If you ask Emily Reeder about the impact of her job as a social worker, the UNLV alumna could bend your ear for hours. She might tell you, for example, about the hundreds of clients she's served in the past two years at the Clark County public defenders office, the ones whose mental illness further complicated their legal cases. Or maybe she'd discuss the alternative sentencing plans she's arranged to provide much-needed treatment options instead of just prison time. Reeder, '02 BA and '03 Master's of Social Work, is especially proud of how her work benefits not only her clients but the community to which they will eventually return.
Consider this: one of Reeder's clients, a man arrested on sexual assault charges, was released after being found mentally incompetent to stand trial. But before he was lost to the streets where he'd lived for so long, Reeder and a group of social workers worked with state service agencies and several advocacy groups to get him placed into a group home. Now, he is not only under supervision but also receives counseling and treatment for his mentalhealth problems.
Reeder can tell you, too, about how there are very few social workers to serve the area's indigent population, and even fewer who have the legal expertise to bridge the gap between the judicial system and the needs of their clients. But that's about to change.
The Opportunity To Do Something Right'
This fall, UNLV's School of Social Work is offering the country's first comprehensive program to train social workers in the legal complexities of the justice system. From serving as expert witnesses to mediating domestic and employment disputes to arranging alternative sentencing plans, social workers are increasingly called upon to provide recommendations to the court that can withstand critical review from opposing parties.
According to Stacey Hardy-Desmond, assistant director of social work at UNLV and one of the creators of the program, the post-graduate certificate program meets a growing need in the community.
"Las Vegas is like Mayberry in big city suit," says Hardy-Desmond. "Although we have this large and rapidly growing population, we don't have a long-standing system of social services," says Hardy-Desmond. On the flip side, she says, the city's lack of established systems "actually provide us with the opportunity to do something good, and right, and well."
Social workers around the country are in short supply, and professionals with forensic expertise that is, the application of social work to the judicial system are even harder to find. The Clark County public defenders office (CCPDO) routinely "imports" social workers from other states to serve as mitigation specialists and to meet the demand for experts in court. It's a stop-gap measure, officials say, designed to fill the immediate need until local supply meets demand.
"I think we're going to see a huge interest in the program," says Reeder, who gained her own forensic expertise during various practicum experiences at the public defenders office. "Although the East Coast has had social workers working in this capacity for years, it is a relatively new thing for Las Vegas, and for the West Coast in general."
Answers for an Overburdened System
In 2003, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association issued a report recommending that the CCPDO hire 35 social workers to meet the demand of its burgeoning caseload five of those positions, the report suggested, should be dedicated solely to juvenile cases. The public defender's office has met the quota for the juvenile court, but still has a long way to go to satisfy the recommendations for adult cases.
Currently, Reeder and Nancy Van Houten, '01 MSW, are the only social workers in the public defenders office assigned to the adult courts, which average 40 to 60 new cases each month. At the time of the interview, the two alumnae were working on nearly 160 cases between them, including 17 capital cases.
And even though you wouldn't hear either one complain (they both speak without irony about how much they enjoy the heavy workload), they say the community needs more.
"This (forensic social work program) is going to be a win-win for everyone," says Van Houten. "Because this is such an emerging field in Nevada, UNLV's program will provide us with a much more knowledgeable pool of social workers. And that will ultimately be more cost effective for the community, in terms of both financial and social costs."
Removing Barriers
Perhaps nowhere else can the societal costs be seen as clearly as in family court, where decisions about complex human relationships cannot be made without an understanding of social work. It's a delicate balance that Family Court Judge Gerald Hardcastle knows well. He believes it's as important for social workers to understand the legal context of cases as it is for judges to understand the human context.
"In substance, it is about getting to better answers for struggling families," says Hardcastle, who helped formulate the UNLV program. When judicial and social work professionals work together with an understanding of the other's role, "barriers to successful results are overcome more directly, and issues presented to the court are done more effectively and artfully."
Hardy-Desmond, who is in her final year at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law, says her experience studying law opened her eyes to the gaps that exist between the two fields.
"My whole motivation for going to law school was to become a better advocate for my mental-health clients," she says. "What evolved was the realization that the field of law could make important contributions to the profession of social work, and vice versa. Lawyers aren't trained to look at the whole picture, or story, of a client; they are focused strictly on the legal issues and on what facts are going to support their argument in forwarding a client's positions."
Hardy-Desmond identified ways in which social workers could support and strengthen legal arguments as well as play an important role in alternative dispute resolution. By integrating that knowledge into the new program's curriculum, she is hoping to better prepare her students for this recent evolution of the social work profession.
"Students who complete this program will be able to hit the ground running instead of struggling and learning it all on the job," she says. But Hardy-Desmond emphasizes that the program was not only created to prepare students to enter the social work profession, but also to provide continuing education opportunities for the more than 1,500 social workers licensed in Nevada.
Helping Those At Risk
Hardy-Desmond says she and Ina Dorman, a social work consultant to the Thomas & Mack Legal Clinics at the law school, designed the program to emphasize human diversity and social justice, with particular attention given to the issues faced by at-risk, historically vulnerable populations.
"Social workers are not here to cater to the happy and the rich. Our profession is one with a mission to provide a voice for vulnerable populations," Hardy-Desmond says. "The people who are embroiled in legal issues are often the most vulnerable, particularly the ones who are incarcerated and suffering from a mental illness or who come from a lower socioeconomic segment of our community."
The 18-credit post-graduate curriculum will address areas such as child welfare; domestic relations law, including family violence; immigration; adult criminal and juvenile justice; public education; mental health and disabilities; and aging. Students will also be required to complete 45 hours of field experience at such agencies as the public defenders office, the 8th Judicial District Family Mediation Center, the Neighborhood Justice Center, Clark County Detention Center, and the women's prison.
Although the program is still new, Hardy-Desmond and Dorman can't help but look to its future impact. Already they've heard from colleagues around the country wanting to replicate the program at their own institutions.
"There's no reason why we can't become the model program for other educational institutions," Hardy- Desmond says. "This is a natural fit for two professions that can work together toward the betterment of our citizens and community."
