NASW Restructuring and Ethical Accountability: When Chapters Stand Up To Leadership

Due to the extraordinary response to this article, and the number of professionals who voiced fears around voicing their concerns publicly, I decided to write a follow up article. You can read it here.

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Social workers across the country are concerned, confused, and angry. How can the organization that claims to represent us, the steward of our Code of Ethics, so blatantly violate the values it taught generations of practitioners to defend?

Last month, national leadership executed sweeping NASW restructuring, resulting in the leaders serving fourteen state chapters being laid off. Many learned of their eliminations at the moment the announcement became public. No transition plans, no member consultation, no collaborative process, and no opportunity for affected chapters to prepare for the loss of their advocacy infrastructure.

For a membership organization in a profession built on community voice, this was not merely an internal decision. It was an ethical rupture.

The response was immediate. Iowa issued a vote of no confidence. Kansas publicly stated they were given no rationale or process for the removal of their leadership. Arkansas and Kentucky reported full board resignations. Former directors expressed not only shock, but grief that the relational work of years could be severed without forethought, acknowledgment, or transparency.

These reactions are not isolated. They are a collective recognition that something fundamental has cracked at the center of our professional home.

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The Values NASW Forgot to Practice

The execution of the NASW restructuring reflects a fundamental disconnect with our professional values. Social work rests on transparency, accountability, and shared decision making. We teach these principles to students. We write them into policies. We defend them in courtrooms, classrooms, community centers, legislatures, and crisis shelters. They are not aspirational ideals. For many, they are deeply intertwined with our professional and personal identity.

Yet national leadership made sweeping decisions about chapter consolidation and layoffs without meaningful consultation with members, chapter boards, state leaders, or the Delegate Assembly. What was removed was not only staffing, but presence. Not only roles, but relationships. Not only operations, but the connective tissue of state-level advocacy.

Paying lip service to our professional values is not enough. We cannot abide a professional organization that refuses to hold itself to the same standards it demands from its members.

This is why Iowa’s action matters. Their statement was not an act of rebellion, but of fidelity. They spoke not out of hostility, but out of moral obligation.

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Betrayal, Not Disagreement

It is important to name the emotional truth of this moment. Social workers are not simply upset about process. They are wounded by betrayal.

Directors like Becky Fast did not hold symbolic roles. They built coalitions, strengthened legislative relationships, and carried advocacy work forward for years in a profession that often erases that labor. To remove them without partnership or dialogue was not a technical oversight. It was a dismissal of what makes this profession function at the state level: trust, time, continuity, and presence.

The problem is not that NASW made a difficult decision. It is that they made it in a way that violated the relational and ethical commitments that define social work as a profession. We are asked, in every setting, to confront power responsibly, inclusively, and accountably. When NASW leadership bypassed those values, it modeled the very behavior social workers are trained to challenge in systems of harm.

That disconnect is what social workers feel so viscerally now. Not a policy disagreement, but the sting of hypocrisy.

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The Importance of Iowa’s Stand

Iowa’s statement did not emerge from impulse. As someone who has served on that board, I can attest to the deliberation, restraint, and ethical seriousness with which they operate.

This was more than a critical response to a single action from NASW leadership. They were calling out a concerning, sustained pattern of behavior. They cited opaque decision making, lack of disclosure concerning the Preferra lawsuit and loss of member benefits, and alleged retaliation against volunteers and staff who raised concerns.

Their vote of no confidence reflects the gravity of what has unfolded. NASW leadership repeatedly acted in blatant violation of the professional values they hold sacred. Their alarm is not dramatic, but a measured and appropriate response.

This is exactly the level of clarity, courage, and integrity we should expect from leadership within our field. The actions of state chapters like Iowa make the failures of national leadership all the more apparent.

Social workers know how to sit with discomfort, how to speak truth to power, and how to hold systems accountable. We expect that of ourselves. We have the right to demand that of NASW.

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Where Trust Goes From Here

The NASW restructuring reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how state-level advocacy works. Legislative relationships cannot be managed remotely. Grassroots organizing requires local presence. Policy change demands sustained engagement with specific communities, agencies, and political contexts. Efficiency models that treat advocacy as scalable administrative work will hollow out the very infrastructure that makes social work more than clinical licensing.

Trust between NASW and its members cannot be restored through email statements, public relations language, or internal talking points. Trust can only be rebuilt through action that reflects the values the profession is named after: transparency, collaboration, and shared leadership.

Social workers are not asking for perfection. They are asking for participation. They are asking to be included in decisions that redefine their professional landscape. They are asking that their expertise, advocacy relationships, and labor be recognized and respected.

The profession must demand more from the organizations that claim to represent us. NASW cannot champion justice while practicing exclusion. It cannot require accountability from practitioners while denying it in its own operations. It cannot claim stewardship of values it fails to uphold.

Social workers deserve better than this. We are better than this.

The profession deserves an organization that reflects the best of who we are, not the worst of what hierarchy can become.

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