Reflections

“Deciding to remember and what to remember, is how we decide who we are”

                                            -Robert Pinsky, United States Poet Laureate

Here is an opportunity to learn more about Maryland social workers’ experiences and contributions over the last 50 years through their personal reflections.  Major social policy initiatives from each decade of the past half century provide a lens into social change.  Social work practitioners remember and describe the impact of significant legislation and court decisions on the circumstances of clients and their professional labors to influence as well as be influenced by the policies themselves.

This website originated from UMBC social work students undertaking to learn and use oral history methodology to better understand the history and significance of social work in the state of Maryland, and to identify the “human face” of social policy as it originates and then is implemented in programs and agencies.