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hello and welcome to the Connecticut women's consortium webinar Social Work Title protection we're joined today by the leaders of NASW CT Michele kenefick board president and Steve Wynn's ik Karp executive director they'll be discussing Social Work title protection Michele and Steve if you readies the floor is all yours hi good morning this is Michele kenefick we're so happy that you are joining us and I wanted to just do a little bit more of an introduction of Steve Karp who I'm sure you're all pretty familiar with but I wanted to first just say thank you to Steve for putting this together and really spearheading our work toward achieving title protection for social workers in Connecticut it's something that Steve is passionate about and has been and so Steve as you know is the executive director for NASW Connecticut and he has been in that position since 1989 with a brief departure to the New York State chapter and then has been with us again consent so Steve works tirelessly as you guys know to make sure that social workers in Connecticut have the best protection and is a tireless advocate for us as well as the people that we serve so with much much gratitude I will turn it over to you Steve thank you shell so I'm speed once a card and I'm going to start by giving you a little bit of history about this issue because this is something that we have worked on on and off and talked to folks on and off for about 25 years I would say a TSW has never actually introduced a bill like we're introducing this year which is a straight title protection bill we do have one point introduced a bill that would only have affected state employees and that bill would have said that the state of Connecticut would have to call those social workers who have so short degrees they'd have to use a title of social worker and they'd have to come up with a different title for those workers who did not have a Social Work degree and there's a lot of different titles that you know can be case worker Protective Service Worker case manager Human Services worker and so forth that bill ran into a lot of difficulty first of all the state employee union American Federation state time municipal employees took a very strong stand against a bill because many probably most of their members in the social workers series for the state of Connecticut were not people with degrees in Social Work Department administrative services that oversees job classifications say you can't have someone doing the same job with two different job titles but that bill did make its way out of a committee and actually I think got as far as the appropriations committee the Appropriations Committee didn't do anything they let the bill die the state of Connecticut had determined that was going to cost a lot of money to do this and this belief has a tendency to do that state agencies will attach fiscal notes to to a proposed legislation when they're when they're not in favor of things and that's something that we'll talk about later you know in terms of some of the obstacles will will have to overcome but the other reason that we never pursued the bill further until now is that I was always concerned that if we got the state to agree that changed the title of social worker to say taste manager or caseworker that the state would then not have any incentive to hire people with degrees in social work so so when when the memorial administration first came in about eight years ago we actually embarked on a campaign and he has been embarked on a campaign to get the state to hire real social workers for the job of social worker and we were successful in doing that the state now has to give preference and hiring to people with MSW and BSW degrees for the social worker job series once we accomplished that I decided we still wanted to hold off on title protection and the reason was I wanted to make sure that it really stuck if you will so now we're sitting here we're talking about eight years later the state has actually been giving preference for about six years DCF and DSS had primarily hiring if not solely hiring people with social work degrees we feel to a certain degree that we've institutionalized that so this point we feel is time to take on title protection we're no longer given the state and out there already we've already gotten place to the preference for real social workers so that's why we decided this is the time to uh to move forward okay um if you can go to the next slide as we as we talk about this any HW is introducing a bill into the legislature to protect vulnerable consumers for receiving substandard services insuring only professionally trained social workers can hold the title of social worker first you know the real point here is that when somebody calls themselves a social worker they really should have a degree of Social Work unfortunately in Connecticut there is no protection for the title of social worker which means that anybody can call themselves a social worker so if you are a consumer of services and you think you're seeing a social worker you really have no way of knowing whether the social worker you're seeing is actually a trained in social work or are they someone with a related or even an unrelated degree but we decided you know this is definitely the time to move forward um I can't think of any profession that would want to have a title that could be used by people who do not have a degree in social work so we are feeling you know if you look at you imagine nurses saying oh yeah any ones who call themselves a nurse or doctor saying anyone should call themselves a doctor or teacher saying and anyone can be a teacher we have a degree we had actually degrees a BSW an MSW as well as doctoral degrees in social work it has very specific training and it's time that after over a hundred years as a profession that we protect that title if you can move to the next slide please 31 states have title protection for job classifications for social workers that includes Massachusetts Vermont Maine and New Jersey and several other states including Rhode Island is working on it thirty-one states out of the 50 states so it's far more than a majority of states that already have title protection rest of the states are similar to to Connecticut Connecticut has partial title protection when I say personal title protection I mean that we cannot you cannot call yourself a licensed social worker or use initials that imply that you're a licensed social worker either LCSW RL MSW in the state of Connecticut and pretty much every state has that but that doesn't protect the consumer for those individuals who are practicing calling themselves a social worker clinical social work requires a Social Work degree at least an MSW degree however there's many aspects of Social Work that did not require a license including the various taste management jobs are out there so you know we're very much feeling like after 31 states we'd like to be the 32nd or the 33rd depending if Rhode Island gets every for us we also want to point out that there's a lot of professions that already have title protection in Connecticut statute and they include chiropractors electrologist now this is an interesting run electrologist you cannot advertise that you are performing electrology if you are not licensed in an electrologist another one of my favorites massage therapists you cannot call yourself a massage therapist if you are not licensed as a massage therapists occupational therapy and occupational therapy assistants physical therapists and physical therapist assistants practical nurses and psychologists are amongst those who have title protection other professions and title profession include has to be no surprise tendencies have title protection physicians have title perfection veterinarians have title protection so it's not something that is going to be a first in the state of Connecticut if something that already exists for a number of professions the other thing I think that's important about the different stage is that legislator for some reason pay particular attention to what states surrounding us to and to what New England the states are doing so in New England we have Vermont Massachusetts in Maine that already have full title protection Rhode Island came very close to passing the law last year it died the last day of their session we expect that they're going to probably get their bill through this year you know this could leave New Hampshire kinetic as the only two states and without title protection New York is similar to us their title protection is for licensed persons only but New Jersey so in the tri-state area New Jersey has full title protection you can move to the next slide please so why protect the Social Work title you're a number of reasons why we would want to protect our title and if we can quickly move to the next slide again thank you first of all we want to ensure that social workers are professionally trained and educated to work with diverse populations by attaining the degree in social work that includes rigorous curriculum and cultural differences ethical practice you in behavior and therapeutic treatments individuals who did not hold a Social Work degree clearly do not have background social work they don't have the theoretical training in Social Work do they not have the professional supervised internships that are required for Social Work so it's very important that if you are calling yourself a social worker you be someone who actually has that training and let's face it it's not an easy degree to acquire both at the bachelor and master level there is extensive curriculum there as I believed ten areas of that you have to to meet in terms of genetic counseling support education you need to have a professional internship these are significant amounts of training that we bring to the table and someone who does not have a degree in social work simply does not have that training it's interesting that the state of Connecticut has a social worker series and one of the requirements in that series is that you have skills and knowledge of Social Work and we've always argued with the state that how you meet that requirement if you do not have a degree in social work you can go to the next slide you serve as social workers are bound by the NASW code of ethics it's been a particularly important area consumers should know that when they're seeing somebody who calls herself a social worker that that social worker is abiding by a professional code of ethics and whether you're a member of any SW or not you are bound by than any SW code of ethics because the state of Connecticut uses that code of ethics as a standard of practice so if there was a complaint filed against the social worker with the part of Public Health they go to our code of ethics whether or not that person's in any SW member now if a consumer is seeing a social worker and as social workers does not have a degree in social work the next that social worker is not bound by the code of ethics and because they're not a professionally trained social worker there is no place to go if you want to file a complaint against an individual rescue onic purchase I mean hardest line to a contractor think of an attorney to go after someone in civil court not an option typically a client consumer they have so it's very important that when it's the public sees the title social worker they know it means is somebody who has a code of ethics is perd is abiding by that code of ethics practicing under that code of ethics and that under that code of ethics of consumer in fact is protected in case there is a problem or an allegation made that the social worker may have violated the professional code we can move to the next slide so the work to ensure social workers are held to strict confidentiality with their consumers now this is an interesting point there is a state law in Connecticut a social or confidentiality statute that statute comes into play basically by saying that records must remain confidential and people often think it's a social worker who holds a confidentiality in fact it's really the consumer who holds the confidentiality it's up to consumer whether or not they want to allow their information to be released now there are exemptions for that for instance we're mandated reporters so we cannot hold confidential information related to child abuse elder abuse abuse related to disabilities there are times when we can release certain amounts of information that has to do with billing purposes in a situation of an emergency we have the right to release information to another provider in order to provide care for a client but that we have to inform the client but for the most part consumers have the right to confidentiality now this point just took effect in 1992 before 1992 there was no confidentiality statute for social workers using in Connecticut in the statute it does say that if the consumer believes that they are being treated by somebody who is a professional social worker that the consumer can claim confidentiality of their records now I do not know if anyone who's ever taken that to court and tried to to test that part of the language but clearly in my opinion that's a very tentative argument so by having people with the title of social worker without being a professional social worker consumers are really putting their confidentiality at risk so that's not what another key reason I think that you know you need to have title protection so consumers are not going to be put in the position of having to test out language that says well I thought a person was a professional social worker I didn't know they could release my information furthermore if they're not a professional social worker they very well not even know enough about confidentiality to understand when they should release information and when they're not allowed to release information so it's a really significant risk I think to consumers by not having title protection when it relates to confidentiality you can go to the next slide so ensure that individuals who lose their license in another state cannot practice in Connecticut without title protection anyone can be called a social worker in Connecticut so there's nothing to stop a worker who's harm to consumer in another state to repeat that offense in Connecticut so there is a database that the state of Connecticut can look into so if you come in and you actually have a Social Work degree and you apply for licensure the state can investigate and make sure that you have not you know not have any violations in another stakeout lost your license another state and the state in that case that could withhold the license however because anyone can call themselves a social worker are a social feminine for Social Work degree who lost their license in other state could come in Connecticut and still refer themselves as a social worker as well as anybody else could come into Connecticut having perhaps been removed from a position in another state because of violations and then come in open some kind of practice start you'll get hired call themselves a social worker again consumers really have no protection because it's just very easy to use the title and we already uses very little protections in oversight of the profession in Connecticut so unless somebody who comes forward and files a complaint with Department of Public Health there is no what I would call a social or police out there sometimes people will contact NASW and say they think somebody is practicing illegally we will then report that to the state of Connecticut and ask them to look into it but the fact is it's very easy in Connecticut to practice without a license and obviously without title protection law anyone again calls themselves a social worker we can move to the next side please ensure that vulnerable consumers know they are getting exceptional social services excuse me miss use the social art title is first of all a form of misrepresentation by the worker because the worker knows that they're not truly or hopefully the worker knows are not truly a social worker that they understand that is actually a degree that's required referring a misrepresentation by the employer and in fact I actually put much more onus upon the employer than I do the employee I don't think of a lot of people out there who are calling themselves a social worker without having been given that title bite employer so our legislation is really a gained as much as at employers as it is individuals by having title protection in statute we can make sure that employers are not misusing the title and if the employer is not giving the title wrongfully then you don't have employees who are utilizing the title wrongfully for instance an employer couldn't advertise social work services if they don't have somebody who is actually a social worker providing those services again they can advertise other kinds of services human services social services but they can't actually say social work services so we think this is another key reason that we want to UM protect the title is to make sure that employers are not are not giving away our title we can move to the next slide as I think I know you learned earlier other professions would not stand for the misuse of their title by a person with a substandard qualification and I don't say substandard qualification lightly the reality is that if you don't have a Social Work degree and you're practicing as a social worker quote-unquote you are actually four sub standard in terms of your qualifications so why is it so Social Work be any different than other professions individuals will not attain certain formal training cannot refer to themselves as a member of most professions under existing law as I said before nursing medicine psychology law physical therapy massage therapy etc all require the appropriate degree so we think it's extremely important to us that we protect our title as a profession and furthermore individuals don't necessarily always see social work as a profession because we're probably a much misunderstood profession part of that icing passage to the fact that social work is very broad in the in the way that we provide services we don't have a narrow focus we we have a very broad person-environment approach and because social workers do so many different aspects of work there are so many different employment settings it's hard for people sometimes understand what a social worker is I think you know you talk about you say a doctor you know there's all kinds of specialties but people understand medicine you say an attorney people understand law by not protecting our title we are continuing that problem and making it continue to make that problem worse by allowing anyone to have that title so really part of protecting the title is making sure that we are seen by the public as the professionals that we are you can go to the next slide okay so we're we're going to look now at the proposed language now this proposed language actually we have up is one variation of the statute and actually we probably are not going to start with the language that is specifically in this slide but this slide says that no person shall use the title social worker a less said person has attained a baccalaureate or Master degree in social work from a causal and Social Work education accredited program or doctoral degree in social work persons using the title social worker if our degree insights work maybe find an amount not to exceed $250 in order to cease to use the title social worker until such time that they acquire the degree of social work as defined in this section this section means what this section means is part it's going to be in a statute and in the licensing statute is where we expect this language to be so that's why it talks about a section the Commissioner of Public Health or their designated representative will be responsible for enforcement of this act now there is a final line here that talks about someone who was priorly employed as a social worker before this law takes effect we're hoping this obviously I expect we are not actually going to use that final sentence when we first introduced the bill and I will talk in a minute about some of the strategies and I'll talk further about why that's the case but we do anticipate that that may be one of the things that we may need to give back at some point if you um go to the next slide the action plan we're going to highly action plan it up but there's a couple of things I do want to talk about before we get to that first of all we know there's we have allies and we have some folks we think are going to be hopefully neutral I just want to touch on that we're very pleased to say that the Connecticut psychiatric society has indicated that they are in support of this concept psychiatry has actually always been very supportive of facial workers they've been supportive of us in third-party reimbursement back in 1990 they supported us for licensure in 1995 they were fine when we did a new licensing law in for ms w in 2000 without lasting past 2010 and when we went to the state and said that we wanted preference and hiring for people with those four degrees just psychiatry supported that so we're very pleased to say that while they said they need to see the specific language of the bill there conceptually in support any SW does the same thing if a profession asks us for support we always say conceptually we can support it but it's always your guy always look at the language before your sore we have talked to the Maryland Family Therapist and we have talked to professional counselors we have not gotten X response from them and the same thing for psychologists our hope is that they will either be supportive or they'll remain neutral we have heard from SEIU 1199 that's they represent a lot of state state workers a they represent clinical work social workers in state clinical sites or series $11.99 is fine with this bill so we do know that you know we have support we have seven MSW legislators this is the most for legislators we've ever had all of them are support of this bill we have the support of the Human Service kochira Human Services Committee Katherine Abercrombie who is one of the people who will introduce a bill for us so we know the folks out there who can support us we have talked to Department of Public Health we're going to continue to have conversations tth they I don't think they really at this point understand fully the necessity is still so we're going to continue to work with them we need to still talk to Department of Administrative Services with on this overseas personnel issues so we you know are hoping again that there will either be support or neutrality from these groups we do not know how to state employee union that represents social workers where they will stand on this one of the things we do know though that given their opposites in the past that they're going to have some concerns it is possible that we may have to waive in some of their employees which is that language that we are not starting with but that may be a concession when we did licensing in 1995 we give the state of Connecticut an extra year to come in and compliance that may be a concession but we surely will be working with the state and with the state union and when they remind them that more and more of the social workers being hired by the state of Connecticut have Social Work degrees so the union the state public employee union their membership demographics is changing and it would certainly be to their advantage to to be minimally neutral if not supportive given the fact that increasingly their membership is going to be social workers and because of a Supreme Court decision individuals no longer have to be a member of their Union so we're hoping that those that will go a long way with talking with the Union folks now we're going to let me talk a little bit about one more thing about opponents and that is people sometimes come out of the woodwork that you wouldn't expect so when we introduced the bill people may come forward to have the title of social worker not two-degree who truly believe that they are a social worker so I think that's you know what another potential area that we need to might be an obstacle and the other obstacle is that legislators typically don't know very much if anything about Social Work beyond our seven social earth legislators and we have a lot of Education that needs to be done so Tanisha so legislators understand why this is important so now we're going to get to our action plan my concern the purpose of sinked Lee is mobilization mobilization mobilization we need to get a quick start on this bill in 1990 we did a third-party vendor ship they call the third-party reimbursement in 1990 the insurance industry opposed social workers getting third-party reimbursement now if you think the insurance industry has influenced in Hartford now in 1990 we truly were the capital of insurance in the world we beat these shores industry because we got off to a fast start the insurance industry never thought bunch of social workers would get anywheres and about three four weeks into the session they began to get nervous and they never caught up that's what basically the strategy we a fast start we need to contact every legislator right off the bat we need to start calling and emailing as soon as we have bill numbers we need to do it in the beginning assessment we need to do it in the middle section we need to do it in the end of session legislators listen to constituents and we have constituents in every single legislative district we also have people who are not members of any SWR social workers there's actually Proxima 9000 social workers who are licensed in the state of Connecticut we have the numbers to push this through we're going to be meeting with key legislators we've already begun to set up appointments to meet with the chairs of the committee or committees that this bill will go to we know the committee will build party go to public health committee our representative Jonathan Steinberg from Westport is Valis chair senator Mary Abrams brand new state senator from Merida is going to be the Senate Sheriff we're going to be meeting with the co-chairs and we're going to be meeting with the Ransom members which means the lead Republicans on that committee and then we'll start setting up meetings of all the members of the committee an interesting twist is though that is that represent of Katherine Abercrombie also from Meriden who here's a Human Services Committee is introducing one of the introduction individuals introducing a bill wants to also run a bill in our committee Human Services so the good possibility bills will come up in two committees so we will be working with representative Abercrombie and also with Senator of Maryland Moore who is the Senate chair of human services we are very excited about having the two committees there's actually a lot of support I think on both committees but we will be half asking our members who have representatives and Senators on that committee we'll be asking our members to contact their legislators as soon as we have bill numbers and it goes to a committee so we'll be sending emails out to our members who live in those districts we'll be following up with phone calls to our members live in those districts and as the bill goes from one committee to another we filed a bill with exactly the same steps sending out emails and making follow-up phone calls to individuals who have members who are come constituent from those committees we're meeting will be meeting with DPH and other agencies as we need to we're going to be sending out an email alert again so you have a bill number it could be today if not very early next week grab bill numbers we're going to send an email alert out to all of our members we're also going to send an email alert I'll tell everyone who's licensed because we have that list and we also have a list of all the school social workers in Connecticut so we're going to be sending out all together we're probably sending out about 12 to 14 thousand emails to folks and then we're doing something that we have not normally done we are doing a hard mail hardcopy mailing to all of our members because we know not everybody opens emails we are maybe 30 to 40% of our member open our emails within the first few days which is actually a very high open rate but we're gonna be sending a hardcopy email hardcopy mailing to all our members with our fact sheet and with a map that shows the 31 states a map that were also going to use with legislators finally next week we're going to do a literature drop we're going to take our fact sheets in our map with a cover letter and we're going to send it to every single legislator is going to get it through their in their mail internal mail system at the legislature so every legislator is going to have this information if you can go to the next slide thank you how you can make tile protection a reality this is really where those of you are listening come into play and this is where our members and our members and our friends and family and our supporters all come into play it doesn't have to be a social worker making calls and contacts with legislators we're going to ask people to talk to colleagues we're going to ask them to talk to family members we're going to ask you to talk to friends and even clients if you're the client you feel that you could have that conversation with there's nothing more powerful than a client calling and saying you know I'm being treated by selling with a Social Work degree it's important to me that I know that that person is a real social worker so the first thing people can do the most important thing is to contact their state legislators I can't emphasize that enough the legislators will listen we can overcome opposition if there is enough contact by constituents because that derives the bills the reality is that legislators know that they're because someone's elected them and if they don't do what their constituents need that they may not get reelected we have a lot of new legislators who probably are not even used to being lobbies and if we have a large response to those new legislators I think that will be very powerful secondly recruit your colleagues friends and family to contact their legislators again it doesn't have to be just social workers and in fact if legislators hear from non social workers that could actually be very very effective because it doesn't look like it's just of course the profession is going to say this but why would non social workers also agree that was one of the ways we got preference in hiring and for the state is we had non Social Work organizations supporting us so in a phone bank we need to plan our members as the bill moves from committees committee these are really easy and friendly calls this isn't like you're calling strangers you're going to be calling any SW members and saying did you get the Legislative Alert in the email I did contact either legislator do you need any information and then you ask them to make the call or send the email to their legislator they're easy calls or friendly calls but there's a lot of them we do have a couple of interns but I would like my interns to do something else just semester rather than just or going seriously we need people to help us make phone calls if you can make eight or ten phone calls that would be a huge success and help to us you can do in your own time you can do at the chapter office we can send your list but that's really important you can donate to any SW Connecticut we have an advocacy fund it's actually going to cost somewhere between twenty eight and thirty thousand dollars to introduce this bill a significant portion of that is that we've hired Gallo and Robinson there are lobbyist Apes they've actually helped us with lobbying in the past they are one of the most respected lobbying firms up at the Capitol they have been doing this for over 30 years maybe 40 years we have four lobbyists that work for them who are working for us but a significant cost of that twenty eight to thirty thousand is going to be the cost of our professional lobbyists and then there's cost to us in terms of our mailings as cost to us in terms of staff time we need to raise money now Connecticut NSW has been saving money for quite a few years now we've been putting money aside but we do need to raise some more oney if we could raise ten thousand dollars that would be a huge help so if anyone to make a contribution of any amount to any SW Connecticut you can go to our website at ESWC T dot or here click on donate or you can make a check payable to nsw connecticut improve advocacy fund in the memo section and send it to us and finally if you're not a member of any SW joining any australians a wonderful way to help us half of your tunes will come back to the chapters health fund our operations and then we can easily much easier reach you that's my third presentation i'd like to open it up now to anyone who may have a question hi i am going to read some questions that were submitted online thank you Steve for that presentation very informative and one of our listeners wants to know that they are an LCSW and why should they care about title protection since their license already protects them okay so your license protects the title but it doesn't truly protect you fully consumers you still need to know that they are seeing someone who's an LCSW or LMS w the reason was really a social worker and the fact is that title protection makes it possible for the public to see us as a profession and why we'd like to we also a rare profession as well as those people out there who are not professional social workers in a practicing are not necessarily practicing in a way that is good practice it reflects for everybody so it reflects on the LCSW is negatively and reflects on the LLM SW is negatively so it's really a matter of do we care about the consumer do we care about a professional name and yes it's wonderful when you're licensed and it's wonderful that you were protected that no one can say that a licensed social worker but it doesn't go far enough because we need the public to know that when they're seeing a social worker they're seeing a social worker thank you for that question great thank you another one Steve have other behavioral health professions gotten title protection and if so how what was their process so in Connecticut psychologists are the only behavioral health profession that has title protection well psychiatry does that they have it through position title protection psychology to the best of my knowledge was able to include in their statute when they became licensed so they did not have to about nine hours they did not have to go through a separate a separate bill there's no other behavioral health professions in Connecticut that currently have their title protected I am sure if we are successful that the other behavioral health professions would probably want to follow suit great thank you trailblazers are there any cost associated with this change we don't think it should be a cost the spirit of connecticut may determine there's some cost involved I mean Department of Public Health would be asked to enforce this legislation we don't really anticipate it's going to take a lot of enforcement we anticipate that when employers learn about this that they're going to follow the statute and make the necessary changes the spirit of connecticut if they have to change the title social workers or something else i mean technically I suppose there could be some cost to that we're hoping that that's the case that it would not be a significant cost but for employers we don't see any cost to employers to private property the private employers nonprofit employers this shouldn't really be any cost involved okay another one just came in do you feel that more companies will hire MS w's I'm sorry very good yes I'm sorry do you feel that more companies will hire LMS w's we do I think that I'm one of the potential benefits here is that it's employers see that they have to use entire social worker only for people faced with degrees I think it heightens our value and I think if it heightens our value that employers may be more likely to hire the individual episodes worth degree and someone with our Social Work degree I think there is that potential for some real benefit as employers begin to better understand that there's a difference between just having someone for Tiger versus having someone with a degree so I think yeah I think it really can have a ripple effect in terms of jobs great I know you discussed some barriers but could you go over them again some of the barriers you foresee in passing this legislation and maybe like the points along the process so we have a better better idea of what we can do to help okay so some of the barriers that we see or first of all Department of Public Health needs to have an understanding that there really is a need and then that we need to to work with them so they don't feel like they need more staff person in order to enforce this then our guess is that it's very rare that they ever have to enforce psychology so let's one barrier is working with Department of Public Health another barrier and that's really I think just meeting with the tph and other strategy acts I didn't mention is that we are going to have a meeting with lieutenant governor Susan Bowser which was very federal toward Social Work and we're hoping Ramon to ministration is supportive of this and then when that support will flow down to the commissioners though there is not we don't over the Commissioner will be for Department of Public Health entrepreneur partner administrative services apps if this thing has to change the job title that's something that again I think some of our strategy is I think to put some pressure on the lawn to administration to understand this importance legislators don't know a lot about social work so that can be an obstacle the fact sheet that we're given to the legislators is two-sided we moved it onto fact sheets but one side because they tend not to read them but this is a two-sided fat sheet the first side talks about all the reasons that we need title protection the back side talks about what social workers do where we work what our trillion is who we are and so when Africa is just hoping legislators understand that we're a profession and why I think that's important and one of them people just make another River crew from filter size whether a federal employer has has given them a title the rooms around that again is really lobbying legislators having our lobbyists work closely up at the Capitol and having people contacting legislators and asking them to support the bill so we understand you know if you're a licensed social worker you may say well does this really affect me but the reality is that as long as anyone can call himself a social worker it diminishes our profession whether or licensed or not so I think our biggest strategy is going to do that Laden effort so as the bill moves forward any SW will be contacting people and saying okay in your your legislators on the public health committee your legislators on Human Services your legislators or maybe in appropriations you need to contact them to build eventually we hope get to the House and the Senate if we don't then we'll go to Senator house first we don't know that as of yet there probably be seven bills introduced they'll probably combine them into one bills and then if it goes to the Senate then we have to contact all our members and and have all the Senators lobbied and to go to the house first and you want to lobby all the house either way you'll eventually have to lobby every legislator again that means phone calls and emails and we expect some of the schools of Social Work or do Lobby days and we encourage people to come up there's going to be a public hearing whenever they raise a bill you have a public hearing so it will be important for us to have probably three or four people come and speak somebody who's an educator who can talk about what Social Work education is NSW will come up and speak and we hope you have a couple practitioners can come up and speak because if you don't show up for a public hearing then they don't think you care about the bill so that's another strategy that will be working on great thank you another question came in will you post the fact sheet under the materials tab of this presentation I can do that and post that Steve as long as I get that fact sheet from you sure we'll be glad to send that we'll send a map and we can send some of our other materials it's also getting posted on our website to any CCC org if you click on advocacy there's a drop down and when the drop down says title protection and then if you hit tile protection the fact she comes up and then there's another drop down off of that which has other documents so we'll send it to you so the women's consortium can have it and we also haven't we already have it on our website okay let me just give another call out to anybody that is on online with the webinar if there's any more questions here for Steve okay and as Steve just indicated there is the NASW CT org website you can submit any questions there too but the materials are also available I will upload this to the materials tab and also have it available to anybody who has signed in I will email it to you Steve I'd like to end Michelle I'd like to thank you for your time if there's anything else you want to add in I guess we're sailin folks your if you're a social worker you should take pride in that fact and part of that pride should be taking action to make sure that individuals that don't have your training can't call themselves a social worker so whether you're a licensed worker or not you should really be concerned about that fact that folks are out there using our title and when I thank you and to say thank you so much for your support and we look forward to continuing to represent social work in Connecticut to the best of our ability and to continue to be really strong advocates for our profession and for the people that we work with and serve wonderful I want to thank you both for our for a very informative I do feel proud to be on my path to becoming a social worker and can't wait to actually call myself one when I get my degree in May so thank you both for your time today thank you thank you alright and on behalf of Connecticut women's consortium I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today and for the participation and also like to thank Michelle and Steve for the excellent presentation and again thank you very much for joining us today and we hope you all have a great day