Transformational Empathy

Preface

Chapter 1:
Welcome to Social Work

Chapter 2:
Understanding the Power of Social Work

Chapter 3:
The Audacity of Helping

Chapter 4:
How Much Does Help Cost?

Chapter 5:
There Goes the Neighborhood

Chapter 6:
Welcome Home

Chapter 7:
Better than Nothing

Chapter 8:
Erasing the Space

References
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author

Tracy Robinson Whitaker has had a long and fulfilling career in social work. She is an associate professor at the Howard University School of Social Work. Her career has included work with individuals, organizations, and community systems. She has served as the executive director of a transitional center serving women who were experiencing homelessness, substance addiction, and mental health issues; as a court monitor overseeing the deinstitutionalization of Saint Elizabeths Hospital and the simultaneous development of community-based mental health services in the District of Columbia; and as the deputy director of a federally funded national resource center that supported and examined issues related to the behavioral health of women across the life cycle. Dr. Whitaker also worked at the National Association of Social Workers, where she directed the Center for Workforce Studies & Social Work Practice. She codirected the national benchmark study of licensed social workers in 2004 and led the first compensation and benefits study of the social work profession in 2009. As a faculty member, Dr. Whitaker teaches graduate students at the MSW and PhD levels. Her classes are known for their innovative and provocative assignments and exercises. Dr. Whitaker is an alum of Howard University.

Social work strives to be an inclusive profession that pushes toward an equitable and just society for all its members. On this never-ending quest, social workers are constantly examining the intention and direction of the profession and its alignment—or lack thereof—with its core values. These core values, which include honoring the inherent dignity of each person’s humanity, protecting the right of people to decide their own destinies, and advocating for the ability for all to participate in a society in which they are equally valued and protected, hold us together as a profession. However, our fidelity to these values often comes into question. This questioning allows the profession to evolve along with the society that we seek to serve.

The main purpose of this book is to engage social work students and practitioners in a critical analysis of their core beliefs, values, and assumptions about the people and communities they seek to serve. Many social workers enter the profession with idealized visions of their ability to help those in need. This book seeks to increase points of commonality and connection between helpers and those who are helped so that social workers can be more effective in their practice.

A secondary goal of this book is to engage the reader in a critical assessment of the myth of the “false dichotomy” that surrounds and supports traditional social work intervention. Traditional social work teaches students to value the client as the “expert” of their problem, while the worker is considered to have expertise in identifying the solutions to the problem. This bifurcated approach forces social workers to mask both their familiarity and experiences with the problems facing the client population and ensures that strict boundaries between worker and client are maintained. In reality, the profession attracts social workers with “lived experiences” that can be valuable to the populations they serve. This book seeks to dismantle the artificial divide between the worker and the client so that social workers may bring more of their authentic selves and understanding to bear on the presenting problems of their clients.

A third goal of this book is to engage social workers in active assessments of their interventions, agencies, policies, and practices. Although there is not one right way to practice social work, there are ways to think about social work practice in relationship to the dignity of the people being served. This book does not seek to direct, but rather to provoke critical thought regarding how social workers can, rather than should, interact with client populations.

Like other human beings, social workers bring their biases, whatever they may be, to their interactions with clients. Their own identities may influence their biases, but do not insulate social workers from prejudices and stereotypes about the people they serve. Yet, despite myriad good intentions, policy statements, and advocacy on behalf of our clients, social workers often fall short of creating equitable relationships that consistently protect the dignity of their clients and produce the sustainable changes the profession seeks. We often think that understanding and valuing diversity is the key to these equitable relationships. However, whereas a true appreciation for each person’s uniqueness goes a long way toward establishing the foundations of a relationship, it is an insufficient foundation for an equitable relationship.

This book encourages you to consider a new approach: transformational empathy. Transformational empathy goes further than identifying what makes us unique—its premise rests on what makes us the same. The goal of transformational empathy is to underscore commonality, not diversity. Transformational empathy is not about privilege or positionality. It is not about racial and social justice as separate concepts. Rather, transformational empathy is about how these ends are achieved by seeing people through a lens of commonality rather than one of difference.

Compassion and empathy are also not enough to build the relationships social workers desire with our clients. Transformational empathy is not just about a short walk in another’s shoes. In that case, social workers may learn to briefly understand how a client feels in a particular situation, but they are able to remove those shoes and return to their own perspective. Instead, transformational empathy invites us to loan our shoes to another, to see how our perspective changes, not when we become the other person, but when they become us.