Before Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez catapulted Nathaniel Ayers into the public eye and before film crews descended on the streets of downtown L.A. to film “The Soloist,” there were UCLA social welfare students on Skid Row.
For the past 20 years, first-year social welfare master’s students have visited Los Angeles’ infamous Skid Row — the 50-block area in downtown that contains the highest concentration of homelessness in America — as part of their field education.
The goal behind the Skid Row module of the program, which was created in 1994 by faculty member Mary Brent Wehrli, is to expose students to the needs of the homeless population and teach them the role of social workers in the community. Back then former field education director Joseph Nunn called it “one of the most meaningful learning experiences offered” to first-year students. Now in its 20th year, its legacy continues to be significant.
“Mary Brent had the foresight to do this before Skid Row received any attention from the general public and policymakers,” said Toby Hur, field faculty member at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs who picked up the torch after Wehrli’s retirement in 2004. “Twenty years ago, pre-media coverage, it wasn’t a place people went.”
In 1999, Wehrli was named California’s Social Welfare Practitioner of the Year, in part for how the Skid Row module — which consists of an orientation at the Cardinal Manning Center, a walk through Skid Row, and visits to several agencies — put UCLA students in the Skid Row community.
“Too often in this field we have asked the communities we serve to come and talk to us and meet us where we are at, but there is something to be said for going to the community and observing and supporting from within,” said Jennifer Mae Moore, first year social welfare master’s student who is currently placed at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s Cardinal Manning Center (which has hosted the module since its inception). “Even though there is much to be done on Skid Row and there are many to empower and encourage, this module also reminds us of the tight-knit community that exists there. That is a strength; and the module highlights that strength.”
After Wehrli started taking students to Skid Row, many of them never left.
‘Changing the face of social work on Skid Row’
Shannon Murray, who graduated in 1996 with a master’s in social work, was in the first class to participate in the Skid Row module and now is program director of Homeless and Housing Services at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. Although she’d never worked with the homeless population before the tour, Murray remembers telling a friend that she’d be open to doing her placement there.
Murray ended up doing her first year placement at the Cardinal Manning Center. That summer, she, along with Wehrli and Joan Sotiros, the director of Cardinal Manning at the time, started a lunchtime seminar series for interns and new staff to help them understand the unique needs of the Skid Row community and the organizations working there. The program is now in its 18th year.
After graduation, Murray returned to Cardinal Manning and spent six years there before moving to other Skid Row agencies, including LAMP Community. She also helped conduct the Skid Row tours for UCLA students for 15 years.
“We were actually able to start changing the face of social work on Skid Row,” Murray said. “There’s a lot of social work that happens there, but in the form of volunteerism and charity. We started bringing in the professionalism of social work, and began developing programs and policy on a macro level.”
Although she no longer works with the Skid Row population, Murray is still invested in solving the issue of homelessness from her office in Watts. She credits Wehrli for introducing her to the idea of social justice work that looks at the bigger picture.
Prior to starting her first year as in the social welfare program at Luskin, current student Roxana Duenas’ only exposure to homelessness in the United States was limited.
“Without the Skid Row module, I would have lacked information about an important part of Los Angeles,” said Duenas, who says what she learned on Skid Row influences her current work at the Koreatown Youth and Community Center, where she’s a caseworker for Gang Reduction and Youth Development.
“Skid Row represents a population that is affected by some of society’s greatest problems: poverty, access to health care and low-income housing, substance use and abuse, mental health problems, and issues with the integration of immigrants,” Duenas said. “To be competent in our work as social workers, we must be knowledgeable about the populations we work with and our knowledge should derive from different sources, including direct exposure.”
For alumna Njambi Kingori who graduated in 2009, the Skid Row module was an eye opening experience. A native of Kenya, she had only been living in the United States for a short time before enrolling at UCLA, so she was not familiar with Los Angeles.
“I had seen poverty before in Kenya and other countries, but seeing this kind of community setting in the U.S. — a country that provides financial aid to other countries — was shocking,” Kingori said.
UCLA provides the support students need to succeed
Prior to her graduate studies, Kingori had worked for a non-profit in Kenya doing international refugee resettlement for people displaced by civil wars and were homeless as a result. She chose UCLA for her degree because of its reputation. While researching schools, she met with alumni who told her that the field education faculty here provided students with a lot of support and opportunities during placement. For Kingori, that was the key.
“I enjoyed my first year placement [at the Cardinal Manning Center] so much that after it was over I told Joan Sotiros that I wanted to come back and work for her,” Kingori said.
This is now Kingori’s fifth year at Cardinal Manning Center since graduation (she held roles as a social worker, program coordinator and now deputy director), and each year she participates in orientations for new students doing the Skid Row module.
Kingori sees a lot of progress on Skid Row as the conversation has turned toward permanent supportive housing and services for the homeless and collaboration among agencies has increased, along with public awareness.
“When I started my internship as a first year student, if you Googled the word ‘Skid Row,’ I think you would get less than 20 hits and most of them were about a rock band,” Kingori said. “Now there is tons of information.”
Still, there is a lot of work to be done to find affordable and supportive housing for the homeless. Kingori said she often tells students on the tour that she is not certain whether homelessness will end in her lifetime due to its sociopolitical and economic complexities. But the incremental progress keeps her optimistic that there is a solution.
“If I can help in shaping policy on homelessness or getting clients to appropriate housing, I’ve played my small part,” she said.
This story was adapted from one that appeared on the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs website.
