The structure is still being established. As it stands now about six faculty members from the Silver School have done work within the institute. They are still creating relationships with other NYU schools, including public service and education. A graduate course called “Ending Poverty: Best Models for Social Change and Social Action” has been established and an undergraduate minor in Poverty Studies is being developed. A planning committee of about two dozen social services agencies – among the 600 organizations with which NYU has a relationship, as locations to place its social work interns – has been meeting to map goals.
And by springtime, the institute aims to launch several pilot projects serving varied populations. Coltoff says they're considering the areas of children and family work; domestic violence or homeless services; and seniors or immigrants as service areas in which to implement new training and practices whose success will be measured. A year from now, as many as 10 pilots could be in operation – not aimed at fundamental change, he said, but getting "from good to great."
Through its Center for Economic Opportunity, the city already runs a number of pilot programs aimed at alleviating poverty and its outcomes. Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, who oversees those efforts, addressed the McSilver Institute's Oct. 16 gathering with a discussion of the Center's work. Gibbs lamented the paucity of information on what works and what doesn’t. She attributed the lack of a working, efficient model for the study and reduction of poverty to a lack of funding for agencies, and a lack of a structured process of evaluation within the agencies. Without this process, agencies fail to achieve their goals and lose funding.
Community Service Society of New York CEO David R. Jones agreed. As leader of one of the city's leading antipoverty groups, Jones applauds the institute's creation as a complement to the work of his organizations like his. “Evaluation costs money,” said Jones. “The problem with evaluation is that [social work] nonprofits in New York aren’t really nonprofits, but are contract agencies for the government. If you made [the government] mad they cut your funding.”
This fear has led to the lack of evaluation in these agencies, he said. Where the Institute can be instrumental in solving this problem is to implement a built-in evaluation process and have the government fund it.
Jones was disappointed, however, with the lack of a stated focus on advocacy. Calling it a “particularly glaring omission,” he thinks that especially in this economy there should be a stronger focus on learning to advocate on behalf of the poor. In his view the institute can offer serious analysis of what works in helping individuals and communities, while also being a driving force for advocacy in matters that require a structural change in society. Still, he heralded the school’s focus on poverty as a return to the “real roots of social work.”
