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“I was taught social justice meant more services. Now I understand that social justice means we don't need so many services.”

"Any place that you would show up and advocate for your own child, now you show up and you advocate for people and families and children of color, too."

“Keeping the ‘why' central — the ‘why' we talk about religion and spirituality is because we care about the clients. Oftentimes, when we get caught up in our own discomfort, we avoid these conversations.”

"When we think about oral health, we really silo it rather than thinking of it as we have one body; we have one health. But oral health is really the gateway into someone's whole health.” –Candace Ziglor, DSW

“Abortion is so stigmatized, controversial and a hot button issue that even social work has been hesitant to make it a primary component of the things we talk about and advocate for, even though reproductive health care affects everything.”

“Having conversations about important issues that affect our lives is how we address the social determinants of our health because it nurtures and cultivates community and a sense of belonging.”

“It's easy to get overwhelmed and paralyzed and not do anything, but if you can, connect and start to take action. You will feel better if you feel like you are part of the solution.”

“Gamification has this purpose of increasing motivation and engagement to influence or change behavior with an aim of achieving a particular outcome you have in mind.”

"Elected office is just like any other social work job. I think sometimes there's this fear you have to have a law degree or be a businessperson — completely not the case."

“Mind-altering, psychoactive compounds and plants have been used by humans for thousands and thousands of years. There are Indigenous traditions that have kept that alive over the centuries and still to this day.”

“There are social workers … that declare that spirituality is a vital part of human development. My question there is, I cannot think of, off the top of my head, any other component of human behavior and human development that we accept simply by declaration.”

"We can certainly talk about having folks at the table, but once they're at the table, are we making sure that their voices are heard? Are we making sure that we hear where they're coming from?"

“It's critically important for us as a profession to understand how computer science and folks who are doing AI in health and mental health are thinking about the problems that we're thinking of. Those engineers are 100% coming for you.”

"I can live in the world with an environmental consciousness of how to behave. I can bring that into my clinical practice. I can have a consciousness about how to be in the world, and I can bring that to my sessions with my clients, because all of my clients will be impacted by environmental issues.”

“When you practice that external skill, it actually creates a different experience inside of you. So one of the ways I think you can become more empathic as a therapist is to practice reflective listening, because doing that will actually expand that inner curiosity that you have."

“One thing we haven't even talked about is how we're preparing all students to go out there and work and practice. All of our students, regardless of where they work or whether they ever know it or not, will work with trans people, right? And so, what we're doing in the classroom or modeling is how to do that.” – Meg Paceley

“It's not waiting around for them to change. It's on us to come together and push for the changes that we know we need. That's the foundation of the overarching safer spaces umbrella that I work under. It's what inspires me.”

“Young Black men who reported higher scores of having ubuntu were more likely to see the benefit and value of seeking professional mental health services, whether that be a counselor or a social worker.”

“We're missing the ball. People with long COVID aren't even being assessed for long COVID. We're not finding out that we have it until major events have occurred that may have been avoided altogether.” - Jazmin Graham, LCSW

"Don't be afraid to have a voice. Advocate for yourself. If you have ideas, get involved. Be as careful as you can be, but just make sure you're offering that piece of education and really just showing people and guiding them through our social work ways. Eventually, people will hear you and understand.” – Stephanie Stodolka, LMSW

“One out of two adults have somebody related to them who has been incarcerated, So to be able to be effectively responsive to that is such a need.”

“Health inequity is baked into the cake. It is not incidental. If we acknowledge that that is true, that health care providers are trained in a way that reinforces racial biases and gender biases and ableist biases … we could start to do something differently in the way we think about medical practice and medical training in medical school.”

“I don't know how many more times we can say thoughts and prayers for these families when there's tangible steps that we can take that actually change the outcomes of some of these things. How many more lessons do we have to learn? How many more lives do we have to lose? How much more trauma do we have to take on until we say this is enough and actually do something?” – Kathryn Franco, LMSW, MPH

“They absolutely loved it. The small group of older adults that we took on that experience, they wanted more. ... They felt tech savvy, because they were using [VR]. It also gave them a choice. Where do you want to go today? What would you like to do today? So just giving them that feeling of empowerment.” – Louanne Bakk

“This is an incredible opportunity for a social worker to show up. And when we do, because of how we are uniquely trained, things get better. Because we do see the person and environment context, and we're not just thinking about remediation of symptoms if you will. We're looking at the structures that help perpetuate or create that person's struggle to begin with.”

"We are talking about a field that likes to tout its ethics and what we do, but our regulatory bodies are not adhering to our core values… This test is not doing anything but creating a massive, expensive barrier.”

“[Y]our story is important, and don't lose your story while you're doing your work. It is important no matter where you come from.”

“Intimate partner violence effects everyone. Even if people say, well, I've never been abused. I don't know anyone who has been abused. You have. You might just not know, because the person hasn't told you. Maybe you haven't presented yourself as a safe person to go to. […] it's something that affects our whole society financially, economically, socially, all that. So, it is affecting all of us.”

“And so power is the ability to act. And most people, middle income, working income, lower income, don't have the ability to act in the public arena. So, question, you know, how do you get power? […] the only two ways to get it is you can organize people, then you can deliver with a focus, consistently and persistently. I said and consistently and persistently because you can't just do it once.”

“It is a scary word, palliative care. But if you ask me, it's just really the best approach to care because it's patient and family focused.”

"[I]f we're talking about why do we need to decolonize schools of social work, we are increasingly teaching future social workers to help our clients put Band-Aids on their situations, right, to advocate for them to deal with these oppressive systems and structures that they live in, right? Where is the advocacy for dismantling these harmful systems of oppression beyond voting? You know, how can we get social work to actually focus on dismantling these systems of oppression instead of helping our clients cope with them? That's really the question.”

“We have to think about the aspect of social work that includes mobilization, organization, and access. For so long in social work we have been very much in the room, present with our client.... [W]e're helping them individually, I think social work[ers] felt like they were reaching the goal of the field. But the field is a social field. It's about impacting and changing society. And in order to impact and change society, we have to be a collective. We have to organize. We have to work together. Mobilize. [...] Part of that is being politically intelligent. Having political will.” – Mery Diaz

“Talk therapy is all about the verbal language. But what if you don't have the verbal language?... That's why movement is so important, because it let's you unpack… [and] describe how it feels in your body.”

“I don't disparage the really important, gifted clinical work… but the danger of understanding social work interventions as clinical and individual is that… We wind up trying to fix people, instead of trying to fix systems that box them often into utterly unworkable problems.”

“What are we doing now to be able to create a more just, caring, and compassionate society on my block, in my neighborhood, and in my city? And that should always be the discussion in policy, research, and every community intervention that we create.”

“It's an amorphous loss that other people can't see and they can't touch and they can't identify with. It's a prospective grief versus a retrospective grief because we're grieving over the hopes and wishes and dreams for the future…. so it becomes so much harder to grieve.”

“We need the magic of community [to address the issue of brain health], not the magic of pills.”

“I don't see my White colleagues talking about racial trauma. And then when I bring it up, it's like that aha moment... And if we don't talk about racial trauma with Black clients, how are we going to talk about regular trauma?”

“I'm very interested in helping physicians understand the big questions of what it means to be human, what it means to be a physician, and what it means to lead a good life in an effort to ensure, not only that all patients are treated with respect and dignity, but also that the practitioners themselves can practice self-care that helps their own mental health and also helps them flourish.”

“... Keep asking the tough questions and holding the child welfare system to a high standard, because both the families and the [social workers] need research that roots out the issues... and helps us work toward a fairer, more just child welfare system.”