Chana Lazar
Pesach Tikvah Family & Children’s Services, Brooklyn, NY
Chana Lazar, who received her MSW from the Touro College Graduate School of Social Work in 2012, had a goal of becoming a child and family therapist. She is now officially a clinician at Pesach Tikvah Family & Children’s Services in Boro Park, as well as the outpatient center’s director of training initiatives. In addition to Chana's many academic achievements, serving as treasurer of the graduate school’s Alumni Leadership Council, her professional activities and community service outreach, Chana also utilizes play, art, and sand therapy techniques she honed while earning her certification in child and family therapy from the New York University Silver School of Social Work.
Social work excites me because it is about helping people find solutions that enable them to function the best they can in the environment in which they live. In my current job, I not only help people understand how they feel, but I also help children through play therapy solve problems that change and better their immediate situations. Social work allows me to externalize the idea that changing the world starts with helping one person.
The skill I never realized I’d need is inner strength. The social worker’s task can be emotionally challenging. When you are dedicated it can take a lot out of you. It is essential to your health that you take care of yourself emotionally and psychologically.
My professional role model is one of my former Touro professors, Dr. Nancy Feldman. While taking a course she taught, Arts Interventions in Social Work Practice, I learned the value of incorporating a range of methods of artistic expression and their applications to clinical social work practice.
We experimented with music, drama, visual art, creative writing, movement and other play therapy modalities. It was eye-opening how the arts can be used to build rapport, assess risk factors, identify client needs, and link people with resources to help them become empowered members of society.
Further, we learned how the use of creative arts can inspire social awareness, public dialogue, and social change. It was from this course in general and Dr. Feldman’s approach in particular, that I was motivated to further my professional growth and develop my own innovative approaches with children and families.
The most critical thing I learned in social work school was about how to help people. It’s not so easy to help someone, even if you have the best of intentions.
Social work is so much more than just handling cases. Social work by nature is a helping profession. What most people don’t realize is there is a range of approaches and specializations within our profession, but the shared goal is ultimately to change or transform lives.
Chana is a founding member of the Graduate School of Social Work’s Alumni Association and Alumni Leadership Council.
