Practice-Informed Research and Research-Informed Practice: Creating Meaningful Social Work Scholarship through HPPAE Field Placements

Overview: Health is a basic human right; however, the pandemic revealed profound disparities among many vulnerable populations, including older adults. This panel presentation will describe strategies for and present original data from mutually-beneficial research projects undertaken by HPPAE fellows during their yearlong field placements, exploring health and wellbeing in later life.Proposal text: The number of persons 65+ has increased rapidly with older adults presently approximated at 9% (617 million) of the global population, increasing to 17% (1.6 billion) by 2050 (Roberts et al., 2018). A Census Bureau report (2021) found that 1 in 6 older adults in the United States are childless, suggesting implications for socioeconomic status, health and wellbeing, and caregiving needs in later life. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these needs and introduced new challenges for the gerontological workforce, where a critical need for social workers has long-persisted (Berg-Weger & Schroepfer, 2020). If older adults’ health is to be protected as a basic human right, it is imperative that the future generation of social workers be prepared to meet the demographic realities of our aging society.

The Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education (HPPAE) offers a unique approach to educating future social workers, relying on university-community partnerships to deliver a competency-driven curriculum and rotational field experiences (Volland, 2021). Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many MSW programs had to creatively adapt their HPPAE initiatives, retaining the rigor of their educational efforts while ensuring the safety of their students and community partners. At one university in the mid-Atlantic region, these constraints led several HPPAE fellows to initiate aging-related research projects. Guided by Social Work Competency 4: Engaged in Practice-informed Research and Research-informed Practice (CSWE EPAS, 2015), two students worked in conjunction with their task supervisor, field instructor, and faculty advisor to conduct and disseminate scholarship that not only advanced their readiness for gerontological social work practice but also meaningfully contributed to the knowledge base of the field.

The proposed panel presentation will offer attendees insights for replication and findings relevant to the field of gerontological social work in three parts:

(1) The panel will begin with an overview by the faculty advisor, articulating approaches taken to fostering meaningful and mutually-beneficial learning opportunities that aligned with the practice behaviors outlined in CSWE EPAS Social Work Competency 4. A process model for these initiatives will be described, including lessons learned during project conceptualization; data collection and analysis; and, dissemination.

(2) Next, a HPPAE fellow who undertook a project during AY20-21 will present findings from her original research. ​​This exploratory study, involving semi-structured interviews with older adult social service volunteers (n=9) and applying Colaizzi’s phenomenological approach, aimed to describe how the personal, social, and existential ramifications of the pandemic impacted community-engaged older adults. Findings challenged typical ageist representations of older adults that portray them as frail, fearful, and in persistent need of rescue – instead, many older adults in this study described facing their fears in productive, growth-oriented ways.

(3) Then, a HPPAE fellow who is undertaking a project during AY21-22 will present findings from her original research. This exploratory study, which is currently in phase one of data collection involving a survey of nursing home directors and department heads, aims to describe the relationship between the implementation of culture change models in nursing homes and the quality of life for residents and staff.