Adequate is Just Fine

Competency is the new focus in social work education, thanks to the new Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) put out by CSWE in February. Since then, all accredited BSW and MSW programs are working to move from "objectives" to "competencies" across the curriculum. This is a great move forward for the profession of social work.

One aspect of the new EPAS is the requirementthat programs define the "practice behaviors" that students have to demonstrate to meet the 10 major competencies. Additionally, programs have to set criteria to measure these practice behaviors across the curriculum. This means we have to set a scale and define the range from inadequate to good to excellent. Not an easy task. This raises the question, what is "good enough"? Good enough for Jane Addams? Good enough for President Obama? Good enough for the clients our graduates will serve?

Visual Thesaurus defines competence as "the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually." Adequate. Hmm. VT defines adequate as "having the requisite qualities or resources to meet a task." This definition intrigues me and makes me wonder how we respond to the term "adequate." In my experience, adequate is not good enough.

But why not? Adequate is "enough, decent, and equal." It is also "fair to middling, passable, and tolerable."

This reminds me of Voltaire's wisdom, "The perfect is the enemy of good."

Brandis, a social worker who graduated a year ago, asks a similar question in her blog,

What do you need to feel successful? I know the question is about what I need in order to feel successful, but when I began to think about my answer to that question, I was more interested in whether I actually feel successful right now, and if I do, what is it that does or doesn’t make me feel that way…

She ends with this thought. " I have a picture of where I’d like to be professionally when I’m “settled,” and I’m not quite there yet."

Just not there yet. I like that! Brandis post speaks to me in many ways and reflects an honest, healthy awareness of an ongoing journey of life long learning. She also illustrates how she is dealing with paradox and has found that "thin line" of grace between the tension of adequate and excellent.

But that isn't what our culture preaches. We in the United States live in a culture that expects excellence now, which is "the quality of excelling; possessing good qualitys in high degree; an essentail and distinguishing attribute of something or someone." So how do we say that adequate is good enough but seek to find excellence? Here are more questions: How do social service organizations promote excellence but accept adequacy? Can social service agencies motivate staff for excellence given the tight budgets and policy limitations given to the provision of services? How do we include the client's voice in the evaluation of performance regarding adequate or excellent? When is the enemy of perfect getting in the way of our work?

These are important questions to consider. Let me know if adequate is good enough - or not.