Living in the Silicon Valley, I see both wealth and poverty on a daily basis. In my residential neighborhood, there are often unhoused people who sleep in front of homes, on benches, or even in the outdoor common electrical rooms (I am unsure of the precise name or description of these). At the end of last school year, one of my twelfth grade students – one that I also taught when they were in sixth grade – shared with me that they were living in their car for the last few months. When volunteering as a court-appointed special advocate for children in foster care over the past eight years, I had many interactions with loving parents who were unhoused as they strived for reunification with their children. I think about the well-being of young and older adults – especially those unhoused – constantly and wonder about short and long-term solutions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Salt Lake City downtown library\u2019s social worker \u201cprovided 2, 144 services to people\u201d since her hire to meet patron needs related to unhousing and psychosocial as well as staff needs (<\/span>Harkins, 2023<\/span><\/a>, p. 1). This number of services provided nearly doubled compared to before the social worker, Nicole Campolucci, was hired.\u00a0 She was able to provide an immense amount of services due to her work in partnering with eight other providers – the \u201cAsian Association of Utah, The Road Home, Odyssey House, Valley Behavioral Health, and the Department of Workforce Services\u201d (<\/span>Harkins, 2023, p. 3<\/span><\/a>). It is incredible that in just three months, Campolucci was able to not just establish these partnerships, but coordinate and get them running.<\/span><\/p>\n Upon further research, I learned that the San Francisco Public Library also has a social worker – they were the first in the nation to hire one back in 2014 (<\/span>Shafer, 2014<\/span><\/a>). The social worker, Leah Esguerra, not only helped the unhoused, but ended up hiring them for an outreach program that she supervised. Similarly, San Jose Public Library hosted job fairs for the unhoused by partnering with a local nonprofit (City of San Jose, 2023).<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n (City of San Jose, 2023, p. 12)<\/a><\/p>\n These are salient examples of how the public library can provide both short and long-term solutions for the unhoused. These services transform and empower those belonging to a population that is marginalized and dehumanized by society – while chipping away at the stigmas held by patrons with more privilege and power. The human, community, and justice-centered direction that libraries are taking inspires so much hope and possibility.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social Work in the Library The concept of social work in the library brings together two tremendous, transformative services. Living in the Silicon Valley, I see both wealth and poverty on a daily basis. In my residential neighborhood, there are often unhoused people who sleep in front of homes, on benches, or even in the … Continue reading Reflection: New Models\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/hellahyperlinked\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/557\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-05-at-11.00.04-PM.png\")
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