Peggy Adams (Ed.D, MSW, LISW-S) is the MSW Program Coordinator at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She has worked as a clinical social worker in a variety of settings, specializing in adult and child mental health. She teaches a variety of coursework including policy, fieldwork, and mental health. Faculty profile
MSW Online
Please share with our readers how you got into social work.
Peggy Adams
Well, when I was a young kid, like in my early teens and all through young adulthood, I was always the person that everybody came to for problem solving or needed somebody to listen to them. I always wanted to do things to help people. It was just like an innate thing. I started working at a residential facility for developmentally disabled people when I was 16. I met the social worker there and really enjoyed listening and talking to her.
Peggy Adams
When I came to the university, I was in a different major that had nothing to do with helping people. It was a helping profession, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. After about two weeks of class, I hated it and needed to go find something else. I went to the career library and was looking around with a friend of mine. We both wanted to change our majors and I found a flyer that said psychiatric social work. I looked at it and I said, “This is exactly what I want to do.” I immediately went over and changed my major. From that point on, I was hooked.
MSW Online
Awesome. It sounds like you had some experiences and people along the way that encouraged your decision. Can you share your career path story? Once you finished your degree, how did you start your career and how has it progressed?
Peggy Adams
Sure. When I graduated with my undergraduate degree, I was actually hired by the agency in which I did my senior internship. It was a local community mental health agency. I was hired as a mental health worker at that time (now they call them case managers). The reason why they hired me was specifically to be part of a team that was starting a children’s day treatment program. Even though I hadn’t really worked with kids, I had worked in adult day treatment and I really enjoyed working with the mentally ill. They wanted me to start working with some kids that are having some emotional problems. I worked with both children and adults there actually. I had a lot of group experience. I worked with the adults during the day in the morning and then I would work with the children when they got out of school in the afternoon, and their families in the evenings. I did that for almost five years. Around three and a half years in, I was getting more complicated situations and I realized that I needed to go back to school, because I was doing things that were okay and I had really good supervision, but I knew that I didn’t have the learning and the knowledge that I needed to do it right.
I went back to graduate school and during graduate school, I did an internship that was totally different. It was on the advice of a friend to try something different. I went into a hospital setting. I had always wanted to be in a hospital just for the heck of it. I was a nurse’s aid for a long time, so I was familiar with the medical side of things from that end of things. When I went into the hospital setting, my internship was working with a social worker in the critical care floors, the ICU, the CCU and the step-down units. We were also responsible at that time for all of the people that had HIV and AIDS.
MSW Online
Interesting.
Peggy Adams
It was a really eye opening experience to say the least. I really found out that I didn’t really like medical social work at that point in my life. What I thought it was and what it actually was, were two totally different things. When you’re dealing with medical issues, there’s not much you can really do… you can’t fix them. That’s the doctors and the nurses job. You have to provide a lot of support and resources and encouragement. I was fine with that, but I wanted more than that. I was missing the therapeutic stuff that I had been used to. That internship taught me so much. Even though it was hard, I would never trade it for anything.
Then after grad school, I started working in a hospital of all places, in a psychiatric hospital that had an inpatient adolescent unit (here locally). It was a really nice blend because it was a hospital environment, but it was mental health care. It was the perfect blend of both medical and mental health for me. I loved my job there. I was there for six years. There was an agency in the community who was looking for a clinical supervisor and the hospital worked very closely with this particular agency – pre-screening for admission all of the adolescents and the little kids that were coming into the hospital. I left the hospital and I went to the agency and worked there for another five or six years. I was fine with it, but the agency went through some restructuring and they restructured me out of a job, so that was not good. But at the same time I was looking to try something different and a position became available after I had started doing some part-time teaching.
The other thing that I had done before I went to graduate school, when I was at the mental health agency, the spring before I went to graduate school, was at an inpatient adult psychiatric hospital unit. That was really cool and I loved it. I was only going to be there for a couple of months because then I was going to leave and go to graduate school, but I stayed for 15 years because I loved working in inpatient psych. I really liked the people with mental illness. They’re so interesting and they’re so misunderstood and I just liked them. I really enjoyed my work there, but I was working a night shift and so it was really hard to keep up with that. My other full-time job during the day, so I had to give that up.
I started doing some part-time teaching at the local university. I found out that I really, really like teaching. When my job was eliminated, I saw that there was a position available at a local community college for a social worker to help start a social work program. I went over there and started working there and I had planned to stay at the community college forever because I really loved it. It was five minutes from my house and I worked with a lot of really great people – it was just fun.
Then my Alma mater called me (I had always been in touch at my Alma mater) and they had a position available and the faculty called and said, “Hey, if you want to come work here, get your resume in.” I did. I’ve been full time here at BGSU since the fall of 2002, but technically I’ve been here since the summer of 1991 because I did part-time teaching for 10 years before I started being here full-time.
MSW Online
Wonderful. We love hearing people’s stories because it can inspire people who are either making educational decisions about where they want to go with their education or whether they’re newly into their career and thinking about a change.
Peggy Adams
I still work a part-time job because even teaching full time, my teaching philosophy is that you need to have one foot in the real world and one foot in academia if you’re going to teach your students the right thing. I teach practice classes. I teach “What’s it like out there? What are some of the barriers that you have to face? What are the resources that you have? What are the clients? What are the clients like that you work with on a regular basis? What are some of the practical wisdom that I’ve gained over the years?” – teachers who are still clinical can bring all that into the classroom. Part of the reason why I kept working at the inpatient psych hospital, even while I was teaching initially was because it was really fun for the students to hear about the real examples of mental health or mental illness. I could say, well here’s an example of this particular disorder and this is what it looked like real life. This is what I did, and this is what the client did. It makes it real for them.
MSW Online
Right.
Peggy Adams
At Bowling Green, it’s the same way. I like to bring that real world experience into the classroom. I started doing some part-time work at a hospital. I’m just drawn to hospitals for some reason. I still work as an emergency room social worker per diem on the weekends or in the evening. Then also as part of my responsibility, depending on what shift I’m working, I also cover OB and pediatrics and the neonatal intensive care unit. So I have a pretty well-rounded understanding of medical social work in general. ER social work is again the perfect blend between medical and psychiatric, because every social problem that exists walks in the emergency room at some point in time. On any given night I could be dealing with a psychiatric emergency, a detox situation, child abuse situations, domestic violence, sexual assault, homelessness, a nursing home placement… it’s a little bit of everything in there. There’s death and dying issues because of the traumas. Like if somebody comes in, in a car accident or cardiac arrest and they pass away, then I’m with the families and helping them start the grief process. Every little aspect of social work is part of in some way, shape, or form, part of the emergency room. I can take that experience and then bring it into the classroom when I’m talking about different things and the students like it because it’s stuff that’s happening currently, not something that happened 30 years ago.
We’ve all had our experiences, but if you don’t keep them up, then the stories and the situations, what you know as your reality is very different. The mental health system that I started in when I was first out of school is way different than the mental health system now. It’s evolved over time. I can explain that to the students and say, “this is what it was like back then, this is what it’s like now.” Look at how policy has affected practice. This is why you have to understand and pay attention in your policy classes because it’s really important. You can make that bridge. Whereas if an instructor doesn’t have recent experience and is not current, it’s a little bit more difficult to do.
MSW Online
Right. You don’t want the student to feel like they just want to get through school and get out there and start making money and later think “I really should have paid more attention to that.”
Peggy Adams
That’s the best thing about teaching and especially about the teaching that I do because I teach some of the field classes in addition to the practice classes. In the field classes, when the students are in their internships, you can see the light bulbs going on. You can hear them say, “well, we learned this in so-and-so’s class and this is what happened in my agency today and I’m so glad we had this material because now I know what to do and stuff like that.” It’s like, yes, this is exactly why we wanted you to have that stuff. You’re using what we taught you and that’s really cool. There’s nothing more gratifying for a faculty member to be able to see that. There’s nothing more gratifying for any social worker I would imagine, to see the next generation of students, the next generation of professionals coming out and feeling like they’re as enthusiastic and energetic as what we were when we were their age. That’s just really, really cool.
MSW Online
And I’m sure knowing all of the people in the future that they’re going to help.
Peggy Adams
Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s so fun to watch them literally grow up before your eyes. I tell them when they’re in their field class, I say, you start out as a student, but by the time you’re ready to graduate, you’re going to be a professional. To watch that transformation take place is a gift. It’s so, so cool. Not everybody gets to see it, but every single faculty member who was involved in a student has a hand in developing that student. Then all the people in the community that they come in contact with as colleagues and as supervisors and other practitioners, they just add to their ability to grow and develop and become great people. It’s just so neat. It’s the best profession in the whole world, as far as I’m concerned.
MSW Online
That’s so wonderful to hear you say that, and it’ll be really inspiring for your students and then people reading your story on our site. Thank you so much for sharing. Kind of along those same lines, what do you see the future trends in social work? Are there new areas? Are there new things? Are there a lot of different roles for social workers from moving into the future? What do you see in terms of industry changes?
Peggy Adams
Oh my gosh. There’s so many things different, it’s hard to even say. Well, first of all, I think there’s always going to be the standard stuff, right? We’re always going to need child protection workers, we’re always going to need mental health case managers, we’re always going to need people in the different agencies. Shelters and mental health agencies and all that kind of work. I think those roles are going to stay. They might change a little bit, but they’re going to stay.
But there’s a lot of opportunities for social workers right now.
One of the hidden jewels in social work is the connection that they have to policy. There’s so many things that a social worker can do. Right now, I have a couple of former students who are working as legislative aides for some legislators at the state house in Columbus, OH. It’s really neat that they can take the stuff that they’ve learned and they can be the eyes and the ears, and they can talk to the constituents. They can educate the legislators on social issues. I don’t think the vast majority of social workers, especially the undergraduate ones, are looking at big macro kinds of things. They’re looking more at the micro arena.
I think that the time is ripe for social workers to be in the spotlight with all the upheaval that is going on in this country right now and all the divisiveness. Our profession has always been the voice of reason. You know, we got loud and in the sixties (I was not there but my predecessors were) they protested and they went to jail and they did all kinds of stuff to get the word out and to stand up for what they felt was right. I think particularly right now, that is something that our profession has been and will continue to do. For once, people are starting to pay attention to what social workers can do. I think that’s really cool.
In terms of new stuff, the idea of forensic social work, particularly working with the police, could be more prevalent in the future. Joe Biden was saying something about it. Basically it’s the idea that social workers and police officers work together to help with community, what they call community policing. Social workers can be with folks in a domestic violence situation to try to help talk people down, to help there to protect the kids or to help with other domestic issues. They can be there to debrief if there’s a really traumatic situation with police and there’s PTSD and secondary trauma happening. They can be there as a help for the police officers and detectives. Even if they’re not in the field with them, they can help them after the fact with things.
Also just social worker values and ethics are really, really good in progressive courts that have an emphasis on treatment or prevention or rehabilitation rather than punishment. We have some courts here where I live, where the judges are very, very, very progressive judges. They really believe a lot in rehabilitation and prevention and treatment for people. They can use and recognize the skill set that social workers have. I think there’s going to be a need for social workers as probation officers and parole officers. I don’t say corrections officers, but in the facilities, they already have them, but they would need more of them. Overall, working in the whole justice system is a trend that I think is going to be huge.
The other thing I think is really important is there’s another trend in the medical field. I think that there’s a possibility more and more physicians’ offices and groups will be utilizing social workers to help with case management needs of their people, particularly the people that live in rural areas or the elderly who can’t always get into the doctor, unless it’s a problem. Social workers can make sure that they’re taking their medicine properly, that they are eating okay, that their heat is on, those kinds of things that will make or break whether or not an older person or isolated person is able to function and people are paying attention to them. I think that’s an up and coming area for social workers.
Then there is overall working with the elderly. The demographic is changing and there’s so many older people, which means there’s going to be a need for more social workers that understand the needs of elderly people and service them appropriately.
Those are the things that I can see. I’m sure other people have other views, but those are the things that I see around here.
MSW Online
Your insight is very timely. I’ve heard the term community policing. It makes so much sense to be a complement to the police officer’s role because we can’t expect police officers to have the same skills, all of these skill sets in the moment.
Peggy Adams
Well, they’re trained totally differently than social workers are. I mean, a simple, simple little example is, police officers are trained to interrogate people, right? There’s a difference when you’re interrogating somebody and you’re interviewing somebody. When you’re interviewing somebody there’s a whole, from a social work perspective, a whole different approach. I don’t know if it’s better or worse. It’s just a different situation. It’s a different way of dealing with people. I had a detective when I was teaching an interviewing class come in and talk about that because part of the students in the class were also criminal justice majors. The detective basically said a lot of the ways that they deal with people is very consistent with how social workers are trained. Some of the police officers are recognizing the value of that.
In our own criminal justice program here at the university, almost all of the criminal justice students have to take the interviewing class. When they graduate, they’re asked as part of their exit survey what class had a significant impact on them or something to that effect. Almost all of them say the interviewing classes. They don’t like it when they’re doing it, but when they go out into the world and they have to deal with people, they realize the value of that class. But it’s coming at it from a different perspective.
MSW Online
Very cool. Any advice for students or new professionals, and then are there any resources like podcasts or websites that you’d really recommend to them?
Peggy Adams
I can recommend membership to NASW, the National Association of Social Workers. That organization is our professional organization. It has all kinds of resources and videos and podcasts and all kinds of stuff. For people in Ohio, we have a very active Ohio chapter and our executive director in Ohio is absolutely wonderful to work with. That is the one resource that I think all students, and all social workers, need to belong to because it’s our voice. They are our advocates in bigger matters, but they also provide a number of different kinds of resources for anybody who is a member, including liability insurance, which is a big deal when you’re out in practice.
As far as advice goes, If you’re a student, then I would say, talk to your faculty in your social work program. Get to know them because they’re going to be writing recommendation letters for you. They have to get to know you to be able to do that well. The other thing is, they’re a great resource. I still have students that call me from 10, 12 years ago that call just to kind of update me on their life and share how they’re doing. They also ask for advice. If they have an ethics question or something like that, they call and say, I have this situation, can you help me out? Where should I go? Then I can point them in the direction or help them problem solve it or other things like that. Developing a mentor is really, really important because that person is always there for you to be able to be a support in some kind of way. If you get to know your faculty or your field person, when you’re in your internship, those people, those relationships can be valuable even long after you’re done with school.
The other thing is make sure that you take time to take care of yourself. Self care is so important. Our profession is one of those where you could literally be working 24/7 and never take a break because there’s so much stuff to do. A lot of times people lose themselves. They focus so much on their work and their clients that they forget to focus on themselves. You have to take time, you have to set boundaries between your personal and your professional time. Try to be home when home, and work is work, and try to keep them separate, so you don’t take things home.
It’s hard work, it’s an emotionally draining profession in some respects. so you have to make sure that you’re energized and that you’re feeling comfortable, and that you’re good to go. Otherwise, if you’re not doing well, then you’re no good to your clients. Making sure that you engage in meditation or mindfulness or exercise or healthy eating or whatever it is that you want to do to take care of yourself, but make sure that you take care of yourself. Because if you don’t, nobody else is going to do it for you.
MSW Online
Thank you!