Silberman Aging

Welcome to the Silberman Aging website!  There are many of us at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College  — faculty, students and staff — interested in aging and the many roles for social workers in this growing and important field.  This website is an effort to make accessing relevant information easier for you and we hope you will find it useful.

Consistent with the human rights framework, the Aging Field of Practice (FOP) is guided by the principle that older adults are individuals and members of a family and community with rights and responsibilities—who must be afforded the necessary protection and assistance to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.  Although older adults are clients that can be served in a variety of fields of practice, this specialization is defined by its formal and informal service structure; its social and legislative sanctions; the population it serves; its specific policy debates and its practices.

The Aging FOP addresses the aging process from a life course perspective.  This specialization explores the aging process and the variety of issues affecting older adults and their family systems.  Course selections provide content with a focus on issues such as health and mental health, social service delivery in clinical and community-based settings, assessment of risk and protective factors associated with healthy aging, assessment, intervention, and evaluation of specialized services for older adults and their family systems, caregiving, long-term care policy, and the implications of the growing demographic of the aging society.

The site is divided into several sections:

• A description of the active and dynamic student group, Student Alliance for an Aging Society (SAAS)
• There is a section  linking with important organizations and websites in the field of aging, including the Council on Social Work Education’s Gero-Ed site, where you will find wonderful resources, the National Council on Aging, Gerontological Society of America, and many more
• A section with links to relevant programs, lectures and activities in our area
• A section with links to interesting popular and academic articles

We want this site to be a rich collaboration, so if you know of other relevant events, articles, agencies, or organizations working with older adults and their families that you would like to see included in this website, please let us know.  We are ALL Aging at Silberman!

For more information about the Aging Field of Practice (FOP), or to submit content for this site, please contact: