A social worker in politics?

Prior to choosing politics as a career, most people have some sort of profession. Most, not all, because there are certainly those trust fund babies out there that we’ve voted in - you know, the ever-patriotic politicians  that have “made their own way” by opening a bunch of failed businesses starting with six figure “loans” from their parents. Ahem.

Most politicians, though, start out as lawyers or large-scale business owners. It’s easy to see why. Lawyers are educated to find information that fits whatever pre-existing narrative they are defending or prosecuting, focused on discounting any information outside of that narrative. It works well in politics, because arguing a political position involves minimizing any information that might justify an alternative perspective. This is true on both the left and the right.

As for the business owners - that’s fairly obvious, as well. Successful business owners and CEOs see the government as a business, and are therefore motivated by profit - which is one reason we’re always caught up in someone else’s damned war. Intelligent people who are economically motivated recognize that war of any kind is always a boost to the national economy as well as to things like cultural unity.

You know what there aren’t that many of? Social workers. And that’s a shame. Honestly, more social workers in politics would create a more successful country, and I do mean from all angles - from the economic to the sociological. Why? Allow me to explain...

Social workers can be divided into three categories: macro, micro, and mezzo. Macro social workers often do back-end work for non-profits and government agencies focused on human well-being. Their professional lives involve marketing, grant writing, communication, and coordination between businesses and non-profits. So, they’re much like those previously mentioned business owners, only instead of being motivated by monetary profit, macro social workers are focused on cultivating successful, financially viable systems that serve humanity as a whole.

Micro social workers are clinical social workers. A licensed clinical social worker is someone who practices psychotherapy with individual clients and possibly groups. So how do they differ from other types of licensed clinical counselors? Like its macro counterpart, a micro social worker’s clinical focus includes systems. This means that when a client is depressed, for example, a clinical social worker will both see the client for therapy but will also do things like find concrete solutions for existing situational problems. That might mean hooking them up with a way to get a job, education, food, health care, and other necessary community services.

And that leaves the mezzo social workers, which do some combination of both of those things. That could translate to managing a bunch of other social workers, or it could mean something like what I do: school social work. I see individual clients for therapy as well as facilitating focused group therapy, but I also coordinate alternative learning experiences for the high school behavioral program and work on connecting the program with local businesses and nonprofits. 

In more concrete terms, a social worker is likely to be a believer in universal healthcare, but s/he is also likely focused on how to best create a financially viable way of implementing it. I think about things like this on a local level. I see, for example, that Vermont has excellent state-sponsored universal healthcare, and that they are a rural state similar to our own. That makes me want to research how they accomplish that. When Tennessee made the first two years of any post-high school education at a state school free to all graduates of Tennessee high schools, I wanted to know how they did that and whether we could make that work in Maine or even within towns like Belfast and counties like Waldo  that have satellite campuse of universities (The Hutchinson Center) along with adult education programs and a technical school. 

And that’s perhaps the biggest difference between social workers and other politicians. We see problems and we want solutions, but we don’t automatically have a position or an answer - and we want one, or many. We research. We talk to people. We consider how what works in Tennessee or Vermont might not work exactly the same in Maine, and we allow contributions from all sides to be involved in the path to creating something that works in Maine. We don’t decide what the solution is and then focus on selling it. We see a problem and then we listen to people to work toward gathering all of the information in order to find a solution.

You want a country that’s fiscally doing well that also takes care of its people? You want a country where everyone works hard at their respective jobs and their needs are also consistently met? Vote for social workers.