Sheila Gillespie Roth is a professor in the Department of Social Work at Carlow University. She teaches courses in both the BSW and MSW programs. Her areas of expertise are crisis intervention and trauma as it pertains to public safety personnel. Faculty profile
MSW Online
Tell us about how you got your start in social work.
Sheila Roth
From about high school age, I knew that I wanted a career path that allowed me to work with people, and to be able to use problem-solving skills. I come from a family of public safety providers. My dad was a firefighter. There are several paramedics in my family, and I’m also an EMT. But I come from a strong background of public servants. I think it’s just in my blood, that I have this interest. I saw my family helping others all of the time. So when it came time to look for college, I thought, “Let me look at some of the areas where I can do this work.” I looked at psychology, and sociology. But social work really spoke to me, because social work really has a foundation of psychology, and of sociology, and of biology, but it sort of merges them all together. That really spoke to me because social work really empowers the entire person, so we work from that frame of reference and it looks at “person” and “environment”, which is so important. That really spoke to me and that’s how I decided to major in social work.
MSW Online
Once you got into your social work program and graduated, what was your career path after schooling?
Sheila Roth
I worked in hospitals as a social worker. I went straight through from my BSW to my MSW program. Because, as you probably know, people who graduate from an undergraduate social work program, from an accredited program, can apply for what’s called advanced standing. And so you can get 15 credits worth of coursework taken care of through your undergraduate experience.
Right now, I’m the director of the Master of Social Work program at Carlow University, and I always encourage students to consider, “If you think you want to go on for an MSW, it might be a good idea to go ahead and get that master’s right away, because it can open job market doors for you”. Certainly people can come into an MSW program with degrees in other areas, however, it will take them a full 60 credits to earn their MSW.
I worked as a clinician in the hospital setting… I was always interested in healthcare because again, I come from that kind of background in my family, my sister is a nurse, so healthcare was familiar to me. Plus, I was interested in the cognitive and emotional aspects of illness, and how it impacts the person physiologically and emotionally. I worked in a small community hospital for my first job, and then, after about a year and a half there, I took a job at a large Level 1 trauma center, which I loved. I worked in the emergency department and on the trauma units.
MSW Online
That must have been very interesting and fast-paced.
Sheila Roth
That is where I really had great experiences being able to see the conversion of physical illness and emotional impact of illness. I would say in the emergency department is where my interest in trauma developed. I have a strong interest in crisis and trauma, and that’s where I really gained a lot of the initial experience in understanding the impact of physical and emotional trauma.
MSW Online
Very interesting. Did you find yourself getting a really good understanding for what your family did on a daily basis as you were growing up? Interacting with all those other types of professionals, too?
Sheila Roth
Yes, because for a social worker in a Level 1 trauma center, you’re part of the team. I always knew people who were paramedics, I knew my dad was a firefighter, and so forth. But when a trauma comes into the emergency department, the social worker is called to the trauma room, just like everybody else.
Your role becomes, “How do I identify this person? Let me start to gather information for a bio-psycho-social assessment.” As the trauma team is gathering information about the physical injuries of this individual, the social worker’s talking with the paramedics and getting a background of, “Hey, where did you pick up this patient? What was happening at the scene?”
You find out, were they at home? Were they at some other place? Do you know who this person is, if they’re awake and alert or if they are unconscious, because you have to identify them. You know, all of that type of information. So for me, it was really that problem-solving, sort of putting-that-puzzle-together piece that I was looking for so many years before.
Once you have the person identified, if they’re awake and talking, then you have a conversation with them. You ask them, “Who can I call for you?” Again, this is at a Level 1 trauma center. Then the social worker contacts the family members and brings them in, meets with them. You become the liaison between the medical team and the patient as they’re going to different areas of the hospital for tests and treatment. And you get the family in there to see them as soon as you can. It’s really quite an amazing job. You are also still assessing for social support, family support, etc… I loved that job.
MSW Online
Many people might not even know that social workers played that role.
Sheila Roth
Yes. It’s the social worker and, honestly, for me that’s been the frustrating part of my career. Because when you say to someone, “I am a social worker,” and they don’t understand the variety of jobs that a social work degree prepares you for. For one example, I have six faculty in my master’s program that I work with, and each of us has a specialization. We all have very different backgrounds. Each of us are unique in our skill sets and there is some overlap, but the common theme is we’re all MSW-prepared social workers. We’re all PhDs (you have to have a master’s to teach in a social work program at least) and every one of us has a unique specialization.
It’s such a diverse field. And a lot of students will major in psychology in the undergraduate level, because they want to work with people, and then they find out what social workers do, and they’re like, “Wait a minute, I can do the same thing? Help people and work with people in interesting ways?”
MSW Online
What is your current specialty in terms of teaching, or your PhD studies? Is it trauma as well?
Sheila Roth
Yes, it is, actually. Our MSW program is actually new. We’re only two years old. We are fully accredited. We are trauma focused. We haven’t gone through a full trauma-informed certification yet, but we’re trauma-focused. The faculty all have trauma backgrounds, and we all take trauma training because we really believe that we want to live that trauma-focused way with our students, and how we’re training our students, and how we interact with people. So that’s very important for us.
My role now is the director of the Master’s of Social Work program at Carlow University. I’ve been at Carlow as a professor for 27 years, and I actually developed the BSW program, the undergrad program, 27 years ago. I stepped down after 23 years because I wanted to focus more on research and special projects, things that I enjoy doing. Then just last year I stepped back up to be the director of the MSW.
I teach Advanced Crisis Assessment. I teach Death and Dying. I teach Families.
I’ve taught a course called Multidimensional Assessment, and it’s looking at the client from a variety of dimensions, the bio-psycho-social-spiritual dimensions of a person’s life and how to assess each of those to help them to fully function in their world. So that’s a fun course.
I teach Direct Practice Treatment Approaches and in that course, we talk about what all of the different types of therapies and treatment approaches that a social worker can use in therapy. If a person earns an MSW, they can sit for licensure right away after graduation. And then they can then work towards the 3,000 hours of supervised practice to apply for an LCSW, which is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. As an LCSW, you can have your own private practice as a therapist. Another whole sort of career as a social worker. I am an LCSW as well and I have a part-time practice where I specifically work with first responders.
I only work with EMS providers, firefighters. Occasionally I have some police officers, 911 telecommunicators. People will call and want to talk, and want to try to understand and try to think through, “What have I just experienced?”, “Why do I feel this way”?
I also volunteer on a crisis team that works with first responders after critical incidents. In that process, we work with people right after something occurs, and we try to say, “You’re a normal person who just went through a really abnormal experience. And here are some things you can do to help yourself get through this. Here’s some information.” On the crisis team, that’s what we do. And we can refer them for further service with a therapist if we think they need it, or if they think they need it. But in my practice, I work through an organization called the Center for Emergency Medicine and that is where I do short-term therapy with first responders, mostly paramedics.
MSW Online
Well then, in a timely question, I’m imagining you’ve seen some changes, or some differences, since COVID?
Sheila Roth
Yes, actually I’m doing a webinar for EMS providers next week on that exact topic. It depends on where you live, too, the state that you’re in, and what’s happening with your service and the COVID numbers. Early on, in my area, it was busy. And then it quieted down because for EMS providers, a lot of people weren’t going to the hospital. They were afraid. So the EMS services were a little bit slower than usual. We were also finding that first responders were actually getting some hours cut because there weren’t as many calls to 911. But now in some areas there’s been a spin around and it’s busy again.
What I always say to people is that, as a social worker working with providers, I really try to go into this with, yes, COVID is happening. This is what’s happening in their work world right now as a major topic. But so are heart attacks. So are car accidents. So are injured children. So are people who are elderly and frail. Their day is a mix of all of these types of human suffering. And so COVID is just sort of like the icing on the cake, so to speak. We are seeing a lot of cumulative stress. And that’s one of the things I deal with quite a bit, helping people to work through this and unpack the cumulative impact of this kind of work. A lot of what I do, in my work with first responders, is a lot of stress reduction. A lot of work with compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and trying to help them to create ways to do self-care and to manage the stressors of their job. Because the work comes home, too. That stress comes home. In my view, we’re helping the providers, but we’re also helping their families by helping them.
MSW Online
Absolutely. What advice do you give to students or early professionals? What would you want to say to them as they begin their careers?
Sheila Roth
One of the things that I would say is, look inside of your heart and ask, “What do I really want to do? What do I want to focus on?” You will get a great education, no matter where you go for your MSW or your BSW. You’re going to get a really nice broad education. But when it comes to practice, use those foundational skills and really ask, “What is it I want to do?”
So many students will come in with the mindset of, “I want to do everything. I want to change the world. I want to do this.” And as hard as it is to say, we don’t have a magic wand. We can’t wipe away all the pain and all the suffering and all the issues that we have in our society all at once. So you have to chip away. I always believe that to help one person is usually helping many, many more because that person touches the lives of other people. And so, you can focus on that. If you can focus on, “I’m going to do good with every client that I see, I’m going to do my best work with each client that I work with.” Or maybe your client is a community. Maybe it’s not… I’m in direct practice but there’s also macro practice, which is working with communities and organizations.
Whoever you’re working with, do what you love, because this is hard work. And if you love what you do, it helps. Also self-care is number one. Put your own oxygen mask on first, before helping the person seated next to you. You can not do this if you don’t take care of yourself.
MSW Online
That’s so inspiring that you found something that you love, and you’ve been able to share that with students and help them kind of build the love for the career, too.
Sheila Roth
I’ve been doing this now for over 30 years. And what’s so cool about social work is that I’ve been able to reinvent myself, but I’ve always had this certain common thread of either healthcare or trauma in that thread.
I’ve never not worked as a social worker. It’s a great field. It really is. It’s a misunderstood field, I think, but it’s a great profession. One of the things I always feel is that we need to call ourselves social workers. Because people call themselves sometimes by different titles, and people don’t understand that the person who’s doing that role is a social worker. And I think that adds to the confusion about what it is that we do.
MSW Online
That makes a lot of sense. What are some of the alternative names used?
Sheila Roth
People may say, I’m a counselor. I’m a therapist. I’m a case manager. That’s okay to do if that’s your job title, but you could also identify yourself as a social worker somewhere in there. If you’re meeting people, say “I’m a social worker.” Get the words in there. “I’m trained as a social worker, but in that role I am a therapist.” Or, “In that role, I do case management.” “In that role, I work with first responders.” We need to use our name to help to change the opinion and the view of what people think social workers do.