Boston-area libraries are employing social workers. Here’s why.
More social workers are working in libraries in recent years.
November 12, 2024
As a social worker at the Cambridge Public Library, Marie Mathieu received many calls from members of the community — but only one from a 4-year-old child.
“Thank you so much Miss Marie!” the child exclaimed through the phone.
Mathieu, a former social worker at the library, had helped put the child into child care by helping their guardian fill out the required documents and vouchers.
“Getting that kind of a call from a 4-year-old who was just trying to go to school and learn was really, really heartwarming,” Mathieu recently told Boston.com.
Library social work on the rise
In March 2021, the Cambridge Public Library hired Mathieu, making it the first public library in Massachusetts to hire a social worker.
“We were concerned about a lack of equitable access to social work services among patrons, and at the same time, we were noticing that we needed to have more attention and care for people who need that high level of assistance,” Cambridge Public Library Director Maria McCauley told Boston.com.
Since then, other libraries have started to follow suit as an increasing number of social workers have been coming into the library setting in recent years.
One of their main roles is to connect people with social service programs to support their needs.
“Libraries are starting to see the value of having a social worker there to support people in need,” Rebekah Gewirtz, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers, told Boston.com.
Social services have been more “acute” since the pandemic, Gewirtz said, which has heightened the need for library social workers.
“Those trends have been leading more people to seek help in public spaces,” she said.
In many communities, libraries, “a safe haven for the underserved,” are the “only free space that welcomes everyone in the community,” a Michelle Eberle, Massachusetts Library System consultant, said.
What do library social workers do?
Library social workers serve a dual purpose of helping library patrons while also supporting library staff with training on how to support community members, Eberle told Boston.com.
Social workers can help connect people with community resources to address issues like housing, food insecurity, unemployment, and health care, she said.
Social workers also provide staff training on topics like deescalation, trauma, informed care, and self care, Eberle said.
“Librarians and library staff are not trained as social workers, so they don’t have the specific skillsets to work with people who are in crisis,” Michael Colford, director of Library Services at the Boston Public Library, told Boston.com.
Which Massachusetts libraries have social workers?
Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Worcester all have social workers on staff.
The Boston Public Library employed its first social worker in May 2022.
“It quickly became clear that there was a lot of work to be done there, and it was far more than one person could handle,” Colford told Boston.com.
Colford said he intends to expand the social work program, creating a social work manager position as well as a staff social worker. The library also has social work interns and is starting a “Care Navigator” program.
“A peer navigator is someone who has lived experience in either housing insecurity, addiction, or mental illness and has overcome it and has been served to work with peers on those issues,” Colford said.
In addition, there is a “growing trend” of community-based social workers that provide services at public libraries across the state, according to Eberle.
“We are currently aware of about 20 community-based social workers in Massachusetts collaborating with public libraries,” she said.
In Newburyport, a local social worker, who created a resource card for librarians to refer patrons to local resources and support, has weekly drop-in social work hours at the library.
In Pittsfield, the city social worker is at the library at least once a week, and in Ludlow, there are social work drop-in hours at the library monthly.
Beyond Massachusetts
While working at the library in Cambridge, Mathieu said she regularly connected with a cohort of library social workers from across the country.
“We would all talk about what challenges we were having within our particular library, or ask for advice about how they’ve navigated a particular situation,” she said. “We really leaned on each other to get a lot of support, especially when building out these new programs.”
Mathieu said it was a “lonely landscape” being the first library social worker in Massachusetts.
“I was very dependent on my colleagues from other states,” she said.
In 2009, San Francisco Public Library became the first library in the country to hire a social worker.
“Having conversations with [people at the San Francisco Public Library] about being the pioneers of this work and getting advice from them was really crucial and beneficial in creating something in Massachusetts,” Mathieu said.