SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION IN ALCOHOLISM

In considering what type of changes in the curricula of schools of social work will produce practitioners better trained in dealing with problems of alcoholism, a brief review of current social work activities in this area is pertinent. It is hard ta find a social work agency without a significant number of problem drinkers among its clientele. Estimates, for example, have indicated that as high as 25 per cent of the caseloads of public assistance agencies may consist of families with alcoholics. Social workers in psychiatric hospitals are also extensively involved with this population as well as social workers in general hospitals, particularly those assigned to alcoholic wards. Social workers in family agencies report that the marital problems with which they deal are often associated with the problematic use of alcohol by one or another of the adults in the family. Social workers in such correctional settings as prisons and reformatories also find that the inmates had made extensive use of alcohol or drugs. Social workers in protective services or in placement services for children also frequently indicate that alcoholism was associated with the deterioration or breakup of the home. Social workers in some of the manpower programs developed recently to retrain welfare populations or other low-income groups also encounter, as a frequent reason for poor participation in such programs, the alcoholism of one of the enrollees. In addition to programs, such as the aforementioned, not specifically established to treat alcoholic populations but actually encountering this group extensively, social workers have been employed as a large proportion of the staffs of agencies established to deal with alcoholics. Among these agencies have been the local alcoholism clinics and alcoholic halfway houses. Social work schools also train practitioners of other social work specialities who must deal with the problems of alcoholism. Community organization practitioners, confronted with the lack of facilities in their communities or their coordination must struggle to deal with the problems of acquiring resources and legal authority to deal with problems of alcoholism. Social workers trained to fullill social planning roles in city, state, and Federal governments also are called on to determine how to use their roles in relationship to allocation of resources and planning of programs. Finally, social work administrators in many types of agencies are confronted with the problem of training staffs and equipping them with the resources necessary to deal with the problems of alcoholism-problems that often are not recognized. When they are recognized, administrators must be concerned when the alcoholic label is sufficient to cause the client to be assigned the lowest priority for help. The question is how staB members for all these programs are equipped by their professional education to deal with such a devastating array of human problems. A survey of offerings in all schools of social work has not been made, but one was conducted by this author regarding what is now being taught in one large and quite adequately staffed school. The situation in this school, used as an example, will then be reviewed and a plan for improvement noted. It is hoped that such a plan will suggest at least one useful model for improved professional education in this field. In the school tu be described, no single course is totally devoted to the prob-