Jonathan Barr, a student in the Social Work program at Georgia State, is achieving the next step in his education while already working in his field.Barr is a Program Manager at Advantage Behavioral Health Systems in Athens, Georgia where he runs a program to help individuals with opioid use disorder. As a certified alcohol and drug counselor, he has discovered that additional education is an important step in advancing the service he can provide clients.
“I feel like I'm going to be more effective with the population that I serve when I can also provide mental health services,” he said. “A lot of times, people with substance use disorders are pigeonholed into programs that don't have mental health services at all or have very little. My vision is to bring something that's more comprehensive to the table for my agency and maybe even the state.”
In the future, Barr hopes to progress to systemic policy work in Georgia. He believes that within our communities, we need policies that will make change possible for those in the justice system.
“I think we need to do better with re-entry, and we need to do better with how we treat people that get convicted of particular charges,” Barr said. “On the state or federal level we need [to assist] not just with co-occurring services for people with substance use disorders and mental health challenges, but also for the justice involved, people that are products or entangled in the justice system.”
“It's the scarlet letter that no one talks about, and I think that we need to make some changes because we're excluding a large group of people out of the social mainstream and ultimately opportunity.”
BSW at Georgia State
“I have loved the social work program at Georgia State,” Barr said. “It has been fulfilling, educational and informative.”.
With coursework in social welfare policy and case management, Georgia State’s Social Work program prepares students for the challenging, yet rewarding, field. Barr entered the program with experience in the field, but faced additional challenges due to his break in schooling. For example, he struggled with the format and guidelines for writing academic research papers.
“The presumption was that I had already been taught,” he said. “And I might have, but it had been almost 20 years since I was in college the last time.”
Luckily, Barr’s professors worked with him to refresh and advance his skills.
“Deborah Whitley was the professor that helped push me and helped me grow the most in my research papers,” Barr said. “I’m to the point today where I feel really proficient with them.”
Barr is currently applying for a fieldwork placement as the final requirement of his degree program. Looking back, Barr believes that it was many of the faculty and staff at Georgia State who helped him get to this point.
“Whether it be the director of the BSW program or the dean of the school of social work that made themselves accessible to me when I had questions, I was able to take the classes I needed,” Barr said.