probably the first time I'd ever been paid to do any community assessment or exploration, but it was kind of a natural match for me."

Sullivan and her team members found Edgewater to be an incredibly organized community with an active alderman. "It was all mapped out in block clubs," she says. The group did a number of assessments at a local food pantry, both with the recipients and the donors of food and clothing. One hot button issue that came up repeatedly was the need for affordable housing for older people. Overall, Sullivan was struck by the number of people she met who were already actively involved in their communities and knowledgeable about the area's existing assets and issues.

The project reignited a spark in Sullivan, reminding her why she'd become a social worker in the first place. "I enjoyed my group tremendously. I loved the camaraderie with the other retired social workers. I really enjoyed our meetings. It was such a marvelous bunch of people. I always had a strong identity as a social worker, but this kind of confirmed it. It was very, very rewarding."

But the benefits of the work Sullivan contributed to extend far beyond the personal. The asset-mapping results are now being used as the basis for new projects addressing critical needs in all four communities.

In Edgewater, the recent suicide of a local older adult who lived in a high-rise condominium building prompted significant concerns about addressing safety among neighbors and determining the best ways to reach out to others in need. "We also learned that there were a lot of people over 50 who expressed an interest in civic engagement and caring for others within their community," says O'Donnell. "So we linked the community asset – people over 50 who wanted to give back – to the community need – isolated and at-risk adults – by training older adults to become Friendly Eyes and Ears Ambassadors." The adults were trained to spot warning signs to recognize someone in need of help, and were provided information about a 24-hour hotline geared specifically to older adults. Two retired social workers facilitated several of the workshops.

In Chatham, a large number of grandparents raising grandchildren participated in the asset-mapping process. Hardly a surprise, many needed additional support to deal with the demands of this challenging role. Two retired social workers paired up with a local support group – Grandfamilies Program of Chicago – to facilitate a series of workshops on life planning through the lead agency for CLOI's in the Chatham neighborhood, Mather's More Than a Café.

In Pilsen, the asset-mapping results were used to form preliminary plans to launch a community bakery, convene knitting and crocheting circles, and establish a community garden.

And for Mary O'Donnell of CLOI, the process itself was of great value. "Having so many conversations with businesses, community organizations and people aged over 50 about their skills, interests, and hopes for their community was a positive outcome itself. It took us a step closer to having people think about this population in a new way and raising awareness about this 'untapped resource.'"

– Jenny Griffin

To learn more about the Retired Social Workers Project, visit http://naswil.affiniscape.com/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=20

To learn more about CLOI, visit
http://cloi.org