Candidates
Jeffrey Trant
Please give a brief biography, including your education, licensure or certification level and employment history:
I am a social work practitioner, manager, and educator with more than 15 years of experience working in community behavioral health care and child welfare. For the past 10 years, I have worked as a program surveyor for the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities International, an independent nonprofit accreditor of health and human services. In June 2019, I was appointed director of the Office of Safe Environment and Victim Assistance for the Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts. In this role, I oversee primary prevention services throughout four counties and work with survivors of clergy sexual abuse.
I am a Licensed Certified Social Worker (Massachusetts) and hold a Bachelor of Science, cum laude, in social work from Elms College, an MSW from Boston College, a certificate in rehabilitation counseling from Utah State University, and a postgraduate clinical certificate in the relational and multicontextual treatment of trauma from Simmons University and the Massachusetts Child Welfare Institute. I am completing my doctoral work (fourth-year student) in the School of Social Welfare Ph.D. program at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
I am an adjunct faculty member at Elms College in the BSW program and have supervised students in field placements for more than 10 years. My teaching focuses on helping students understand research design and apply evidence-based and research-supported interventions in their practice. I teach courses on research methods, social welfare policy, and human behavior in the social environment.
Give a synopsis of your regulatory and professional experience. Please emphasize your involvement with ASWB:
I was privileged to become involved with ASWB in 2015 as a member of the Practice Analysis Task Force for the sixth analysis of the practice of social work. Through this process, I learned firsthand the critical importance of developing a reliable, valid, and legally defensible examination to measure competent social work practice. In 2017, I served as a panelist for ASWB’s standard setting meeting.
My experience with ASWB’s examination development program motivated me to become involved as a regulator in my jurisdiction. In 2017 I was appointed to the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Social Workers, where I am currently completing my first term. As a regulator, I have benefited tremendously from the training and technical assistance offered by ASWB (including New Board Member Training and the annual education conference).
In 2019, I had the opportunity to further serve ASWB’s mission. I was appointed to the Regulation and Standards Committee and, in August, was trained as an item writer for the Masters examination.
My volunteer work with ASWB over the past five years has truly made me a better social worker. I have gained a deep understanding about regulation and licensure in furtherance of public protection and the vital role of ASWB to the social work profession throughout North America.
Finally, make a brief statement on the major issues you see facing ASWB, and how you would address them:
The ASWB 2019–2021 Strategic Framework establishes three goals that are critical for the association to address:
- Advance knowledge and acceptance of social work as a licensed profession
- Facilitate mobility by licensure through endorsement
- Curate research for best practices in regulation
These interrelated goals address the major issue I see facing ASWB: developing an evidence base on the impact and efficacy of regulation to inform the social work regulatory landscape.
Recent legislation on occupational licensure (e.g., Arizona’s April 2019 universal occupational licensing recognition law) demonstrates jurisdictions are passing laws to increase professional mobility in order to address local workforce issues. For social workers in North America, there is significant variance in scope of practice and requirements to earn and maintain a license from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This lack of standardization presents a significant challenge for portability as jurisdictions allow equivalently licensed professionals to practice when, for social workers, there isn’t parity among jurisdictions. This has significant implications for public protection.
As a director at large, I will address this issue by working to support ASWB’s professional staff and volunteer workforce as they implement the 2019–2021 Strategic Framework. Furthermore, I will draw upon my knowledge and experience with the association’s mission and services to inform my governance responsibility to the organization and its membership. Lastly, I will draw upon my experience in research, higher education, accreditation, and regulation to help ASWB achieve the goal of curating research to develop an evidence base on best practices in social work regulation.
Date jurisdictional board term ended:
September 30, 2019
Beatrice Traub-Werner
Please give a brief biography, including your education, licensure or certification level and employment history:
My name is Beatrice Traub-Werner, and I am a social worker from Toronto, Ontario. I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where my parents fled Nazi Germany. I am fluent in English, Spanish, and German and I speak some Hebrew. In the late 1960s, I was very active socially and politically in Argentina. It was a dangerous time for those of us who spoke out about social justice and freedom. Some of my friends began to “disappear” and so, newly married, my husband and I moved to Canada. We intended to stay for five years but have lived in Canada for almost 50 years. We raised two sons and a daughter and have six grandchildren who keep us active and engaged!
I have a BSW from York University and an MSW from the University of Toronto. I worked for many years providing mental health services to youth and adults. I have worked as director of admissions and faculty of social work at the University of Toronto and was a sessional instructor. I also spent 18 months teaching at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where we delivered the first-ever MSW program in that country to 16 of their teaching faculty. That led to the development of two parallel interests: I became a doctoral candidate in bioethics and developed, in partnership with St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, an ACE-approved continuing education program, which I ran for the next 12 years. During that time, I partnered with a community-based agency, and we developed a provincially funded bridge training program for internationally educated mental health professionals that continues today. I am now the dean of continuing education at the Adler Graduate Professional Schools. I have sat on numerous community boards, chairing several of them, am involved in a start-up rural residential treatment facility for young adults, and serve on a panel of the Allocations Committee of the Archdiocese of Toronto’s Catholic Charities. I am not the “retiring” type.
Give a synopsis of your regulatory and professional experience. Please emphasize your involvement with ASWB:
I became involved in professional regulation in the late 1980s, when Ontario social workers started their own social work self-regulatory body and I was an examiner. In 2007, I was elected to the Council of the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW). I was reelected to the OCSWSSW council three times and spent six of my 10 years on the Executive Committee, three years as president. I served on a number of committees and attended most committee meetings during my tenure as president.
My involvement with ASWB began at the time when I was first a council member and then a council president (2010). I attended all ASWB meetings and voted at the delegate assembly as the delegate from Ontario. I was appointed to the ASWB Continuing Competence Committee in 2016, and the following year I was elected to the ASWB Board as a director at large. I am currently serving as the ASWB Board liaison to the Regulation and Standards Committee.
Finally, make a brief statement on the major issues you see facing ASWB, and how you would address them:
Both deregulation and the move to include social work on composite boards are making it significantly more difficult to provide public protection. With the Board’s full support, ASWB is already providing advice and resources to member boards, as appropriate. Advocacy training has begun in some jurisdictions, and it is likely that more is needed.
The ASWB Board, staff, and members understand how complex and crucial labour mobility issues are for professionals in our field. A great deal of thought and work have already gone into assisting those jurisdictions that are readying themselves to provide licensure by endorsement.
Recognizing the challenges that lie ahead, ASWB’s new strategic framework includes curating research for best practices in regulation. Regulatory research may well, for example, be able to assist in finding ways to standardize CE requirements across jurisdictions. Without the research evidence, however, it is not possible to definitively decide the number of CE credits needed to support ethical practice. If, for example, the goal is to harmonize requirements for licensure across the 64 member jurisdictions of ASWB, targeted research could inform best practices regarding components of licensure, such as CE and supervision standards. Evidence-based best practices to inform harmonized licensure requirements will result in better public protection, which is the ultimate goal of all of our work.
Date jurisdictional board term ended:
September 6, 2017