From the Desk of the Executive Director

When Social Work is a Felony
published January 29, 2012 in the New York Daily News

N.Y.C.'s Unfair New Policy Underpays Nonprofits for the Services They Provide
Published August 29, 2011 in The New York Daily News

Anti-Government Rhetoric? Caveat Emptor
Published November 12, 2010 in Caribbean Life

When Social Work is a Felony

Published January 29, 2012 in The New York Daily News
By David Nocenti

Recently, I was speaking with a colleague who runs a local nonprofit who told me about a crime that she unwittingly was planning to commit. Namely, she was thinking of hiring a licensed social worker to work with at-risk youth. Apparently she was not aware that, unless she applied for a waiver to do so, New York State would treat that hiring as a felony.

You read that right: In our state, social service organizations are not allowed to hire licensed social workers.

How can that be? The state Education Department says it is illegal for most corporate entities, including nonprofits, to hire anyone who has a license to practice any of over 40 professions — from physicians to engineers to social workers to family therapists. Instead, these licensed professionals are only allowed to work in their own professional group practices.

This rule apparently is based on the belief that licensed professionals can be unduly influenced by unlicensed supervisors, and will somehow be convinced to abandon their professional ethics in support of some separate corporate goal.

But the state itself clearly gives little credence to that theory, because it has granted numerous exemptions to the rule. For example, there are exemptions for pharmacists, speech pathologists, massage therapists and optometrists. (This exemption explains why you can get a prescription filled at Duane Reade and can buy eyeglasses at Lenscrafters.) In addition, hospitals and HMOs have an exemption to hire licensed health professionals such as doctors and nurses without violating the law.

But for smaller social service organizations like the one I oversee, the rules are especially convoluted. In particular, when faced with the state’s assertion that it was illegal for nonprofit organizations to hire licensed social workers, a coalition of nonprofits and advocates for social workers convinced the state Legislature in 2010 to pass a law authorizing nonprofits to individually apply for waivers from that prohibition.

The deadline to do so expires, however, on Feb. 1, 2012. After that, if a nonprofit hasn’t applied for a waiver, or if its request for a waiver is denied, hiring a licensed social worker to provide services for the poor could lead to criminal charges.

This is no way to try to get services to people in need. Nor do I believe it is an accurate reading of the law. The statute that the Education Department relies on merely says that it is illegal for an unlicensed person to practice a profession or to “hold himself out as being able to practice a profession.” From there, the state concludes that corporations cannot hire licensed professionals at all.

That, of course, defies all common sense. If you watch a television commercial for an airline offering low-fare flights to Florida, you assume that the plane will be flown by a licensed pilot. If a nonprofit says it offers mental health counseling to help individuals with HIV and AIDS, the assumption is that the counseling is provided by licensed social workers, not the nonprofit’s bookkeepers. The nonprofit is “holding itself out” as employing licensed professionals, as well it should, but not as practicing a profession.

It is time to abandon this crazy patchwork system. In particular, the Education Department should acknowledge that while practicing a profession without a license should be a felony, hiring a licensed professional to practice that profession should not.

At a bare minimum, the Legislature should grant social workers the same exemption that pharmacists, speech pathologists, massage therapists and optometrists already enjoy.

Either action will free those of us in the nonprofit world to focus on our mission of serving individuals in need, without fear of prosecution.

N.Y.C.'s Unfair New Policy Underpays Nonprofits for the Services They Provide

Published August 29, 2011 in The New York Daily News
By David Nocenti

Imagine if the government decided to build a 10-mile road, but told potential contractors that it would only pay for 9 miles - and the contractor had to secure donations from private citizens to cover the rest. The government would be rightly chastised for trying to get something for nothing, and no rational company would bid on the contract.

Anti-Government Rhetoric? Caveat Emptor

Published November 12, 2010 in Caribbean Life
By David Nocenti

There is a movement sweeping the country that will have a fundamental impact on the lives of the poor, the disabled, and the disadvantaged. Unfortunately, it is not a movement to bring compassionate assistance to these individuals, but rather one that disbands decades of bipartisan efforts, through government action, to fulfill society’s collective obligation to help those in need.

The latest—but far from last—manifestation of this movement occurred on Election Day, and it would have occurred regardless of which party claimed victory. The reality is that no individual can run for office—and certainly none can be elected—unless their platform opposes taxes, opposes government spending, and indeed opposes government itself.

State and local budgets are already shrinking rapidly due to the economic downturn, and that will now also occur on the federal level. The adverse impacts from these cuts will accelerate as well.

What will this new reality bring? The first hardships will be visited on those in greatest need:  shorter time periods for unemployment benefits, greater restrictions on eligibility for food stamps, the elimination of subsidized child care slots, reduced aid for new immigrants, fewer services for those with physical and mental disabilities, fewer shelters for the homeless, reduced services for the homebound elderly, and so much more.

We collectively seem to have forgotten not just the hardships that existed before these programs were put in place, but, crucially, that these programs protect not just the poor, but the middle class as well.

Subsidized child care for poor parents and English language classes for new immigrants allow both groups to find jobs and start paying taxes. Unemployment benefits and food stamps allow individuals to feed their families and avoid eviction, so that they too can find work rather than fall into hunger and homelessness. Providing in-home services for the elderly and the disabled, as well as programs for disconnected youth, saves taxpayer dollars by avoiding the higher costs of institutionalization.

For example, in the past individuals looking for work were eligible for publicly funded child care. Due to budget cutbacks, however, that eligibility has been eliminated.  Here is an example of the real-life impact of that change:  Earlier this year Rosa P. was working and her daughter attended one of Union Settlement’s child care centers. Rosa then lost her job, which meant that her daughter’s child care was no longer funded. Rosa found herself in a double-bind: unable to afford to pay for child care and unable to look for a new job while she was caring for her daughter. Because of this reduction, Rosa is neither working nor paying taxes, and her daughter no longer has the benefits of early childhood education.

Because certain types of spending cannot be reduced (such as debt service) or are considered too essential to reduce (such as military spending), budget cuts will have to be imposed on more than just programs for the poor. Both rich and poor want to have safe streets, but governments are already cutting police officers, probation officers, and transitional services for those leaving prison. The inevitable result: More crime. Every time there is an outbreak of salmonella, or a bridge collapse, or a new insider trading scheme, the public asks: “Where were the government inspectors and regulators?” Increasingly, the answer will be: “We had to lay them off.”

There are still many among us who believe that society has a collective obligation to care for those in need, and to provide opportunities for those who wish to learn and work and produce.  Since the Great Depression, Americans have realized that the most efficient way to provide those services is through government funding—either directly, or through non-profit organizations that offer child care, youth programs, job training, food banks, adult education, immigrant assistance, home care, and other basic social services to those in need.

The tide, however, clearly has turned, and those with the loudest voices are winning the debate over whether the government is a mechanism through which the voting public can do good, or an impediment that must be dismantled. And so the new, long-term reality of lower taxes and decreasing government spending has arrived, and looks like it’s here to stay. Unfortunately, the old adage “you get what you pay for” applies not just to products we buy in stores, but to our government as well.