Growing up under Jim Crow laws in the South, Frances Caple felt she had to find a way to help the most vulnerable and disenfranchised individuals in society.

She got that opportunity at the USC School of Social Work, where she helped build one of the largest and most successful training programs for school social workers, ensuring that hundreds of students graduated with the skills necessary to address critical challenges in the public school system.

In recognition of her tireless efforts in the social welfare arena, the California Social Welfare Archives (CSWA) honored Caple with the Frances Lomas Feldman Excellence in Education Award during its annual awards ceremony on April 1.

“I feel blessed and honored and grateful and humbled,” she said, adding, “My life has taken some wonderful turns to bring me here. We may have to wait awhile, but things do have a way of always working out for the best.”

Finding a path

 

Born in South Carolina, Caple attended Benedict College and initially planned to become a public school teacher. But she quickly became disillusioned after Sen. Strom Thurmond threatened to close down the school system in the face of any attempts at desegregation. After working as a secretary for an adoptions agency in New York and teaching for a few years in North Carolina, she and her husband headed west to California.

 

Caple ultimately found a home with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, where she worked as a child and family social worker. At the urging of her supervisor, she pursued a master’s degree in social work at USC, which she completed in 1971.

After a stint as a school social worker for the Los Angeles Unified School District, she returned to USC to complete a doctorate in social work and joined its faculty as an assistant professor. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she became director of the school’s nascent program for the preparation and credentialing of school social workers.

“There was one year we only had one student enrolled in the program,” she said.

Despite its slow start, the program grew into one of the largest in the nation, graduating hundreds of students interested in practicing social work in school settings. Caple credited the success of the program to hard work and support from her colleagues and mentors, including the namesake of the award, Frances Lomas Feldman.

She also cited the lessons passed down by her grandmother, who watched Caple and her sister and brother after school every day during their childhood. Both siblings pursued a similar career path; her sister also graduated from USC with a master’s degree in social work.

“My grandmother was a compassionate woman, who truly taught me how to be with people, how to be empathetic and to be of help to others,” Caple said. “It’s no wonder that we all became social workers.”

Honoring pioneers

 

During its awards ceremony, CSWA also recognized two other leaders in social welfare: Judge Michael Nash, the recently retired presiding judge who transformed the juvenile court system in Los Angeles County and dedicated his career to helping vulnerable children and families, and Y. Bill Watanabe, a social worker and community organizer who changed the face of social services in Little Tokyo and the broader Asian-American community in Southern California.

 

In his keynote address, Nash described his decades of experience as a juvenile court judge, highlighting the “crusader mentality” he brought to his role in the courtroom and community.

“We are the equivalent of the emergency room in the medical profession,” he said. “We have to intervene in crises and figure out the best response on a case-by-case basis.”

In 1998, Nash helped launch Adoption Saturday to reduce the number of foster children awaiting adoptions; since its creation, the program has found adoptive homes for more than 35,000 children during Saturday court hearings and has expanded across the United States.

Striving for more

 

Although he helped reduce the number of children under the jurisdiction of dependency court from approximately 50,000 several decades ago by more than a third, Nash said much work remains.

 

“That decrease sounds good to some, but I can tell you I am not satisfied,” he said, adding later, “There are more than 30,000 children in our child welfare system in Los Angeles, many of whom are not getting what they need, what they deserve, and what they are entitled to as children—that is a safe, healthy, loving, permanent home.”

Although he officially retired in January, Nash returned to the bench two months later, this time in delinquency court, where he continues to seek increased collaboration among various agencies, institutions and individuals involved in child welfare.

In presenting him with the George D. Nickel Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Welfare, Marilyn Flynn, dean of the USC School of Social Work, said it is clear that Nash has made a highly significant contribution to social welfare history in Los Angeles and throughout the nation.

“His eyes are really fixed on what it takes to change our child welfare system and more importantly, our capacity to unify and support and sustain families,” she said.

Building a community

 

The third honoree, Watanabe, received the George D. Nickel Award for Outstanding Professional Services by a Social Worker. Born in a World War II internment camp in California in 1944, Watanabe earned a master’s degree in social work with a focus on community organizing from UCLA in 1972.

 

He put that background to good use as the cofounder and executive director of the Little Tokyo Service Center, which has grown into a multipurpose agency that offers services such as child care and youth programs, affordable housing, business development, family counseling, and parenting classes.

Watanabe also helped promote a thriving arts scene in downtown Los Angeles, spearheaded the development of a sports and activity facility in Little Tokyo, and pushed for the protection of historic sites, earning him the title of Preservation Hero in 2007 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“Being a community organizer is one of the best jobs in the world,” Watanabe said. “You get to work with people in the community, in the neighborhood, trying to empower them to make change and improve their environment for themselves and generations to come. What better job can you ask for?”

CSWA officials also announced the creation of a new honor, the Madeleine Stoner and Ralph Fertig CSWA Social Work Scholar Award, to annually recognize a promising master of social work student at USC. The inaugural recipient, Joseph Wise, is an MSW candidate studying community organization, planning and administration.

For more than 35 years, CSWA has documented the development of social welfare in California for educators, scholars and researchers by preserving and making available materials of historical significance and publishing oral history interviews with social work pioneers. Its California Social Work Hall of Distinction honors exceptional contributors to social welfare and the social work profession and supports curricula in social work programs throughout the state.