Social Work Career Spotlight: Crisis Services Specialist

Brett Barney graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor's degree in social work in 2021. Barney, who was raised in Olathe, completed BSW classes at the KU Edwards Campus in Overland Park. 

After graduation, Barney began work with Easterseals Midwest as a crisis services specialist. There, Barney works to help individuals with disabilities settle in homes and develop life skills.

What does a typical day of work look like for you?

I'll go in and greet my individuals. … I’ll get morning medications ready for them, run through their morning hygiene tasks, and then we'll kind of assist them with what they ask for too. It’s part of helping them learn communication skills, you know, helping them tell us what they need and what they want help with. And then we'll have specific programs that our behavior analyst gives us to work on with them.

What do you find most rewarding about your current job?

Knowing that we've got them in a secure place, like a home, not stuck in a hospital anymore. Not stuck in one room basically for months at a time. Getting to see them healthy and happy and in a positive place.

Tell us about your favorite class from the BSW program – what was it and why is it your favorite?

Sydney Spears was the professor. ... She had us all learn more about our own different intersections of identity and we just came together and learned about each other's backgrounds. I think it was a class where we really learned a lot about the systems that go into how people's lives are affected by politics and other things like that.

And she always had us start with almost like a mindfulness kind of exercise, just to make sure we were in a good headspace going into the class. Just the way she did things, the way she ran the class, I think was a very good example for how people should operate as social workers or in any helping profession.

What advice would you give to current social work students?

I'd say having a solid self-care routine is probably the number one thing you know. And ... just making sure you can check in with yourself and know where you're at and making sure that you're in a healthy place, because that's where you can help others heal from, you know?

What advice would you give someone who is considering getting a BSW?

I'd say to go for it. 

There are a lot of different things you can do with the BSW. There are so many different subfields of social work.

If you're looking to get into a helping profession and maybe you don't have it exactly nailed down what you want to do, I think social work is a great way to go, because it just gives you so many different options.