Making the World a Better Place - Touro College

Listening with His WHOLE Being
Bobby Staley MSW ‘08
Bobby Staley has a reputation for
tackling the toughest social work cases.
The dedicated mental health clinician has
worked with challenging populations,
including HIV patients, the formerly
incarcerated, and now the severely
mentally ill.
Recently, Staley met with a client who had cut his hand
with a knife, damaging the tendons so badly that
surgery was required. After missing a couple of
important appointments, the patient said,
“Don’t worry about it. Let them cut my
hand off.”
Instead of resignation, Staley heard
frustration, sensing that the client hadn’t
actually meant what he said. Rather than
allowing the client to give up, Staley was
patient and persistent, finally convincing the
patient to get the help he needed. Of his
approach, Staley says, “You don’t just listen
verbatim. You listen with your whole being.”
On any given day, that’s exactly what
Staley does in the South Bronx, as
assistant director of The Bridge, Inc.’s
Assertive Community Treatment (ACT)
team, a modality that provides therapy, medical and support
services to the severely mentally ill. He helps clients fulfill
basic tasks, such as finding housing, going to work, visiting
the doctor, doing their laundry and even visiting social clubs.
The Bridge, Inc.’s ACT client population benefits from the
organization’s team approach, where a host of
professionals—a case manager, a psychiatrist, two nurse
practitioners, three social workers and two housing
specialists—develop treatment plans for the 68 individuals
they serve. As a social worker, Staley takes a hands-on
approach to monitoring their progress. “If
buying a sandwich for someone means that
they’ll stay at their medical appointment, that’s
what we’ll do,” says Staley. “We look after the
little things.”
But, as Staley knows, for this particular
population, even the so-called “little things”
can feel like Herculean tasks. “This job gives
me an opportunity to better understand what
it’s like to have a severe mental illness,” he
says. “To use a military metaphor, our team is
like the ‘special forces of working with the
mentally ill’.”
If anyone is equipped for the ‘special
forces,’ it’s Staley. Steven Huberman, Ph.D.
and founding dean of Touro’s Graduate School of Social Work
(GSSW) was Staley’s advisor when he was pursuing his
graduate degree in social work. Dean Huberman says of his
former student, “Bobby always would take on the most
challenging responsibilities in the most quiet, humble ways.
He has consistently self-selected the most difficult populations
to work with.”
18 TOURO LINKS I SPRING 2013