Profiles in Social Work

Integrating Aging into the Social Work Curriculum
Molly J. Ranney, Ph.D., LCSW

By the year 2030, there will be over 70 million people in the United States over the age of 65. In the meantime, social workers are reporting that they feel inadequately trained to work with older adults. Without a concerted effort to train all social workers to handle the needs and issues facing older adults, the United States will soon be facing a critical shortage in social workers qualified to provide quality care to its older citizens.

Recognizing a need for sweeping change to the social work curriculum, the John A. Hartford Foundation is sponsoring the Geriatric Enrichment Program at 67 social work programs at universities and colleges throughout the United States. The three-year program provides guidance and funding for participants to plan, design, and implement changes to the social work curriculum to provide more aging-related content for bachelor's and master's-level social work students.

One of the program's most enthusiastic participants is project director Molly J. Ranney, Ph.D., LCSW, an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach. Upon receiving the grant, Dr. Ranney and her project team quickly set to work on an analysis of the university's social work curriculum. In addition to identifying gaps in the curriculum, they also worked to highlight aging-relevant content already present in the material. "We tried to build on what was already there, to make this an expansion," explains Dr. Ranney. "After all, faculty are more likely to include the content in their courses if it seems relevant to their interests." Their ultimate goal was the creation of a number of aging-oriented curriculum modules designed to be plugged in to pre-existing courses.

To further the appeal of the new material, Dr. Ranney was careful to work within the structure of the CSU Long Beach social work department. Her project team incorporated the department's "life span approach," which emphasizes the course of normal development from birth through adulthood, by including material on successful, positive aging. They also tried to choose topics, such as "Grandparents Raising Grandchildren," that would interest students primarily studying youth and family issues.

With these curriculum needs in mind, Dr. Ranney recruited faculty members to the project, offering financial incentives to those willing to help prepare one- to three-hour aging curriculum modules. The response was so positive that Dr. Ranney had to request more funding from the Geriatric Enrichment Program in the second year. She is grateful that her request was granted and for the level of support she received from the program. "I appreciate that [program directors] Suzanne St. Peter and Nancy Hooyman have been able to keep a unique understanding of each school in mind," she says. "They have been open to things developing in a creative way, and the additional support kept the momentum going."

With assistance from Ranney's team, focus groups, and an advisory board, participating CSU Long Beach faculty created 16 curriculum modules for bachelor's and graduate social work courses. The modules were disseminated to the remaining faculty. By the end of the grant's second year, students were reporting a higher level of aging content in their courses than they had in the previous year. In addition, said Ranney, "this program has raised the visibility of aging in our department and invigorated the gerontology faculty."

For the future, Ranney intends to continue supplying the social work faculty with the latest important research on relevant aging topics. "I really see this as something you can't let go," she says. "You have to stay current, because the field of aging is expanding rapidly."

With the hectic pace brought on by the curriculum revisions behind her, Dr. Ranney hopes to resume her own research interests, which include studying dementia caregivers from a multicultural perspective. Still, she notes, the opportunity to improve the social work program at CSU Long Beach--where she obtained her master's degree--was "a natural fit" for her passion for gerontology. She firmly believes that the Geriatric Enrichment Program, by funding a national, concerted effort to infuse aging content into the social work curriculum, will greatly reduce the impact of the upcoming boom in the population of the nation's elderly. "With social work educators so overwhelmed with priorities for curriculum, I don't believe we would ever have addressed gerontology without this program," she says. "Now, I really believe that the goal of institutionalizing aging in the social work curriculum has been achieved."

Posted on October 6, 2003

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