ARCC meeting
Tuesday June 28, 2016

ARCC Agenda and Notes

Tuesday June 28, 2016

Ideas and notes generated at the meeting were added into the agenda items

  1. Review and discuss preliminary list of actions that faculty have identified we could take to support an anti-racism lens within field learning.
  2. Solicit feedback and identify other ideas
  3. Discuss how comments/feedback received during comment period should be shared
  4. Discuss the collaborative process between students and faculty as we work on these agenda items
  5. Confirm proposed ARCC meeting dates:
  6. Monday 7/18:6:30-7:30
  7. Mon 8/1:6:30-7:30
  8. Mon 8/15:6:30-7:30
  9. Other items on the ARCC agenda from the retreat:
  10. Our working agenda: setting priorities and work plan
  11. What data do we wish to collect/monitor our progress on working items and toward our goals of anti-racism (see actionable items)?
  12. How can we include marginalized voices in curriculum and campus?
  13. Clarifying how ARCC can work collaboratively and effectively
  14. Move to student-elected positions?
  15. Organize an orientation session for white-identified students to help them to understand the discussions about race, so that they feel ready and supported in the process; structured analogously as the networking event
  16. We want to be very careful to not create silos/binaries but have time to create productive collective space
  17. Students do not have times that allow them to come together as a cohort in discussion; there are smaller groups or it is conducted in a presenter/audience format
  18. Invite in a presenter (like Lee Man Wah) to facilitate a large group discussion
  19. Can we re-think orientation altogether that isn’t just about campus information but brings the cohort together in learning from an anti-colonial lens?
  20. Can we approach these trainings from an intersectional, decolonizing lens?
  21. Would it be helpful to put the Anti-Racism course into the 1st year?

ARCC Preliminary list of actionable items identified

at All Community Meeting held 6/24/16

Immediately actionable:

  1. Create/re-imagine an existing resource (e.g., a person, a procedure) to insert a level of accountability to anti–racism into the consultation/review process, support the student
  2. Identify a person who will monitor/observe the process. We can’t involve them for the first time at the consultation process; how will we raise the visibility of the ways that racism/social oppression is at work before things get to the consultation process?
  3. How do we flag agency, supervisor issues?
  4. Currently students bring their concerns to their FFA but this can serve to diffuse responsibility and delay finding real solutions
  5. We have to make sure all voices are heard – including field agency voices as well
  6. How do we balance the FFA voice with the student voice?
  7. How will we reach out to students who have gone under the review process?
  8. Have a person/team who provides support to the student; guides through process once at the point of consultation; how to counter the predominant supervisor narrative, the lack of air time for the support person and to bring an eye to the structural elements at play
  9. Develop a menu of roles of folks to help the student to identify who would be helpful to them;
  10. Challenge the current policy that a student cannot bring someone who is not in ‘good standing’; Students who have been through the consultation/review process may be in the best position to understand the process.
  11. We want to be careful that the student is not bounced between offices, given as much agency as possible.
  12. We will need clarity on how much agency the student actually has. What is their role and power of the advocate in this situation?
  13. Balancing the playing field for the student under review (the student is outnumbered in the face of a number of other administrators/supervisors); bring in an administrator, staff, faculty, and/or a PhD student who is knowledgeable and impartial, increase voice of field reps, Sotomayor Fellow
  14. Could this happen at the consultation point in addition to the review. The consultation happens first
  15. Interrogate the Essential Abilities from the lens of anti-racism
  16. How are items operationalized?
  17. How is anti-racism perspective integrated into the EA; so that they don’t sit separately?
  18. This will require buy-in from FFAs and supervisors
  19. It is difficult to navigate both professional responsibilities to treat colleagues respectfully and speak out about experiences with supervisors and FFAs.
  20. Through this process, keep the NASW Code of Ethics in context as well.
  21. All vested interests need to be seated in the context of the code of ethics.
  22. A joint process between student and supervisor on the field evaluation, have several points of check-in, so that there are no surprises and time to understand what is being asked and to discuss.
  23. We run the risk of repeating the issues here given the strengths and weakness of supervisors/FFAs as well; how do we insert checks and balances here?
  24. An early communication re: how the consultation/review process works; so that students have another access point to information.
  1. What trainings do FFAs and supervisors receive; required and optional; consistency and accessibility of the trainings?
  1. FFAs as employees of SSW can be required to attend trainings
  2. Develop a consultative process for FFAs and supervisors; allow them to access the Sotomayor Fellow as well
  1. Establish the Marta Sotomayor Fellowship for the full academic year
  1. Hit a one year pause on the anti-racism assignment to engage in a full redesign
  1. Student’s Evaluations of the field supervisor/site no longer need to be signed by the supervisor
  1. Create integrative seminars specifically designed from the perspective of clinicians of color.
  1. Conduct an audit of consultation/reviews held in 2015-2016 and over 3-5 years
  2. Can students appeal at this point? The 7 day appeal policy may have disadvantaged students in the past year.
  3. Use this review to understand how to flag organizations.
  1. Institute exit interviews with students who leave the program temporarily or permanently
  2. How to build in additional support to students who are questioning whether they want to return to the program
  1. Re-examine, re-imagine, and create necessary structural supports for students of color
  2. Consultations with the Sotomayor Fellow focus both on structural issues and social emotional support; How can we build more support for the students beyond the Sotomayor Fellow?
  3. We need to ensure that the process is nimble enough so that time doesn’t drag out; students experience a significant lag in being responded to which adds to the situation.
  4. Change the agenda for the 2016 Annual Conference to include space for student voices and training
  5. We are not sufficiently focused on prevention and place our emphasis on reaction.
  6. What is the basis of the policy for not allowing students to change FFAs and placement?
  7. Allow students to re-do their supervisor and agency evaluations.
  8. Can we utilize the period of time before students get on campus, online resources to provide training; use pre-readings.

Other items

  1. Audit process by which agencies, supervisors, FFAs are selected and trained.
  2. Conduct an environment scan to understand how and where situations first emerge.
  3. What role can the pre-doctoral Bertha Capen Reynolds fellow (scholar of color)?
  4. Identify specific new resources into field learning to ensure that an anti-racism lens is held.
  5. Develop supports/teaching to help students/FFAs address racism and oppression within organizations that are under pressures and effects of structural oppression and racism themselves.
  6. Create data structures to evaluate field learning from a structural rather than individual lens.
  7. Evaluate the educational structural processes that heighten disciplinary impact over educational intent and interrogate the dynamics of power.

Discussion

-There is variability between FFAs in terms of how available they are for you; their preexistingrelationships with the supervisor may disadvantage students.

-When does the School visit the organization/agency outside of when “problems” arise; students have experienced being in placements before anyone from the School has done a site visit.

-Not all the student placement evaluations and course evals are available on Moodle.

  • Students may have heard that there were problems at the placement last year but then do not have access to this information.

1