Kay Blakney received her MSSW from the Memphis campus in 1974. She recently turned 77 years old and spent some time reflecting on her social work career. She noted that her MSSW opened many doors for her in the profession and wants the upcoming generation of social workers to know what a fulfilling career they get to look forward to.
Kay Blakney’s service career started in Atlanta in 1969, and she was the Intake Worker at the Ben Massell Dental Clinic in Atlanta. They provided dental services based on income and had a sliding fee scale. After graduating from UT at Martin, she worked in Obion County for about a year and a half as a Food Stamp Certification Worker. She left that position to start work on her master’s in social work in Memphis. She applied for a stipend and attended graduate school with a commitment to work for the Welfare Department for a few years. At that time, the college was located in the Med School area in Memphis and it had a one-year program. To complete her degree the following year, Blakney would have had to go to Nashville.
Luckily, the college had plans to start a second-year program in Memphis a few years later. Since her husband was in Law School at Memphis State University, going to Nashville would have been difficult and not a viable option. Blakney was approved to take the year off, work at the Welfare Department, and then return to school for her second year in Memphis. She was assigned to be a children’s case manager working with Protective Services, and her caseload involved working with children in foster care. She worked with the children, the foster parents, the natural parents/family, school systems, and regularly went to court regarding custody issues. After a year filled with unbelievable experiences, she returned to complete her master’s degree at the Memphis campus. After graduating, she returned to the Welfare Department to fulfill her commitment.
“At that time, I was involved with some major policy changes within the department,” Blakney explained. “In the past, foster care was under General Services. Shelby County was the first County to start the new program of having a Foster Care Division, which was pulled from General Services. We had a director of the program and three Foster Care Units. I became the supervisor of one of the units and this group became the first specialized Foster Care Unit in the state. This position gave me requirements for supervision experience that I would need later. So that is how it all started.”
Later in her career, Blakney worked as a school social worker in Shelby County, the only county in West Tennessee to have school social workers. UT Martin eventually developed a School of Social Work program with classes required in special education and a School Social Work class that Blakney taught one semester each year for 10 years. “We had people driving in from all over west Tennessee for the class,” she said. “After a while, there were school social workers in many of the counties.”
After taking the test to become an LCSW, Blakney worked for a few years in the Fraser/Millington Community Mental Health Center as a therapist and was appointed to be on the State Board of Directors for the Department of Human Services. Blakney worked with the Department of Human Services and applied for licensure as a Child Placement Agency. “We needed case managers, office staff, and a therapist,” she said. “While doing all of this, the heavens opened, and I was approached by the UT School of Social Work asking for a student majoring in administration to do a field placement at Childhelp. We were licensed and approved several weeks earlier because of her abilities.”
Blakney later learned that the position for Assistant Superintendent of Social Services was going to open at the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, where she had previously worked. About six weeks later, she returned to work at Lakeshore. The job involved managing the Director of the Admissions Department, the Director of Psychology Department, the Director of the Social Work Department, Director of Adjunct Therapy, and Director of Adult Services. Blakney worked at Lakeshore until she retired at age 62. She then moved to Murfreesboro to take care of her grandchildren.
“After retiring, it is hard to let go of who you have been for so long,” she explained. “I just eased out gradually. I was on a board for a child advocacy center for a couple of years, did a few private pay therapy sessions for some families working with children during divorce, and provided supervised visitation for some families for DCS. I have learned that being resilient and adapting to the new chapters helps.”
“As for my career in social work, so many of the experiences I had opened doors for other opportunities. Most were not intentional. I had so many right place, right time situations. I would advise students to be intentional and do things to get all the experiences they can. You just don’t know what opportunities may present themselves later. I never imagined starting an agency when I was in school. I had a class with Virginia Gates at grad school and one of our assignments was to develop an agency. I wish I could tell her that the things she taught me came in handy. I think she would be very surprised to learn of this because at the time I didn’t look much like someone that would start an agency. So just don’t rule anything out.”