Jen Hirsch, LMSW

Jen Hirsch (any pronouns) is a clinical social worker and second year doctoral student at Michigan State University. As a medical social worker, they have experience supporting people’s adjustment to chronic illness and providing grief support. Their hope is to engage in humanizing research processes and they are interested in describing people’s experience of the healthcare system and impacting health policy related to the patient experience and wellbeing. Jen is passionate about social justice within healthcare and the social work field. In their free time Jen enjoys gardening and doing crafts with her kids.

Presentation Title:Combating the Gatekeeping of Social Work : A #StopASWB Panel

Presentation Description: In Aug 2022, the social work profession got confirmation that concerns about the ASWB licensure tests were true and the test at all levels showed heavy racial, language and age biases and other data was still not released. This panel will discuss the current issues with how social workers are evaluated, the actions and discussions being had, and what it means for our profession to continue to be ruled by racist, ableist, and generally oppressive gatekeeping praxis.