Focusing on public mental health, Rosemary and David Farmer fund a new M.S.W. scholarship
With a career devoted to clinical social work and social work education, it’s no surprise Rosemary Farmer’s philanthropy would focus on helping students follow in her footsteps and pursue internships and employment in the public sector.
Along with her husband, they have established the Drs. Rosemary L. and David J. Farmer Public Mental Health Scholarship at the VCU School of Social Work – with an emphasis on public. Their initial gift lays the foundation for financial support for Master of Social Work students once the endowment is fully funded from additional donations.
“All of my education, from grammar school through my Ph.D., has been in public schools. I’m a public lady,” Farmer, a full-time social work faculty member from 1993 to 2014, says with a laugh. “And it’s been wonderful.”
Easing the financial burden
Recalling that she paid about $600 a semester in tuition as a master’s student at Hunter College School of Social Work (CUNY) in New York City in the early 1970s, she understands the much greater challenges current students face.
“The financial pressures and what happens when students try to work full time and do an M.S.W. program … something has to give, and it’s either their family or their health,” says Farmer, who earned her Ph.D. in social work at VCU in 1993. “They become sick. I’ve seen students who had to drop out because they were trying to work 40 hours a week and do the full-time M.S.W. Well, they have to go part-time, which extends their trajectory. I’ver seen breakups of marriages occur with students.
“Students try to do everything, and you just can’t successfully do everything. You get C’s in your courses because you don’t have time to read. You don’t have time to really write a decent paper. So hopefully some scholarship money will help, even minimal amounts.”
To me, social work is a core discipline; social workers bring an unusual blend of knowledge, human development, social policy and social justice. It is just a unique blend.
Rosemary Farmer
Farmer emphasizes the need for more social workers to focus on mental health care in public agencies that serve clients who don’t have the financial means for private care.
“This is where we can equal the playing field for those with limited incomes,” she says. “Additionally, the M.S.W. Program uniquely provides social workers with the skills needed to work effectively with persons who struggle with serious mental illnesses and other psychosocial problems that make it difficult for them to live successfully in society.”
Social workers, in fact, are the largest group of mental health providers by occupation in the nation, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. There are more clinically trained social workers – over 200,000 – than psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurses combined, according to the National Association of Social Workers, citing SAMHSA data.
“So that’s why my husband and I are trying to get more social workers interested in working in the field of public mental health,” Farmer says.
A path to social work
Farmer graduated from then-Harpur College, now Binghamton University (SUNY), with a degree in political science and then worked in a variety of settings in New York City: with the homeless population on the Bowery and in a women’s shelter, as a caseworker with the New York City Bureau of Public Assistance in the South Bronx and East Harlem. This work led her to earn an M.S.W. from Hunter College in New York City, and she then worked as a ward social worker at a state hospital, the Bronx Psychiatric Center.
As she began moving south from New York, Farmer continued her part-time private practice and worked at the Family Service agency in Montgomery County, Maryland, running adolescent programs and directing a newly funded psychosocial rehabilitation program. Arriving in Richmond after her husband had accepted a faculty position at VCU, she became the director of professional services at the now-defunct Family and Children’s Service of Richmond. She met Grace E. Harris, then dean of the VCU School of Social Work, several years later; in 19886, she was hired as an adjunct faculty member at the school, a position she held until her full-time appointment in 1993.
At VCU, her research focused on mental illness and psychosocial adaptation, bringing more biological knowledge into the social work curriculum and incorporating research from the neurosciences into HBSE and clinical practice courses. Her dissertation focused on the effects of neuropsychiatric impairment on adaptation to a chronic mental illness by persons with schizophrenia. She also studied psychosocial adaptation of veterans at the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center and also partnered on psychopharmacology research with then-faculty members Kia J. Bentley, Ph.D., and Joe Walsh, Ph.D.
Farmer also published a textbook, Neuroscience and Social Work Practice: The Missing Link, in 2009. “For me, the missing link for social workers was the brain, the biological,” she says. “You have to know about the brain in order to work with people. It’s not only medication, but substance abuse, major mental illnesses – all that stuff relates to the brain, its structure and function.”
David Farmer also spent much of his career in public service. After emigrating from Great Britain to Canada, he taught school in Estevan, Saskatchewan, and then worked for the provincial government of Saskatchewan and later the government of Ontario. When he came to the United States, he was employed by public administration companies and did consulting work. This experience led to him being chosen as a special assistant to the police commissioner of New York City; after this appointment he moved to the D.C. area and served as director of the police division at the U.S. Department of Justice.
He holds two Ph.D.s, in economics from the London School of Economics and in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He also has a D.P.A. in public administration. His academic career began at VCU, where he spent 35 years teaching and writing. He is currently professor emeritus of philosophy and public affairs in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.
A continuing need
Social workers are so impactful, Farmer says, because of the wide range of populations and subject matter they are trained to work with: couples therapy, family therapy, older adults, children, chronic illness, mental illness, LGBTQIA+, among others.
“Because of our knowledge, background, our belief in social justice, we are very well able to work with many different populations and to help people find the best fit that is possible for them with different systems and with families and friends,” she says. “To me, social work is a core discipline; social workers bring an unusual blend of knowledge, human development, social policy and social justice. It is just a unique blend.”
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