A Lifetime of Service and Learning: Social Worker Debby Beck

With a career that spans decades of direct practice, teaching, and advocacy, Debby Beck has dedicated her professional life to helping others and mentoring the next generation of social workers. Beck’s journey began in 1971 when she graduated from Simmons College with a master’s degree in social work (MSW). Like many new professionals, she faced early challenges that nearly led to burnout. How she navigated those challenges ultimately shaped her career focus and teaching philosophy.

As a professor of social work first at Simmons College and then at Wheelock College, Beck emphasized the importance of self-care and burnout prevention to her students, drawing from her own experiences as well as her evolving understanding of the field’s challenges.

Although she retired from teaching seven years ago, Beck remains active in the profession. She maintains a private practice and serves on three committees for the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, including the ethics committee and the legislative action committee. Her ongoing involvement keeps her connected to current issues facing the profession — and four years post-pandemic, stress and burnout remain priority challenges.

“The care of social workers in their profession, and how we manage what we’re doing in our work and our lives, is very important,” Beck said. “New professionals coming into the field are just beginning to see the need for self-care strategies.  They really are sort of feeling abandoned, because the whole behavioral health field is overstressed and overburdened.”

Beck’s on-going commitment to finding ways to support social workers prompted her to learn more about MASStrong for Healthcare Workers, our group mental wellness support program for frontline healthcare workers.

After attending an informational webinar about MASStrong for Healthcare Workers, Beck signed up for the facilitator training.

“I was extremely impressed right from the start with the quality of the instruction, the curriculum, and the way it was organized and articulated,” Beck said. “The instructors are extremely well-grounded in group work theory and practice and know what they’re doing. They demonstrated that very well.”

Beck, a seasoned educator, was particularly struck by how the training modeled the process that group participants will experience. “You actually are participating in the process in each module, which focuses on a segment of the group structure,” she explained. “You don’t just observe, but you actually partake in what the group process is like.”

The training, conducted entirely via Zoom, incorporated both large group sessions and smaller breakout rooms. This format provided “constant guidance and an opportunity to practice what you were learning,” said Beck.

While nothing in the content particularly surprised her, Beck said she felt “nicely affirmed” in what she considers best practices for group facilitation. She praised the training’s approach as “positive and strength-based,” rooted in “an understanding of both trauma but also of the potential for people to heal and grow and develop and transform, no matter where they are starting from.”

She said that MASStrong for Healthcare Workers program could be a potential lifeline for social workers at risk of leaving the profession due to stress and lack of support.

“I think it will be greatly beneficial and it’s really needed,” Beck said. “I think it holds the potential to not just keep social workers from leaving the field, but also helping them to find the gratification that’s inherent in the work and which I found in being a social worker for 50 years.”

While Beck is still exploring how best to bring GPS groups to more social workers, she is energized by the potential.

“The facilitator training just reawakened some really strong beliefs I had about the power of people to help each other,” she said. “There is a power in groups coupled with an understanding that whatever the trauma and life stressors people are facing, as human beings we all have an absolute ability to heal, make use of our basic strengths, and become resilient.”

Taking the facilitator training was a “truly transformative experience,” Beck said. “I’d recommend it to anyone looking to make a real impact in peer support.”