Cultural Competence Aside from attendees learning the basics when treating veteran trauma at the 2013 Military Social Work Conference, they’ll also be educated on military culture. Co-editor Jose Coll writes in the Handbook of Military Social Work: “A key tenet in the social-work knowledge base today is the need for social workers to be culturally competent with regard to the target population they serve.” That includes recognizing unique stigmas. “Both enlisted persons and oficers in the armed forces are indoctrinated to believe that mental-health issues and psychological problems are sources of weakness. … This culturally driven value can serve as a potential obstacle in the therapeutic process.”
in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The idea came to Ruben when he sat in on a local presentation by social workers from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), who explained that they would need help once veterans started returning in large numbers. “They said, ‘It won’t work if we keep referring them to mental-health practitioners,’” Ruben said, “‘because a lot of them don’t know how to deal with vets.’” To alleviate some of the burden placed on the VA, Ruben
and his colleagues decided to convene a conference that would better prepare area social workers, educators, and other mental-health professionals to work with vets. The three-day meeting is divided into two tracks: one for civilian practitioners who will be treating and providing services for veterans, and another for social-work educators looking to expand their course offerings. The educator track will be “modeled somewhat” after the content and format of the Handbook of Military Social Work, Ruben said. “We’re going to focus on what [educators] could do to
Smooth Transition
‘We thought it would make sense to have a conference,’ said University of Texas professor Allen Ruben, Ph.D., ‘to meet the needs of veterans that are returning en masse from the wars.’
better prepare future practitioners to work with this popula- tion,” Ruben said. “What kinds of courses they should teach, what internships would work, and how to work with vets coming back to school.” Ruben expects 75 to 100 practitio- ners from Texas and approximately 50 social-work profes- sors from around the country to attend the conference, which he says will be the first of its kind in the city of Austin. On the third and final day of the conference, educators
and practitioners will reconvene for a panel presentation by spouses of veterans. “We’ll be addressing [veterans’ families’] needs throughout the conference,” Ruben said, including a six-hour workshop focusing on families and children of mili- tary personnel and veterans. Other sessions will concentrate on traumatic brain injury,
Conference, which the School of Social Work is hosting at Texas’ Thompson Conference Center on April 11–13. Pre- sented under the theme “Civilian Social Work With Veterans Returning From Iraq and Afghanistan: Implications for Prac- tice and Education,” the inaugural event will happen just four months after the release of the Handbook of Military Social Work — co-edited by Ruben, the conference’s organizer; Eugenia Weiss, a social worker and psychologist who teaches at the University of Southern California; and Jose Coll, an associate professor of social work and director of veteran stu- dent services at Saint Leo University in Florida. “We thought it would make sense to have a conference
after the book’s publication,” Ruben said, “to meet the needs of veterans that are returning en masse from the wars over
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide prevention, helping veterans transition into civilian life, military culture, and ethical dilemmas in working with military personnel. “It’s real clear to me that the social-work profession is hav- ing a very strong response to this need,” Ruben said. “A lot of social workers, their ears are perking up right now.” In his research for the book, Ruben found that very few
university programs offered much in the way of veteran- specific social-work education. He hopes the conference will beef up the extent to which they prepare students for work- ing with veterans. “And we’re hoping that more practitioners here in central Texas who currently don’t feel particularly motivated or capable of working with veterans, will now feel more confident about doing so,” Ruben said. “They might seek out further continuing education, or this might just be a start for some to get moving in that direction.”