dr alma jackson carten, phd, lcsw, acsw

Dr. Alma Jackson Carten earned her Bachelor of Arts from Ohio University, her Master of Social Work from the Atlanta University School of Social Work, and her Doctor of Social Welfare from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her education—spanning public, historically Black, and metropolitan institutions—laid the foundation for a lifelong commitment to social justice and the common good.

A seasoned social worker, educator, author, and policy leader, Dr. Carten's career spans more than five decades of service, scholarship, and advocacy.

 Her professional journey began as a psychiatric social worker and has evolved to include leadership in child welfare administration, higher education, professional association governance, and policy consultation. She has worked to improve the lives of children, families, and communities, especially those who have been underserved and marginalized.

Dr. Carten served as interim deputy commissioner of the New York City Child Welfare Administration during the transition to the Administration for Children's Services. She also served as president of the NASW New York City chapter from 2000 to 2002, leading the chapter through a time of great challenge and change—including the aftermath of September 11th, when the chapter's office was located at Ground Zero—and through the transition to state licensure, advancing initiatives in trauma-informed care, professional advocacy, and workforce support across the city.

A faculty member at a prominent school of social work and at Brooklyn College and other academic institutions, Dr. Carten has taught graduate courses in social work practice, policy, and ethics. Her teaching, research, and writing link micro and macro practice, focusing on social policy, child and family well-being, and the building and defense of the American social welfare state. She is a strong voice for culturally responsive practice and for policies that strengthen families and promote child well-being.

She is the author of Reflections on the American Social Welfare State: The Collected Papers of James R. Dumpson (NASW Press), along with numerous articles on social policy, child welfare, ethics, and the social work profession. A lifelong advocate for justice and equality, she writes to inform, to inspire, and to remind us that social work is both a calling and a commitment to the common good.

For more than five decades, Alma Jackson Carten has stood at the intersection of social work practice, policy, and the fight for racial and economic justice — as a psychiatric social worker, a child welfare administrator during moments of citywide crisis, a university professor, and a national voice for the profession. 

Commitment to the Common Good, Notes from the Desk of an African American Social Worker is her academic memoir: an unflinching look back at a career built inside public, historically Black, and metropolitan institutions, and at the systems — some of them broken, some of them worth saving — she spent a lifetime trying to change from within.

The book moves through the defining chapters of that career: the early years as a frontline psychiatric social worker; her tenure as interim deputy commissioner of the New York City Child Welfare Administration during its transformation into the Administration for Children's Services; her presidency of the NASW New York City chapter through the trauma of September 11th, when the chapter's own office sat at Ground Zero, and through the turbulence of the transition to state licensure; and decades in the classroom shaping the next generation of social workers around ethics, culturally responsive practice, and the link between individual care and structural change.

Woven through it all is the single thread that gives the memoir its title — a career-long argument that social work is not merely a job but a discipline in service of the common good, and that the American social welfare state, however imperfect, is worth defending, reforming, and reimagining rather than abandoning. 

Part personal history, part institutional record, Commitment to the Common Good is both a reckoning with what the profession has gotten wrong and a testament to what it can still get right.

"From our stories, we find our voice. From our voice, we shape policy. From our commitment, we build a more just society." Dr Carten.

Understanding Social Work: A Primer on the Profession is Dr. Alma J. Carten's accessible introduction to one of America's most influential — and most misunderstood — helping professions. Tracing social work's evolution from its roots in charity and Progressive Era reform to its contemporary role across health care, mental health, child welfare, education, and public policy, the book challenges the common assumption that social work serves only the poor and marginalized, revealing instead a profession that touches nearly every corner of American life.

Organized around nine core questions — What do social workers actually do? Why is social work a profession? What challenges confront it today? — the primer moves through the field's history, its ethical foundations, its theoretical frameworks, the associations that govern its standards, and the wide range of settings, from hospitals and schools to courts and community organizations, where social workers practice. A closing chapter widens the lens to international perspectives on the profession. 

Throughout, Dr. Carten weaves in the often-overlooked contributions of African American social welfare leaders, offering an account of the field's development that is as inclusive as it is comprehensive.

Designed as a companion volume to her memoir, the primer supplies the historical and conceptual grounding behind its stories — useful for students considering the field, practitioners and educators, and general readers seeking to understand a profession so often reduced to stereotype. At its core, the book returns again and again to the belief that has anchored Dr. Carten's own career: that social work's dual mission — helping individuals while working to change the conditions that shape their lives — is what makes it, at once, a calling and an act of citizenship.