How social work interns are changing lives at public libraries

“That bench, that’s where I used to sleep,” Paul Jackson said, pointing across the street from the Sacramento Central Library. “I went to sleep over there one night. I woke up with one shoe, and my glasses were gone.” Blind in one eye and living with seizures, Jackson was alone and struggling with access to services until he met Maria Montano, a social worker at the library.

In less than two years, she’s become his lifeline, helping him navigate housing, disability applications and access to health care. Jackson and hundreds of other Sacramentans’ lives have been touched by Montano and a team of student interns through a quiet but groundbreaking social work programme at the public library.

Montano described herself as “a social worker from A to Z,” assisting library patrons with overcoming housing instability, mental health crises, joblessness and other real-world hardships. And she’s training college students from across Northern California how to do the same. Since 2023, Montano has been leading the transformation of county libraries into a lifeline for the community’s most vulnerable — and a rigorous frontline classroom for the next generation of social workers. “Our community sees libraries as safe spaces where information can be sought without barriers, and those in need can seek resources and assistance,” said Liana Acevedo, the public services manager at the Sacramento Public Library.

While library staff can provide info on a range of topics, they cannot offer the level of support that patrons often requested, Acevedo said. Montano said librarians cannot handle sensitive personal information such as social security numbers that patrons must provide to social service agencies. “Social work Interns offer in-depth computer assistance, provide individualised consultations for questions requiring resource referrals, and can assist with paperwork and applications,” Acevedo said. While the Sacramento Central Library used to have navigators to assist homeless residents and those with mental illness, the social work internship program takes advantage of a student population passionate about helping those facing hardships. Of the thousands of public library branches across the nation, only about 160 of them offered a social work program like the one here in Sacramento in 2023. according to Sara Zettervall, author of “Whole Person Librarianship.” The first Library Social Work Conference will convene in October at the Richland Library in Columbia, South Carolina.

The Sacramento programme has garnered attention from libraries in other counties, and they are looking for ways to partner with social work programs to help their patrons, said Lisa Marsh, director of field education at Sacramento State’s School of Social Work. The tough part, she said, is that they haven’t been appropriated enough money to contract with a site supervisor like the Sacramento Public Library has done with Montano. By investing in a social work internship program like this one, Marsh said, communities are increasing the chances that students will want to return to their communities to work health care, government or nonprofit settings. “It’s an unusual opportunity for them to really engage with community people,” Marsh said of the library internships. “It’s a little bit more informal. It’s a little more organic. Our students learn to be more adaptable, working in an area where there’s not a lot of predictability.”

Students must deepen their understanding of the social determinants of health, those non-medical factors like income, employment, job security and food security that affect people’s ability to access resources essential for health and well-being. Not only do interns come from Sacramento State, they also come from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Cosumnes River College. The Central Library is moving the interns from a tucked-away third-floor room to a more visible second-floor space, reflecting their growing role, and they soon will be working two days a week in the Valley Hi/North Laguna and Southgate branches as well. “Students have expressed appreciation for the real world practice of meeting people where they are both literally and figuratively,” Marsh said.

Some of this is taking students back to the roots of the profession when social workers were known as “friendly visitors,” Marsh said, but it’s also ensuring that students are comfortable with being uncomfortable, with being proactive, with operating in an environment of ambiguity.

Jackson said he had nowhere to go and no one to help until he and a buddy met Montano at the library. He was born at the Sacramento County Hospital in 1976, two years before it became the UC Davis Medical Center, but as a child, he moved around with family, living at times in Utah and Southern California. He was living in Long Beach in 2018 when he was attacked and beaten on his way home from a bar. His head injuries resulted in an injury that required the removal of his left eye and left him suffering with seizures and pain.