Returning Vets: Call To Arms For Social Workers

Returning Vets: Call To Arms For Social Workers
CAROLYN JACOBS
August 7, 2008
Those outside the profession may not have noticed when the Council for Social Work Education appointed a national panel to look into how schools can better prepare students to serve the needs of returning soldiers.

But those of us whose business is the education of social workers recognize the move as a sea change in the profession. Social work educators, long a bastion of anti-war advocates, need to know that supporting warriors is not the same as supporting the war. We need to begin teaching about how to treat veterans because our students will be treating the troops of current military conflicts for years to come.

Discomfort with war has long permeated schools for social work, creating internal conflicts for professors and students. How can we teach about treating soldiers while being fundamentally against the horror and atrocities of battle, we often ask.

In the absence of a clear directive from the professional organization, silence resounded. Treatment of Vietnam veterans met with a similar response and, by extension, silenced veterans. More than three decades after the end of that war, some soldiers are just now beginning to open up and seek help for the issues they have struggled with since.
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