Courtesy of the Brown School

Dr. Sue Stepleton

Stepleton joined Washington University in September of this year as director of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work’s new Policy Forum. The forum was created to encourage students and faculty at the University to contribute to the dialogue about the public policies surrounding social issues of interest.

“There’s just been a real passion here for getting the knowledge, the science, the research into the hands of those making policy decisions…We’re trying to figure out what is the action step that moves that kind of knowledge, particularly in the areas of public health and social work, into the policymaking arena,” Stepleton said.

Prior to accepting the position, Stepleton served 10 years as president and CEO of Parents as Teachers, an international organization based in Missouri that provides parents with research-based information about early childhood education and development strategies.

As CEO of Parents as Teachers, Stepleton spent a great deal of time in Washington, D.C., working with Congress and other federal departments in an effort to affect public policy.

“The business of young children is very political. Enormous amounts of federal funding go into early childhood, so affecting how that’s spent, that there are good decisions made, presenting why it’s important to keep those investments strong,” she said.

Before Parents As Teachers, Stepleton worked at the Edgewood Children’s Center in St. Louis, where she was also highly involved in public policy issues.

She personally enrolled as a graduate student in the social work school 39 years ago.

Stepleton views her experiences in prior positions leading naturally into the work she will be doing as director of the forum.

“The combination, the strength of a social work approach and a public health approach …is a really wonderful marriage of two ways of looking at children and families and what they need,” she said. “I will always be a committed child advocate myself and be very interested in those issues around young children, but it’s also very easy for me to extrapolate beyond that.

“Kids need to grow up in healthy communities, and that’s what the Brown school is all about.”

Stepleton has been passionate about social work and policy for her entire adult life. She recalls one child she worked with nearly 40 years ago, a five-year-old girl who had been sexually abused by her uncle.

“I can still see that child and remember what an impact it made on me that any child would be living with those kinds of things. So it was a no-brainer to move in the direction of ‘What could I use my professional life doing to make things better for children?’” Stepleton said.

Her experiences teaching led her to discover her deeper interests and strengths.

“I loved teaching, but it became clear to me fairly early on that I would like to be involved at the level that policy is set and organizations are managed,” Stepleton said. “Whether they are social workers or public health workers or teachers, they can only do their jobs effectively if there are good policies and management of organizations. It’s been a pretty consistent thread throughout my adult life.”

The forum will host events related to current issues in public policymaking, and encourage and facilitate the creation of “products” and research conducted by faculty and students.

Stepleton says that these “products,” such as policy briefs, white pages and monographs created by students and faculty, will be useful to policymakers.

The forum will also aim to foster an environment in the social work school and the University at large in which policy affecting social issues is a focus.

“In addition to events and products, we really hope to create at the Brown school a policy lifestyle…that means that people are thinking about impacting public policy no matter what they do,” Stepleton said. “Because of our two disciplines, social work and public health, we need to be thinking policy all the time, so we’re going to look for opportunities to make that happen.”

While the forum has begun planning some events for 2012, it is still in its preliminary stages of development.

“We want to do it right, we’re not in a hurry. We want to be really speaking to a need that exists, not just putting up events for the sake of events.”

Stepleton is enthusiastic about the work that lies before her as she returns to the University in this new position.

“I really come at this with a passion about how we use the resources of the University and the Brown school particularly to help policy move in the right direction.”