Early Writings

I began my professional career as a social worker at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) MetroWest NJ, where I worked with a wide array of populations ranging from toddlers to older adults.  During the latter part of my time at the JCC, I worked exclusively with adolescents.  The insights I gained through my work served to establish my initial scholarship focus.  For example, conflicts between parents, JCC administration, teens, professionals and other parties about a peer-led sex education project, created a need for an agency policy on condom distribution.  The policy development process and the value conflicts which surfaced, served as the basis for my first publication (Sweifach, 1996).  A second example concerned conflicts among an array of  JCC constituencies over interdenominational joint programming (orthodox, conservative, reform, reconstructionist) and issues of “who is a Jew” (patrilineal reform teens mingling with matrilineal orthodox/conservative teens).  I explored this community-wide dilemma in an article due to appear in the next issue of Social Thought (Sweifach, 2006).

Commentators routinely discuss concern over the affiliation patterns of Jewish adolescents (Boeko, 1993; Herman, 1997; Schauder, 1995; Vernon, 2000).  A number of my initial writings focused on core competencies, capacities, abilities and educational standards critical for work with Jewish youth, spotlighting how social work practices and principles provide a unique skill set for achieving success with this age group. 

From these writings, a new research interest developed; I endeavored to understand the nature of social work practice in JCCs, exploring differences between social workers and non-social workers in the way roles are perceived, defined, and carried out.  This interest has resulted in a number of publications that contribute and add value to the literature on host/guest relations and on deprofessionalization. 

Most recently, I have been collaborating with Wurzweiler colleagues and other Academics/practitioners on an array of topics, including: (1) HIV/AIDS, (2) volunteerism, (3) domestic violence, (4) group work, and (5) the impact of 9/11 and other major disasters on agency-based social work practice. 

HIV/AIDS
An up-coming publication (with Michelle Maidenberg) due to appear in the Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services, describes therapeutic approaches and interventions for working with HIV positive Haitians.  This manuscript is the first in a series of articles that I plan to write focusing on the need for cultural sensitivity and awareness when providing HIV services and related therapeutic interventions to unique populations, such as Haitians, orthodox Jews, and native peoples.  A second HIV/AIDS research interest relates to HIV/sex education in the schools.  I conducted (with Heidi Heft LaPorte) a national survey of the School Social Work Association membership, exploring the extent to which the role of school social workers could be expanded to include responsibilities for HIV/sex education services.

A second article (with Heidi Heft LaPorte) was mined from the same data, exploring the perceptions of school social workers with regard to how peer education could be used as an effective strategy for increasing HIV/AIDS preventive education effectiveness.  The next phase of this research will involve a survey of high school principals, exploring perceptions of how the school social worker role could be redesigned and expanded to include responsibilities for HIV/sex education.

Volunteerism
Marge Gibelman and I conducted a survey of licensed social workers, exploring volunteerism in regard to patterns of volunteer activity among social workers.  A manuscript reporting on this study was recently sent to Social Work for consideration.    The next phase of this research will involve a survey of  licensed guidance counselors, and counseling psychologists, allowing for interprofessional comparisons.

Domestic Violence
The literature related to domestic violence, substance abuse, and other taboo issues in Jewish homes is sparse.  I recently co-authored a paper on domestic violence in the orthodox Jewish home which appeared in Affilia.  This publication generated a number of presentations on this subject, and has served to inspire additional research (with Heidi Heft La Porte) on the use of cultural sensitivity in domestic violence groups with orthodox women.  Preliminary data were presented at the CSWE conference in Chicago.

Group work
Wurzweiler is only one of four schools in North America that offers social group work as a practice method.  This concerning situation has prompted two separate research studies  -  both currently in process.  The first (with Heidi Heft LaPorte) surveyed group work students in each of the four schools, probing why group work was chosen as a practice concentration.  It is anticipated that findings will be instructive in regard to perfecting  recruitment techniques and in contributing to a refinement in the way group work is presented as a concentration option.  The second study (with Marty Birnbaum and Heidi Heft LaPorte) explores the issues and problems which may arise when group work students are supervised by field instructors who lack group work knowledge or training. Overall, my group work interests are wide and varied.  It is my intent to continue research in this area over the next few years.

Impact of 9/11

Norman Linzer, Heidi Heft LaPorte and I have recently completed interviewing practitioners at 10 separate locations within the United States, Canada, and Israel, who work with victims of catastrophic loss, their families and members of the community.  It is expected that this research will generate a number of publications over the next few years.