When Betty Williams took an undergraduate elective in anthropology at the University of Oregon in 1955, her plans for a career in dentistry evaporated. She was so intrigued by how human beings function in society that she decided her days would be spent more productively in front of people, rather than beside them brandishing a high-speed drill.
“The class steered me in the direction I probably should have been in from the start,” she recalls, noting that after only two weeks at college she already had a support group in her dorm room.
“I realized I was concerned about people and their problems, and I was not going to be challenged by the sciences. To me, the most important issue was individuals and their interaction and relationships with each other.”
From then on, Williams says, she directed her youthful energy to making the world a less hostile place for the basic societal unit-the family. She has become a zealous advocate for legal and policy changes that strenghen families.
“Being a parent is an immensely difficult job, always has been and probably always will be,” she says. “But when parents don’t have even the barest necessities, it becomes an insurmountable burden.
“We have little or no control over many of life’s tragedies. However, we can control poverty if we, as a nation, choose to unleash our tremendous resources to free families from its pernicious effects and allow them to realize their potential.”
Williams, 57, just back from a high school reunion in her hometown of Marietta, Okla., credits her parents with instilling the importance of family in their eight children at a very young age.
“I grew up in a nurturing, extended family environment,” she recalls. “My mother worked part-time, took care of us, fed the poor and clothed the homeless. The hobos came daily to sit on our back porch, and my mother never turned one away. Imagine a poor family feeding 10 people already, but still able to feed more. I learned that one way we grow and always have enough is by giving to others. `You never have so little that you can’t share’ was my mother’s motto, and I have made it mine.
“As a child, I saw families supporting each other and the community supporting families,” she says. “As a young adult, in clinical work with low-income families, the dynamic jumped out at me even more: If families have a fairly secure economic base and resources or know where to go for resources, they likely will flourish, and this was the key, not only to supporting families, but also to the development of strong communities.”
In 1960, while doing field research for her master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago, Williams became convinced that the American family was in serious jeopardy but still salvageable.
“When we were able to provide services for families in the projects and be there for them, the results were staggering,” she recalls. “I saw that everyone has some strengths and the key is to build on those strengths one step at a time.”
But Williams admits the task seemed overwhelming.
“While I could help one family and then move on to another, I began to question how I, or any other practitioner, could ever see enough to make a real difference,” she says. “United Charities, metropolitan Chicago’s largest non-sectarian family-service agency, for example, serves 80,000-90,000 families a year. That seems like a lot, but it’s only a drop in the bucket in terms of the actual number of Chicago-area families in need.”
During a two-year stint as a social worker with United Charities after graduation, she acknowledged to herself that the only way to achieve real and lasting social change was to correct governmental policies and procedures.
Today, as vice president of government affairs for United Charities, Williams works closely with Illinois legislators, church leaders, civic groups and public and private organizations to establish and develop family-supportive programs and policies.
She travels frequently to Springfield to testify on state legislation affecting families, coordinates training and information sessions for legislators and administrators and lobbies for the creation of a “more family-friendly state and country.”
Williams chuckles when she recalls it was her voluntary participation in the local PTA that propelled her career from the clinical realm into the state capital.
“Even while I was temporarily out of the traditional workforce raising my two children, I never forgot my father’s admonition to be useful to society,” she says. “And through my work on the PTA mental health committee, I discovered a talent for getting people to listen to what I had to say and for taking complex issues and making them more easily understandable.”
Williams also found she could motivate others to good works. She pulled together ideas and got people to rally round them. She developed mental health forums at the school and invited professional speakers to present their views to packed audiences.
By 1976, members of the legislature began inviting her to give testimony on family issues in Springfield, and that year she was appointed by Gov. Dan Walker to serve on the advisory council for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
“It’s been history ever since,” she says. “That appointment, though still a volunteer position, really set the tone for the next phase of my working life. Going to Springfield and meeting directly with legislators had already convinced me I belonged in policy work, rather than in clinical practice. Now I was also convinced I could bring about change if I brought enough people together and presented a strong enough argument.”
Encouraged by repeated successes in helping shape governmental family policy, Williams returned to full-time work at United Charities in 1979. When she was asked to head the social advocacy department the following year, she began combining her legislative efforts with practical and logical appeals to community leaders.
For the last 15 years, Williams has spearheaded United Charities’ legislative and policy initiatives, with many positive results. In 1983, she successfully lobbied to make Illinois the first state to enact Family Impact Laws requiring government agencies to consider the effect their actions are likely to have on families. In 1988, she founded the Illinois Policy Council, a 35-member statewide group that reviews public policies involving families. She has worked actively on legislation to protect aging families from becoming impoverished as a result of runaway nursing home expenses. And as a member of the Cook County Juvenile Court Advisory Committee, she has assisted the policy and court systems in becoming more responsive to the needs of juvenile offenders and their families.
“United Charities’ double mission of strengthening and empowering families while working to change social policy always had appealed to me,” she says. “Now I saw how the direct practice experience was pulled together and articulated in a manner promoting legislative and public policies that are sensitive to the needs of families. It was the perfect combination for me.
“I have a vision of a better time and place for families,” she notes. “And I think we can create it now, as opposed to waiting until we die. We have the resources, but as a nation regrettably we still don’t have the will. Only when we finally understand that economic policy and social policy go hand in hand will we begin to see lasting change.”
To hasten this understanding, Williams recently captured the interest of Chicago-area church and community leaders and is excited about a burgeoning initiative to benefit African-American families.
“My interest is in all families and family issues,” she insists. “But with all the turmoil in African-American communities and with the recent problems experienced by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, I have felt strongly that there has to be some special focus for this group.”
As a result of discussions with members of the National Association for Black Social Workers and Creasie Finney Hairston, dean of the Jane Addams School of Social Work, Williams has created an African-American Family Preservation Task Force with the goal of reaching further into black communities to solve family crises.
Active participants include Rev. Al Sampson, president of the Metropolitan Council of Black Churches, and Jesse McDonald, director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Task force representatives have met twice this year with Gov. Jim Edgar and his staff, and more talks are planned.
“With this initiative, we again are involving the community in family matters, just as in earlier, gentler times,” Williams says proudly. “We offer mentoring programs for mothers and encourage extended family members to take care of children while their parents are indisposed.
“Take the Grand Boulevard area for example, where this year alone more than 1,300 children have been removed from their homes because of parental neglect, abuse or drug and alcohol addiction. This is all wrong. We must keep children in their neighborhoods at all costs and deliver services to families there.
“Bad things happen to a lot of people, but if you focus on the good things about them and their capacity for change, you can help them become stronger and get them back on their feet.”
“I like the way Betty talks about families as if they have strength,” says Sampson, who was impressed by Williams’ oratory before a legislative committee last May. “So I approached her and committed my personal and professional support to her efforts on behalf of families. I want to help, and I’m ready with resources to do that.”
Williams believes the greatest hope for families lies in focused and caring action by concerned and influential citizens like Sampson and McDonald.
“In even our most troubled neighborhoods, there are strong people ready to work for families, and there are resources into which we can tap,” she says. “In terms of our future as a country, we must make immediate changes, both in public and private life, in business and in government. Ours is a wealthy nation, full of bright and hard-working people. If we put our minds to the test and work together, we can turn this problem around in our lifetime.”
Williams has been recognized widely through the years for the many steps she has taken to further the needs of families. Among the many honors bestowed on her are the Kizzy Image Achievement and Service Award, the National Family Advocacy Award from Family Service America and the Governor’s Partner in Building Better Communities Award, all of which hang on a wall behind her desk in her downtown office.
In June she received the 1994 Distinguished Social Worker Award sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Black Social Workers. The award honors individual achievements that have drawn attention to the needs and struggles of African-Americans and advanced the delivery of social services to their communities.
Despite having undertaken a task she still views as enormous, Williams remains optimistic about the prognosis for re-establishing the American family.
“I don’t think I could ever stop being involved in this work,” she says. “I firmly believe the family is still the optimum place to raise children and that if we go back to that basic unit and really strengthen it, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish. I couldn’t keep on going if I didn’t believe that.”
