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Multiracial Recruitment in the Field of Family Therapy: An Innovative Training Program for People of Color

Posted on: Sunday, 4 September 2005, 03:01 CDT

This article describes the creation of a training program designed to increase the number of family therapists of color in the family therapy field. In 1992, a partnership between New York City schools of social work, community agencies, and the Ackerman Institute for the Family created the Diversity and Social Work Training Program. Elements critical to the program's success were recruitment strategies, mentorships, partnerships with outside organizations, provision of a long-term institutional commitment, biracial collaborations, and institutional change. This article describes the design, structure, and process of this program's evolution and its impact 12 years later.

Fam Proc 44:249-265, 2005

Feeling angry in the historical dimension,

I close my eyes and look deeply

Three hundred years from now,

Where will you be? Where shall I be?

Thich Nhat Hanh (Essential Writings, 2001)

EARLY DIVERSITY EFFORTS AT THE ACKERMAN INSTITUTE

Founded in 1960, the Ackerman Institute is a nonprofit postgraduate training, treatment, and research center located in New York City that trains mental healthcare professionals to work with families as they meet the challenges of living. Its faculty are drawn from the fields of social work, psychology, and psychiatry, and in addition to their teaching responsibilities, many also direct research projects focusing on contemporary issues facing families. New insights about issues that families face and methods of treatment are folded into the various training programs that the institute offers. The range of training opportunities includes workshops, year-long courses, and intensive 2- and 3-year certificate-based training programs. The Ackerman Treatment Center, a sliding-fee-scale family therapy clinic, serves a diverse population of New York City families and provides the setting for many of the institute's training activities. The institute trains approximately 150 students a year.

In the late 1980s, the Ackerman Institute's faculty was 100% White. The student population was only slightly more diverse, including one African American and one Latino student. Gillian Walker, a senior faculty member, attempted to draw attention to this issue in the mid-1980s by convening discussion groups among the few student alumni of color. She recruited Sippio Small, an African American, and Nellie Villegas, a Puerto Rican, to join a project dedicated to working with families of those affected by HIV/AIDS (Walker, 1991). At that time, the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) was providing the bulk of mental health services to individuals with AIDS, but there was a dearth of services for families. As we began our work in this area, the population we served was predominantly gay White men, and we gained expertise both in working with the disease and with gay men by volunteering at GMHC, which was run and staffed by gay men who could educate us on both counts.

As substance abusers and their families, many of color, began to emerge as the second wave of families devastated by this disease, a stark contrast emerged. Where was the GMHC for people of color? Where were the therapists and faculty of color to learn from at the institute? In short, with the exception of Small and Villegas (who were not at that time core faculty but were considered adjunct project faculty), there were none. Sippio Small, the late Ruth Mohr, and Laurie Kaplan began to brainstorm how to address the lack of diversity within our training institute. Although clearly in the minority, several family therapy training institutes had begun to make strides in bringing issues of race, culture, and social justice to the family therapy training agenda, most notably McGoldrick's Multi-Cultural Family Institute of New Jersey, Imber-Black's Urban Institute for Families in the Bronx, and Almeida's Institute for Family Services in New Jersey. Ackerman was clearly lagging behind these other training programs. Moreover, the statistics from the U.S. census and marriage and family therapy organizations were sobering.

According to the 1990 U.S. census, 24% of the population consisted of people of color, and by the year 2050, that number is expected to increase to 48% (Green, 1999). One of the more recent surveys of family therapists shows that 95% of family therapists nationally are Caucasian (Bailey, Pryce, & Walsh, 2002). We were concerned that the field's theoretical base had been strongly influenced by its dominant White membership and lacked the knowledge and expertise of professionals of color.

Without a proactive recruitment strategy, were we not, in effect, perpetuating racism in our society by treating families of color and White families almost solely by White professionals? Were we not depriving all families, both White and those of color, exposure to the richness and complexity of difference? What would be the impact if families of color and White families were treated by professionals of color as often as they were treated by White professionals? We began to conjecture that this underrepresentation had impeded the development of a community of multiracial professionals tackling the problems that families face today and had done little to reduce racial bias in our society. We took to heart McGoldrick's challenge that "how a society defines gender, race, culture and class relationships is ... critical to understanding how all family processes are structured" (McGoldrick, 1999, pp. 10, 17). It was time for Ackerman, a leading family therapy training institute, to become a multiracial family therapy institute.

STARTING FROM THE "BOTTOM UP"

In 1992, Sippio Small, Laurie Kaplan, and the late Ruth Mohr joined ranks to attempt to create a program that would significantly begin to diversify the student population of the Ackerman Institute and address the glaring absence of family therapists from diverse backgrounds in the field. We were aware that starting from the "bottom up" (i.e., recruitment of students) vs. "top down" (recruitment of faculty) was fraught with risk. Bringing in students of color to a predominantly White institute with only one faculty member of color ran the risk of not providing the students with enough support and leaving them vulnerable to feeling like "token" minorities, chosen first for their color, second for their skill. However, we shared the belief that a grassroots approach had its benefits. We believed that by increasing the numbers of students of color trained, we would in effect be creating a pool of trained professionals whom we could ultimately recruit to join our faculty. We also believed that once the ratio between White and students of color became more balanced, a different dialogue would evolve, and the need and desire to hire additional faculty of color would naturally occur.

We proposed to the administration that we wanted to collaborate with schools of social work in New York City to offer field placements to second-year graduate social work students of color. Initially, this idea was met with resistance because there was concern about whether students who had not yet completed their graduate studies would be able to provide the kind of care upon which the reputation of the institute was built. The administration wanted to continue to try to recruit students of color after they completed graduate school. However, we had not had great success in this endeavor thus far. Even if we were moderately more successful, the likelihood was that there would often be only one student of color in a training group, creating the burdensome and unwelcome role of "educating White students about color."

We also researched recruitment strategies in schools of social work and discovered that essential ingredients for success were early recruitment, mentorships, and financial and emotional support (Bailey et al., 2002). Small emphasized the importance of recruiting students of color while they are still in graduate school, citing his own personal experience and studies that have demonstrated that people of color are less likely to enter into postgraduate training after graduate school (Wilson & Smith, 1993). Small's ability to draw on his own personal experiences in graduate school was the most significant factor in alleviating administrative doubt and resistance.

Small also suggested that we enlist the help of Arthur Maslow, a former faculty member who had long been an advocate for inner city families. In his role as board member at the institute, he had created a fund entitled the New Interventions in Family Therapy (NIFTY) Fund, and with the support of Peter Steinglass, executive director, and Marsha Sheinberg, director of training, they agreed to provide initial start-up funds to pay for instructor salaries, overhead costs, and student stipends. Because all other training opportunities at Ackerman are based on student tuition, this program needed other funding sources to survive. It was clear that the purpose of the NIFTY Fund was for seed money only and that it was our responsibility to take the lead in securing alternate funding sources after the first 2 years. If we were not able to do so, the program would not survive. We were now ready to approach the schools of social work and ask them to partner with us to achieve our mis\sion.

THE PROGRAM

In 1992, we began the Ackerman Diversity and Social Work Training Program (DSWTP) in conjunction with the Columbia, NYU, and Hunter Schools of Social Work, and the National Urban League. We adhered to the premises outlined below.

Choosing the Field of Social Work

We chose social work as our focus of trainee recruitment because of the field's century-long commitment to social change through both a sociopolitical and clinical lens. Our own experiences in social work school were, however, at times perplexing because we were simultaneously being taught a strength-based perspective coupled with psychodynamic theory, and the medical model, a pathology-based theory and practice. The discovery of family systems theory and its nonpathologizing approach to healing resonated with us when we were still social work students because it seemed more consistent with the original mission of social work. Because people of color had long suffered from pathology-based belief systems, including racism, we believed that a treatment model that embraced strengths, resources, and resilience would particularly have meaning for students of color.

Recruitment of Young Professionals of Color BeforeThey CompleteTheir Graduate Studies

Institute training programs often require prerequisites of 3 years of postgraduate experience and considerable tuition expense that relatively few can afford. Many students of color already have taken out significant loans to pay for their graduate school education. Additional loans at this time can seem daunting. If one's exposure to the field of family therapy has been limited to an elective here and there, the motivation necessary to "sign on" to a large commitment is not likely to materialize. We felt that if we could increase the exposure of graduate students to what family systems theory and practice has to offer, coupled with financial support and mentorship, we could both recruit and retain many more students of color than if we focused our recruitment efforts after graduation.

Partnering With Outside Organizations

In addition to partnering with schools of social work, we felt that we needed to build linkages and collaborations with other influential human service organizations whose mission was to create policies and programs that were culturally relevant and sensitive to families of color. In addition, given the complexity of social problems that families face, we felt it necessary to train young professionals both to become clinicians and to do program development and community organization. We also wanted to draw from the diversity of expertise offered by other organizations committed to the same goals. We looked to the National Urban League, an African American organization dedicated to creating social policies and programs that benefit people of color and staffed by African American program and policy analysts and community organization advocates, to train our students in program development and community organization.

Provision of A Long-TermTraining Commitment

To successfully retain students, it was essential to create structures that would support them financially and emotionally. One year of training would not be sufficient to produce skilled family therapy professionals. Additionally, it was too brief a period to consolidate the building of a community of professionals of color. Thus, the program was designed to begin as a 1-year internship in the second year of a master's level graduate school. Upon graduation, all students who had participated in the program would be invited to continue in 3 to 4 years of postgraduate training and would be provided with financial assistance to do so. With regard to the need for emotional support, we were aware that entering a predominantly White postgraduate institution both as the only master's level students and students of color was a double "one down" position, increasing the likelihood of their vulnerability to acts of racism and being treated as "other." Hardy's description of the "unintentional nature of proracist ideology" (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1999, p.120) describes well an institute replete with professionals committed to racial justice, yet "simultaneously unaware of the ways in which one's attitudes and behaviors perpetuate a pro-racist ideology" (p. 120).

Discussion of the students' experience with regard to race was initiated throughout their training experience within their training group, in their clinical work with families, and in their relationships with students and staff in the institute. A major component of the program was to create activities to build both peer support networks and faculty-student mentorships. Group process and group building activities, including the formation of an alumni association, would also be key components of the program. Additionally, Kaplan, Small, and Mohr would initially serve as mentors to support the students.

Biracial Partnership

We believed that our own biracial partnership (African American and White Jewish) would both create opportunities and tensions for the program and be metaphoric and instructive with regard to our differing experiences, feelings, and attitudes about race, power, oppression, and difference. These were issues that existed among us, between White faculty and professionals of color within our institute, within the field, and in society as a whole. The two of us committed ourselves to exploring some of the complexities of the relationships between African Americans and White Jews, both on a personal and professional level. Hardy also states, We "Once one understands that race is a central organizing principle, and that it shapes society through the lens of a pro-racist ideology, the next step towards racial sensitivity is increasing one's cross-racial exposure. It is only through consistent and direct contact with racially diverse people that one is challenged to learn more about oneself as a racial being-which is the next step" (Hardy & Laszloffy 1999, pp. 124-126). We also believed that learning how to articulate our struggles with one another would help prepare us for the struggles of our students. Our focus was to recruit students of color, yet within that broad definition, there would be many racial, cultural, gender, and class differences among them. Those differences would require exploration and provide opportunities to examine our relationships, which would also begin to expand our dialogue and influence our work with families.

Program Design and Recruitment

The program began by accepting four second-year social work trainees: two from the Hunter School of Social Work and two from the Columbia School of Social Work. University faculty selected students of color who were highly motivated and independent learners. Additionally, Small went to the universities and spoke at Black and Latino caucuses, telling them about our program. Subsequently, we accepted six students, adding New York University School of Social Work and Yeshiva School of Social Work to our partnership. Alumni of the internship also joined in the recruitment of students, both by word of mouth and by speaking at diverse student association meetings.

At the time of their interviews for the internship, students were informed of the mission of the program and our desire to increase the number of professionals of color in the field of family therapy. Frank discussion about the meaning of being part of a program that recruited students of color and its burdens on the students themselves was part of the interviewing process. We were choosing outstanding students of color, yet they would be vulnerable to assertions by others that they were chosen only for their color. Students who elected to become part of the program all struggled with this aspect of the experience, yet almost all stated that it was a burden they were willing to shoulder to support the program's mission. We also shared with them our hope that they would find the internship year an exciting one and would want to continue at the institute for an additional 3 to 4 years of training. If they did, we would provide them with both financial assistance and supportive mentorship, and we hoped, over time, a community of professionals of color who would support each other in their work.

In their first year at Ackerman, the institute, the universities, and the National Urban League combined to provide a 1-year internship experience. Their graduate schools provided them with an academic education in social work; Ackerman provided them with an intensive clinical training program that expanded their knowledge base and skills in working with families; and the National Urban League provided them with training in community organization and program policy and development. They spent 21 hours in the field, 14 at Ackerman and 7 at the National Urban League. Each student had a caseload of three families drawn from the Ackerman Clinic, in addition to being active team members for the cases that their student colleagues were carrying. Their work included ongoing therapy with these families throughout the year and advocacy work with larger systems that impact them (e.g., therapeutically oriented visits to schools, community hospitals, courts, correction and police departments, and social service and welfare agencies).

Group Supervision

The students and their supervisors met as a team every week for 6 hours of group supervision. Trainees brought in their families for live supervision behind a one-way mirror and observed the work of their student colleagues. The team of students and supervisors assessed family issues, discussed treatment plans, and recommended interventions for change. This model of supervision provided students with hands-on training and allowed supervisors immediate access to both students and clients. The group experience included exercises designed to build and deepen connections among the students\. Equal importance was given to clinical skill development and the building of a community. Personal genograms of the students and experiential exercises1 that invited exploration of cultural and racial difference were a few of the tools used to deepen the students' understanding of one another.

Students were also required to spend 1 hour together without the supervisors present to explore issues that they were struggling with among each other or with their supervisors. A feedback loop was encouraged, and the group selected issues that they wished to bring back for discussion with their supervisors. This helped the students form a bond that was not dependent upon the supervisors' presence and empowered them to develop their own identity.

The interns also participated in a weekly postgraduate didactic seminar, familiarizing them with family theory and facilitating interaction with the rest of the student body.

Journal Club

Students were encouraged to discuss issues of race, class, culture, religion, power, and oppression from their different vantage points and to be mindful of the ways that those issues impact the families they are treating. To help facilitate those discussions, students participated in a monthly Journal Club. All students were invited to share unique aspects of themselves as they related to race, class, culture, or spirituality through poetry, film, literature, or their own writings. A few examples of Journal Club offerings were viewing of films such as Sankofa, the journey of an African American woman reliving the forced slavery migration of her ancestors; the complex migration experiences of three Latino families; the personal stories of gay men and women in Haiti; and a personal poem written by a Korean American student describing her migration experience through a child's eye.

Irene Lee, an Asian American internship alumna, in describing her experience of the Journal Club and the internship, commented, "The internship offered me the truly unique experience of learning family therapy through the lens of ethnic and racial diversity. As a group of social work students from myriad cultural and racial backgrounds, we used our own experiences of each other to better understand the impact of race, culture, and difference for the families we were treating. Journal Club was a particularly powerful tool that helped us deepen our understanding of each other. Presentations of poetry, film and writings that spoke to each student's unique identity were powerful in both connecting me more deeply to that person and appreciating the significance of race, class, and culture in shaping both who we are and our understanding of others."

Participation in Clinical and Research Projects

Each student was assigned to work with a senior faculty member on a clinical project. Examples include working with violence, chronic illness, attachment, incest, learning disabilities, and depression. Equal weight was given both to the learning experience and to the import of building connections between the students and the faculty. This intensive interaction was designed to help incorporate students into the institute, preventing marginalization. Their work with senior faculty set them apart from the other students at the institute, whose program did not include this requirement, and it was a highly regarded bonus of being in the program. Additionally, many of the project faculty in the early years of this program were White, and the benefit of including voices of difference was experienced by senior faculty firsthand, aiding in reinforcing the value of this program.

Effecting Change Within the Institution

To support the notion that the Ackerman Institute's systems approach in working with families can also be applied to units larger than the family, students were asked to identify, plan, and execute a small structural change that would improve the services of the institute. Examples of "change projects" included development and implementation of a survey sent to families to ascertain treatment outcomes; a questionnaire given to institute students and faculty regarding therapist attitudes about homosexuality and its impact on treatment; and questionnaires and surveys examining the Diversity and Social Work Training Program itself, eliciting feedback from current and former students about the program and suggestions for improvement. In particular, student feedback about the program resulted in changes, such as changing the name of the program, shortening the postgraduate training commitment by a year by allowing the interns to participate in a postgraduate theory course during their internship, and choosing community placements.

Community Placements

The initial partnership with the National Urban League enabled students to spend 7 hours weekly focusing on reviewing programs that were designed to offset racial discrimination and poverty by providing people of color with tools to ensure equal opportunity in employment, housing, and education. With leadership changes at the League, the support for our partnership dwindled, and we needed to develop other community linkages. Because student feedback indicated that they wished to have community placements in areas that held special meaning for them, we expanded this part of the program to include such placements as:

* A photography residency with 12 adolescent male students at Central Park East secondary School, depicting the inner lives of children in East Harlem through photography

* Conducting interviews to research the impact of belief systems on the use of traditional vs. modern medicine by Korean American immigrants at the Asian Center for Immigrant Health

* Conducting multiple family groups with families experiencing chronic illness at North General Hospital in East Harlem

* Writing grants and assisting in community-building activities, such as working with food pantries, sewing sleeping bags for the homeless, and creating a community garden with youth at Fresh Youth Initiatives (FYI) in Washington Heights

Rehana Ali, a program alumna who designed the photography residency mentioned above, spoke about her experience in this way: "When I was 10 years old, I immigrated to this country from a small village in Bangladesh. The experience was overwhelming, compounded by a language barrier that made it almost impossible to communicate what I was seeing and feeling. A woman who became my mentor gave me a camera and encouraged me to give voice to my feelings through the use of photography. This was a powerful experience for me and I wanted to share it with others."

Virginia Fung did her community placement at FYI, an innovative after-school program for teens in Washington Heights. "Virginia was instrumental in helping FYI pioneer a wonderful relationship with the Blank Foundation, affording us $90,000 over a 3-year period to support our Community in Action Program," stated Rodney Fuller, FYI codirector.

Annual Student Events and Presentations

Through the generosity of scholarship funds provided by the Psychotherapy Networker, the students attended the Networker conference together annually. Because there are still so few professionals of color in the field, it can be alienating to attend the conference alone. For many, it was startling to be so overwhelmingly in the minority, underscoring the need for our program. The experience offered them exposure to the broader field of family therapy and deepening of bonds and connections among one another by sharing hotel rooms, meals, and the opportunity to socialize.

Students also participated in an annual alumni get-together at Ruth Mohr's home. Alumni of the program were invited annually to welcome and get to know the newly graduating social work students. Slowly, a community of therapists of color began to evolve. At the end of each internship year, a clinical presentation was made by the trainees at the institute. University, institute, and community agency faculty and staff, in addition to students' families and friends, were invited to attend. Students were asked to select either a piece of clinical work or an aspect of the work they performed in their community placement that had been instrumental in their professional growth. This annual event created an opportunity for all those partnering in the DSWTP endeavors to both celebrate the students and critique the year's experience. Figure 1 summarizes the program's partnerships with other institutions.

Organizational Change at the Institute: Making the Commitment

After 3 years, the seeds of our "bottom up" approach began to reap some rewards. Faculty had begun to experience firsthand, both through the students' participation in faculty projects and their annual presentations, the expertise of these students and the effect that "difference" can have on broadening perspectives in working with families. The original concerns that graduate students would not provide the quality of care necessary disappeared entirely. Faculty often found the social work interns' work of superior quality and an asset to the institute. Yet, the program remained a "project" within the organizational structure of the institute. Every year, we had to write grants in order to keep the program afloat.

We began to question the logic of remaining a "project" and its consequences. If we remained a project, the mission of changing the landscape of our community would rely on three faculty members rather than being an institutional commitment. We became convinced that we had to move out of "project status" to achieve true organizational change. It was necessary for the institute to decide if it wanted to make a long-term commitment to raising monies to support this mission, separate and apart from our collective professional interests. The time, 1996, seemed ripe for such an institutional commitment. Discussions about diversity were taking place within family therapy professional as\sociations and the field at large. Senior faculty member Virginia Goldner facilitated a year- long seminar for faculty, focusing on issues of race, diversity, and family therapy training. A number of distinguished scholars and clinicians of color came to work with the faculty, including Nancy Boyd Franklin, A.J. Franklin, Lascelles Black, and Miguel Hernandez.

FIGURE 1 Institutional Partnerships

At the same time, we engaged in ongoing discussions regarding hiring additional faculty of color. Shortly thereafter, Miguel Hernandez, a Latino scholar on family migration (1999), was recruited to join the faculty. The hiring of Dee Watts-Jones, a distinguished African American psychologist (Watts-Jones, 2002) soon followed. In 1996, after much discussion, Steinglass spearheaded the institute's financial commitment to this program. Its successes and failures were no longer solely the responsibility of the faculty who created it. Its survival now rested squarely on the shoulders of the institute. In reflecting on the reasons that led him to support making this program an institutional priority and commitment, Steinglass remarked, "The need for racial diversity in the field was abundantly clear and the program had proven that the institute was ideally positioned to address that need. It had the potential to help shape trainees for leadership roles and to expand our training mission to one of social change."

This change in organizational structure was critical to the program's survival. The success of our grassroots approach toward diversifying our student population first and our faculty second was dependent upon the institute's positive experience of the students themselves and the impact of the program itself. It laid the groundwork for the more difficult steps of finding ongoing funding to support the program and making changes in faculty positions to make room for faculty of color.

The hiring of two new faculty of color allowed them to form, for the first time, a community of leadership around issues of race and diversity (Hernandez, WattsJones, & Small, 1999). At the recommendation of Small, Hernandez, and Watts-Jones, the institute hired a leading person of color in the field, Ken Hardy, who, from 2000 to 2004, taught, mentored the current faculty of color, and occupied a senior administrative role within the institute.

With a better faculty and student racial balance, dialogue regarding race began to open, and White students began to have an expanded understanding of the direct experience of families of color and the impact of larger systems on their lives. The awareness that people of color are treated differently than Whites at the hands of larger systems began to influence our teaching, helping trainees to use that knowledge when working with families of color. More weekend training seminars were also offered to address issues of race, reinforcing curriculum changes.

Guidance and Mentorship

One of the early and significant contributions made by Watts- Jones, Hernandez, and Small was the formation of a mentoring group for students of color (Watts-Jones, 2002). In 2000, faculty of color reached out to both current students of color and alumni to meet monthly on Saturday afternoons. The students were invited to address their concerns and needs as professionals of color both within the institute and in the field at large.

The creation of the mentoring group provided a necessary support network for our graduating students and an added incentive to continue in postgraduate training at the institute. The social work internship provided the students with an intensive training experience, one of whose benefits was establishing intimate relationships with other students of color. Leaving the safety and support of that experience and entering the generic postgraduate training program was often a difficult transition. Whenever possible, we tried to place our students with faculty of color. We also tried to make sure that they would not be the only professionals of color in their training groups, but this wasn't always possible, and they sorely missed the support and exchange of ideas among one another. The mentoring group was a critical next step toward building an evolving community of professionals of color. True mentorships evolved, as well as strong collgial support and unity. Bryan Warde, internship alumni, stated, "It was extremely important to have faculty of color to relate to. The opportunity to observe their work helped inspire me to go back to school and get my doctorate."

Watts-Jones, Hernandez, and Small provided leadership and mentorship that allowed the group to develop its own voice and become a powerful instrument in its own right. In addition to providing peer support, the group began to agitate for greater focus on issues of social justice that affected not only their clients, but also their personal and professional lives both within and outside the institute.

TENSIONS WITHIN THE INSTITUTION AND LESSONS LEARNED

Over the course of 12 years, the program has undergone changes that have been informed by student feedback, faculty experience, and reflection. Student feedback, through group discussion and the development of questionnaires designed to evaluate the program, has been extremely useful. In the first several years of the program, students articulated their discomfort when participating in courses with the predominantly White postgraduate student body. They often felt singled out, with the burden of race "conversations" being their responsibility, and they were at times the recipients of racist comments and behavior. This prompted discussion in faculty meetings that there was a need, for White faculty in particular, to become more comfortable facilitating discussions exploring the complexities of "cross-racial relationships" and the need for faculty training in this area. Topics such as White privilege, power, and oppression, and how to deepen racial awareness and sensitivity became part of faculty dialogue and discussion.

Hardy, Hernandez, Watts-Jones, and Small took the lead in deepening these discussions, which remain part of an ongoing process at the institute. More recently, the mentoring group of students of color has also taken an active role in furthering this process. Some White faculty have begun to join the faculty of color in initiating discussions about race in cross-racial training seminars. Additionally, students of color felt that they were receiving a disproportionate number of families of color to treat and less exposure to White families. Although aware that this was occurring, Kaplan, Small, and Mohr had not been effective in addressing this problem. Part of our mission was to expose more White families to therapists of color and facilitate greater exploration of cross- racial relationships within that configuration. Trainees of color often worried that they would be the recipients of racism, with White clients "assuming" that they were not as competent as White therapists. How could we facilitate the exploration of those issues when our students were not seeing enough White families to treat? Why was it happening? The answer was a complex one and due to a number of factors. First, families of color often requested professionals of color, and until recently, the institute could never satisfy that request. Once there were professionals of color, the intake office was only too happy to comply. second, our trainees saw families on Friday evenings and Saturdays, days and time slots more popular with families of color than with White families.

Commenting on the reasons for this, Joanne Devonish, a program alumna and current intake staff member, remarked, "It has to do with economics and class. White families are usually from the surrounding neighborhood or can afford to take time off from work right after school to be seen for therapy. Most families of color do not have that luxury because of the time it takes to travel to the institute." Despite these obstacles, faculty and intake staff redoubled their efforts to make sure that interns treated White families. Speaking of her experience in this regard as a social work intern, Devonish, who immigrated from Barbados, added,

The first family I saw was a White couple which caused me lots of anxiety. Coming from a dominant Black culture and then experiencing overt racism in the streets of America, I could not help but wonder if I would see the look of disdain and mistrust on their faces that I have experienced since my move here 10 years ago. I was concerned about my response to them in this particular setting. If I perceived racism, how did I take on the role of therapist in a way that did not close the door to the work before it got started? One of the great things about the program was the fact that we worked as a team. It allowed me the opportunity to voice my anxiety, feel validated, and then formulate ways to handle the issue if it presented itself. I also learned to bring the issue of difference into the room, discussing openly the meaning of class, color, or cultural differences between us.

Although our students shared the common bond of experiencing oppression by not being part of the dominant White culture, there were also many differences among them. Some had newly migrated to this country, some came from families who had been here for generations. Beliefs about gender were highly variable based on different cultural, racial, gender, and religious identities. Our groups have included a mix of African American, African, South American, Central American, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Hawaiian, Egyptian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and biracial students.

Small and Kaplan looked to Hardy3 for guidance in deepening the small group experience, challenging them to articulate their affective experiences of one another and encouraging them to talk about their race, class, \culture, gender, and religious differences. We ascribed to Hardy's belief that "racial awareness and sensitivity provide the critical foundation for the development of specific skills and strategies associated with effectively identifying and responding to racism in therapy" (Hardy & Laszloffy, 2000, p. 41). We encouraged the students to share their personal stories through the lens of Hardy's cultural genogram (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1995, pp. 297305), using interactional experiences between group members to highlight systemic theory and practice.

We also decided to have the students form cotherapy teams when working with families. This pushed them to confront the way that their racial, class, cultural, religious, gender, and familial identities differed from and informed their premises about their clients' behaviors and choice of interventive strategies. Although beginners, they also sat behind the one-way mirror, functioning as a "team" for one another, and they used supervisory feedback on how best to support one another throughout the learning experience. Jiwon Lee, a former intern now in the postgraduate program, reflected, "We were lucky; it was hard to fully appreciate and metabolize all that we got at the time. The support enabled us to challenge ourselves and examine who we are so we could be in the room with integrity. We were trained not to be what we thought therapists were 'supposed to be,' but how to integrate authentic aspects of who we are with what our clients needed. We also became a little 'family' and now I miss it."

EFFECTS OF THE PROGRAM

Student Outcomes

Over the past 12 years, we have trained 57 graduate students of color, 49 females and 8 males, with 27 electing to remain at the institute for postgraduate training and an additional 6 students currently completing their social work internship. This is a 50% retention rate, which is high when compared with other recruitment and retention efforts for professionals of color (Oliver & Brown, 1988). Twelve have completed the full 5 years of training and graduated from the externship program, and 9 are in the midst of completing their postgraduate training. Of these 12 graduates, 3 have become part of Ackerman's teaching faculty, 1 is a program coordinator for Ackerman's Welfare to Work Program at Help, U.S.A., 1 is a research assistant for the Center for Families and Health, and another helps coordinate our Intake Department.

FIGURE 2 Impact of Program on Institution

Five years into the program, Bryan Warde became the first faculty member of color hired from within. This was a watershed moment as he paved the way for future outstanding graduates of the program to join our faculty.4 Warde, currently director of foster care at a large metropolitan foster care and adoption agency, described the impact of the program on his work in this way: "It helped me to gain a conceptual framework that both informs my clinical work with clients and my work in the foster care field to this day. I have been able to revamp the way I conceptualize program development in our agency and also facilitate more effective collaboration with other systems. I see everything now through a systemic lens. It is a fantastic training program." As the years passed, more and more students were moving through the pipeline and completing 4 years of postgraduate training. Maslow, pleased with the progress of the program, now wished to provide additional funds to create teaching apprenticeships for outstanding graduates of the program. As a result, the Maslow Fellowship Award was created and given to Lisa Lavelle, the first student to receive this fellowship and currently part of our teaching faculty. This further cemented the institute's commitment to retaining outstanding students of color and assisting in their mentorship to becoming faculty and leaders in our field.

Other graduates of the program are working in a wide array of agencies and programs where many occupy positions as family service providers, supervisors, and directors. DSWTP alumni use their experience from working on Ackerman projects to implement treatment models for schools and families in the New York City public school system, foster care, and mental health settings. For many of our graduates, the mentoring group has helped sustain a community of support, friendship, and encouragement to further their professional goals and aspirations and inspire them to further articulate the needs and concerns of people of color. Membership is not predicated on remaining at the institute; those who have left often return for support or advice on creating programs in their agencies that advance social justice concerns for their clients. Figure 2 summarizes the impact of the program on the institution.

CONCLUSION

The Diversity and Social Work Training Program has been a vehicle to recruit and retain diverse students, enabling a family therapy institution to reliably count on a slow but steady diversification of its student population and its faculty. Its origins evolved from a belief that an initial grassroots approach (i.e., "bottom up vs. top down") can successfully influence and counter administrative doubt and become a significant instrument in promoting racial equity and justice.

Recruiting students early and providing them with mentorship and financial support were crucial ingredients for success. Partnerships with academic institutions and community agencies committed to social change helped to enrich our thinking. It also enabled students to develop both clinical acumen and skill in developing programs that are racially and culturally sensitive to the needs of families.

Clearly, a "top-down" approach had to follow, and the institution's commitment of financial support and hiring professionals of color at the faculty and administrative levels led to a more diverse group of faculty brainstorming shared needs and concerns.

The formation of the mentoring group by the faculty of color was a critical next step toward building an evolving community of professionals. It has also become a powerful instrument for change within the institution. Hiring graduates of the program to join our faculty has helped achieve a greater racial balance. This has created the opportunity to question conventional family therapy paradigms strongly influenced by the field's predominant White membership and to invite the knowledge and expertise of professionals of color. They have expanded our understanding of the direct experience of families of color at the hands of larger systems and continue to influence our training curriculum to more comprehensively use a social justice lens.

The development of "same group" (i.e., separate dialogues among Whites and people of color) structures is an integral component of continued institutional growth and change. They help in articulating common needs and concerns and in building a sense of connection and support that can provide safety and the strength to engage in meaningful cross-racial dialogue. Personal cross-racial working relationships help to connect people beyond the larger ethnic and racial divides, making it more possible to honestly confront issues of power, race, oppression, and difference. We have not succeeded as a nation in having a dialogue about race, nor can we wait for it to happen. It is up to us as individuals and as professionals to begin those cross-racial dialogues in therapy rooms, in training seminars, and in our communities.

REFLECTIONS

As an African American male and a White female, we have tried to remain true to our mutual quest to promote racial equity and justice. We saw our mission first and foremost as political vs. clinical. In our earlier work together in the AIDS Project at Ackerman, we were drawn to one another because we were committed to using the clinical arena to advance issues of social justice. A unifying premise that we shared was that we believed that a change in organizational structure would set the stage for a paradigm shift in our institution's commitment to these issues. Simply put, increasing the numbers of professionals of color in the institute would create the opportunity for new organizational structures and paradigms to evolve, and most important, to survive. These seeds indeed bore fruit as we observed the ripple effects of our program proceeding as we had hoped. As numbers of students of color increased, so did the faculty of color. Their unity as a group was a developmental milestone essential to the continuing development of a community of professionals of color and ongoing institutional change. Yet, it was also difficult to negotiate the impact of these changes on the relationships among Kaplan, Small, and Mohr. Although clearly achieving the goals that we had hoped for, it was at times painful for Kaplan, who had previously been an insider on all issues relating to race at the institute. It was also difficult at times for Small. Because his tenure at the institute was longer than that of other faculty of color, he had deeper roots in his connection with White faculty and administrators involved with the social work program. At times, he found himself in a loyalty divide, trying to mediate to keep the process moving forward. When tensions flared, our older beloved colleague, the late Ruth Mohr, provided wise mentorship to us both, reminding us that we were united in our passionate commitment toward social justice and to mine our differences to deepen cross-racial understanding. It is 4 years since her death, and her unwavering faith in humanity's potential serves us in our most difficult moments.

The authors gratefully acknowledge Carmen Hendricks and Glynn Rudick from the Hunter School of Social Work, Susan Oppenheim and Kathryn Conroy from the Columbia School of Social Work, and Diane Grodney, Judy Lemberger, Kathy Medina, and Krishana Lloyd, from the New York University School of Social Work.

1 The authorsused an experiential exercise regarding culture, race, class, and ethnicity that was devised by Elaine Pinderhughes and the cultural genogram exercise devised by Ken Hardy.

2 The definition of a project refers to faculty who have demonstrated an interest in developing expertise or a model of practice in a given clinical arena. Funds are raised to support that project until a body of knowledge is developed and disseminated both in the institute and the field at large through books, workbooks, on- and off-site workshops, and so on. Projects traditionally average a period of study of 5 to 10 years.

3 The authors had numerous conversations with Ken Hardy regarding deepening the group experience, and we gratefully acknowledge his guidance and assistance.

4 Internship alumna Lisa Lavelle, M.S.W., and Aquilla Fredericks, M.S.W., have also joined the Ackerman faculty.

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Copyright Family Process, Inc. Sep 2005

Source: Family Process

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