Overview: Individuals experiencing psychosocial crises have used the community-based safe-haven and resources provided by libraries at increasing rates over recent years. Social work can provide crucial knowledge to and support skill development of library staff, and positively affect attitudes, improving libraries' ability to provide equitable, trauma-informed services to people in crisis.Proposal text: In the United States, individuals experiencing psychosocial crises have used the community-based safe-haven provided by libraries for decades, the rate of which has increased in recent years (Real and Bogel, 2019; Wahler et al., 2019). Among many factors contributing to this increase are the deinstitutionalization of persons with serious mental illness without adequate community-based support, nationwide affordable housing shortages, the opioid epidemic, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Notably, these crises have disproportionately affected people of color, deepening social justice implications of services public libraries provide. In this context, library staff interact with diverse individuals in crisis in a variety of ways based on professional knowledge and personal attitudes, which are limited by lack of specific training (Williams and Ogden, 2020). In this project, we proposed that through interprofessional collaboration, social work can support crucial knowledge and skill development to library staff, and positively affect attitudes, and so improve the ability of libraries to effectively provide trauma-informed services to people in crises in a natural community setting.
In this presentation we will describe several current models of social work-library collaborations to frame the rationale for our approach, and explain how we addressed the project aims by providing a series of workshops co-designed and facilitated by social workers and librarians, to address the most urgent needs identified by the public library professionals in our previous research: One workshop focused on supporting healthy boundaries in public library work in order to address role diffusion; another taught specific skills and knowledge to improve interactions with and support for people in crisis, with a focus on those experiencing mental health crises; and a final workshop focused on building resilience and self-care practices was presented, with an eye towards preventing burnout.
Pre- and post-workshop assessments provided data about participants’ knowledge and attitudes changes, and allowed participants to reflect on the trainings and extent to which they felt more comfortable and skillful addressing the issues at hand before and after the workshops. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data indicate the workshops were successful in increasing knowledge and altering attitudes of the librarians on each of the topics. These results will be discussed in detail in the context of the current literature on social work-library interprofessional collaborations, as well as implications for next steps in our interprofessional research, and for social work practice and education.
Attendees will gain insights into the implications of our promising data, the role of the value of equitable service shared by social work and public librarianship in our interdisciplinary work, and the importance of developing the capacity of library workers to engage in trauma-informed work through ongoing interprofessional continuing educational workshops. Attendees will also understand limits of such workshops and our rationale for proposing that social work interns be placed within public libraries to collaborate in the provision of trauma-informed resources and crisis intervention. Finally, attendees will understand how this interprofessional collaboration honors needs and preferences of individuals in crisis, in an anti-racist, human rights-affirming model that deserves further exploration and development.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion, participants will be able to describe the implications of our promising data, the role of the value of equitable service shared by social work and public librarianship in our interdisciplinary work, and the importance of developing the capacity of library workers to engage in trauma-informed work.
Upon completion, participants will understand limits of workshops such as we provided and our rationale for proposing that social work interns be placed within public libraries to collaborate in the provision of trauma-informed resources and crisis intervention.
Upon completion, participants will understand how this interprofessional collaboration honors needs and preferences of individuals in crisis, in an anti-racist, human rights-affirming model that deserves further development and exploration.
