Compassion in Action: One MSW Student’s Experience in Homeless Services

How has your experience at Homeward shaped your understanding of the connection between social work and housing stability?

One of the things I’ve learned during my time at Homeward is that homelessness has many causes, and it’s a multi-faceted crisis. Social work as a practice is a good mix of a lot of different skills while keeping people at the center of your work. Social work has this ability to make connections across different fields and can fill in gaps in other services. It’s well suited for how complex the process of solving homelessness can be.

As social work students, we learn the importance of understanding both the person and the environment they are surrounded by. So, rather than seeing your client as a list of symptoms and issues to be solved, you ask, “What brought you to this point of crisis? How is your environment impacting you?” Housing is one of the most crucial aspects of your environment. If you don’t have a reliable roof over your head, a sense of safety and stability at home, it makes it much more difficult to be successful in every other area of your life. 

·What’s one key lesson you’ve learned as a student social worker about supporting individuals experiencing housing insecurity?

The more I learn about how the Continuum of Care works, I have learned you can’t promise people things you don’t have. There simply aren’t enough resources, and you have to prioritize the most vulnerable. It’s an unfortunate reality. One of the things my supervisor taught me is that to be successful in this work, you have to stay grounded. You can’t project your own emotional reactions onto the people you work with and/or their interactions with the system, even though some days that can be tough. This is how you stay focused on the big picture, which is maximizing the resources we do have to help the most people.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Virginia General Assembly for Housing Advocacy Day. I got to see how changes are made on the policy level that can then be used to go advocate for people on the ground. This is part of the “big picture” work that Homeward does.

What’s next for you?

Next semester, I will be placed with a different organization to continue gaining supervision hours. I’d like to be placed somewhere that is focused on recovery, because I would like to work in recovery spaces as a substance abuse counselor. Homelessness and substance abuse cross over with each other, so it’s been helpful for me to get a better understanding of the landscape of homeless services in our region. There is a lot of difficult, but good work being done.