From the Pen of the President: December 2025

NASW-Illinois Chapter President LaTasha Roberson-Guifarro, MSW, LCSW

NASW-IL President LaTasha Roberson-Guifarro, MSW, LCSW (she/her)

I lead with the belief that presence, courage, and care change outcomes. Across Illinois, I continue to see social workers do what this moment requires. You steady families, navigate complex systems, and keep moving because people are counting on you. This month, I want to share how we have been strengthening our tools so we can serve with even more clarity and impact in the months ahead.

In November, NASW-Illinois Chapter Executive Director Joel Rubin and I brought to our board and committee leaders who live this work every day to help us deepen our response in immigration, trauma-informed care, and rapid response. We heard from the Coalition for Immigrant Mental Health, Aimee Hilado and Cindy Eigler, who shared training resources, reflection spaces, and hubs of information developed for these devastating times when people are being harmed, rights are being violated, and the unknowns show up in spaces we walk in daily. They offered four ways we can provide trauma-informed care: Realize, Recognize, Respond, Resist. They reminded us that who we are in the room is as consequential as any intervention we choose. We also heard from Elizabeth Cervantes of the South Suburban Immigrant Project, NASW-IL Member At-Large Lorraine Lorena Guerrero, Candace Gingrich from NASW-IL and Rogers Park ICE Watch, and immigration attorney Michael R. Jarecki. Each is an expert in their lane, and together they made plain the complexity of immigration enforcement in Illinois, shared stories of work underway in community, and showed what rapid response looks like when people center rights, accompaniment, and care. 

Following this connection, the NASW-IL Advisory Board honored colleagues whose work reflects the strength and purpose of our profession. Congratulations again to Darby J. Morhardt, LCSW, our 2025 NASW-IL Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and Franshandra Owens, LCSW, our 2025 NASW-IL Social Worker of the Year. Their leadership keeps us tethered to what matters, and their impact reaches far beyond the moments we name.There is so much knowledge and action in our social work community. All of us together strengthen practice, gives us tools for how we live out our ethics and advocacy, and shapes partnership with the people we serve, with our colleagues, and in our families and lives. Please keep sharing, developing, and challenging what is so we can shape what must be.

As those conversations sharpened our understanding of what communities are facing, this month I also had the opportunity to speak to an executive order surrounding youth exiting foster care. The order focuses on education, workforce development, housing supports, and digital access. The intention to build a clearer pathway after foster care matters because stability, access, and direction are decisive stabilizers for young adults. This order brought needed attention to the outcomes of youth who age out and reinforced the importance of preparation and support. In the very next week, we saw letters go out to state agencies providing foster care that challenge gender affirming requirements as unconstitutional. Both realities exist at the same time. One says youth in care or exiting deserve investment and a path. The other signals rolling back protections based on identity. 

Just as I am finalizing this message, I am learning that the U.S. Department of Education has proposed a federal reclassification that would exclude social work from the list of professional degrees. The proposal is expected to move through the federal rule making process and could limit how future social work students access federal financial aid and repayment options. Under this framework, social work is grouped with nursing, education, and other essential fields that would all be recategorized as non-professional degrees. According to the Illinois General Assembly’s Behavioral Health Workforce Report, our current workforce can meet only 24% of the state’s mental health need. More than 9.8 million Illinois residents live in designated mental health professional shortage areas, and the demand continues to rise. 28% of Illinois adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in 2023, while 41% of Illinois teens reported persistent sadness or hopelessness and 15% seriously considered suicide in the past year, as cited by the CDC Household Pulse Survey and the Illinois Youth Survey. Social workers are central in responding to every one of these realities, yet to suggest that our degree is not professional is absurd. It devalues the expertise that holds communities together, the professions communities rely on most and could harm the people we serve. For a profession already facing structural workforce shortages, this proposal raises real concern for our students, our pipeline, and the communities who depend on a strong, supported social work workforce. It is another example of the duality we live in: our country declares the need for a stronger behavioral health and human services workforce while simultaneously making decisions that constrain who can afford to enter it. We live inside the tension of the world as it is and the world we insist on building. We live inside the tension of the world as it is and the world we insist on building. 

So, how do we steady that tension and honor the NASW Code of Ethics of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, the importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence in how we lead and act? I do not know the answer to that. We live in what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., named an “inescapable mutuality”, where our choices shape conditions for one another. What I encourage is to choose one action and put it to work. You can provide public comment on proposed rules, initiate a brief conversation with your team about ethical decision-making in uncertain times. Share one resource with a colleague and set a date to use it. Bring a five minute 4 Rs skill moment to your practice. Remember, as we come into the holiday season that days bring celebration, family, and light for some. For others, holidays surface grief, distance, or quiet. You can give yourself and others grace. Make room for rest and reflection. Reach for and offer connection. The ethic that guides our work belongs to you as well as those we serve, and it is in mutuality we survive. 

We know the incongruence of truths and living in what is and what ought to be will continue to evolve and be with us. If you need a compass, hold the multiple truths in front of you, stand in the tension, challenge what diminishes dignity, and do the next right thing. The truths of what is may not be aligned with our values, but what we do and make of them can be.

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LaTasha Roberson-Guifarro, LCSW, currently serves as vice president and chief operating officer at Lutheran Child & Family Services of Illinois, one of the state’s largest child welfare and adoption agencies, and where she also acts as privacy officer. In this role, she leads programming, data and information systems, and enterprise-wide initiatives that strengthen performance, expand impact, and drive outcomes. Recognized as a trusted voice in the field, LaTasha’s leadership extends nationally and statewide. She is a Council on Accreditation (COA) reviewer, co-chair of the Child Welfare Advisory Committee for Innovation, Technology, and Stakeholder Engagement (CWAC-ITASC), board member of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), vice chair of the Illinois Child Welfare Licensure Board, and president of the NASW-Illinois Chapter. She also serves on multiple advisory boards and committees dedicated to system transformation, child and family well-being, workforce stability, equity in race and LGBTQIA+ care, social justice, and innovation.