SaraKay Smullens, LCSW, ACSW, BCD, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, whose private and pro bono clinical social work practice is in Philadelphia, is a certified group psychotherapist and family life educator. In addition to her clinical emphasis, a long-standing professional priority has been to bring social work awareness and committed mental health insights to the public at large, and through this process join those devoted to addressing and alleviating divisiveness and rage in families, work settings, and society through education, advocacy, and activism.
 
SaraKay’s activist roots began in her childhood in Baltimore, watching the enforced evils of segregation through the Jim Crow laws. During her two years at Skidmore College, she engaged actively in an array of civil rights activities. Due to the ill health of her mother, SaraKay transferred to Baltimore’s Goucher College, where as a commuting student she successfully led a two-year campus coalition to end segregation in Towson, Maryland, the Baltimore suburb where Goucher College is located. A graduation award for this initiative led to an introduction to John F. Kennedy at the Democratic Convention in 1960, and subsequent employment at the Democratic National Committee, where she became a regional coordinator for young Democrats. It was President Kennedy who recommended social work to her as a profession. In graduate school at Catholic University’s National Catholic School of Social Service in Washington, DC, when President Kennedy was assassinated, she transferred to the University of Pennsylvania to complete her degree, where her scholarship and stipend were continued.
 
As director of Family Life Education at Philadelphia’s Jewish Family Service, a highly regarded sectarian agency committed to use of a sliding scale to determine fees, SaraKay found it morally impossible to turn away those of different religions seeking help. As an alternative, on her intake days, she asked if those seeking appointments were descended from Abraham. Her boss, executive director, Ben Sprafkin, a committed social worker, was at first furious, but when he calmed, he told her to “carry on.” Soon after, SaraKay learned that her close friend and assistant, Roz Blanton (who served tea to the multicultural rainbow coalition in their small waiting area) was fighting a virulent form of cancer with no health insurance. SaraKay led the agency’s first negotiating team walk-out to put health insurance for support staff on the negotiation table. As a result, insurance was extended to these essential staff members.
 
When Lynne Abraham became Philadelphia’s first woman District Attorney, she offered SaraKay an extraordinary pro bono opportunity: With the input of psychiatric consultation, she would work with staff to carefully select first offenders in domestic violence cases in which there were no fatalities for intensive therapy in lieu of incarceration. SaraKay’s approach involved intensive group psychotherapy, augmented by individual, couple, and family therapy and family life education.
 
SaraKay’s articles and commentaries have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Her stories about domestic abuse contributed to the reform of brutal, archaic Pennsylvania divorce laws. Her investigation of invisible patterns of emotional abuse, always part of physical and sexual violence, led to their independent codification. It also led to an initiative focused on the involvement of Philadelphia clergy, identified as “a missing link” in addressing the epidemic of domestic abuse and violence and the founding of the Sabbath of Domestic Peace Coalition. After several years, the Coalition was able to disband as its work was integrated into the leadership commitments of faith communities and houses of worship in Philadelphia and throughout the Delaware Valley.
 
More than five years of research into an evidence-based understanding of burnout and the self-care strategies to address and prevent it led to the 2016 publication of Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work, which offered one of the first full explanations of the complex phenominum of burnout from a psychosocial perspective, stressing that burnout is a syndrome, not an illness. The book not only sold to social workers and mental health professionals; sales also extended to the general public. In 2021, a fuller understanding of the complexities, reach, and dangers of burnout led to a second edition. Regular author presentations in myriad settings in the United States and abroad have continued through the years and are still going strong.
 
SaraKay has introduced two essential concepts into the literature: the importance of an “emotional sense of direction” to navigate the slippery slopes of life, and “societal burnout,” an overwhelmed state of being, accompanied by profound loss and accompanying anxiety, due to long standing unmet societal problems. Honored by numerous awards for her work through the years, in 2018, SaraKay was one of five graduates of UPenn’s School of Policy and Practice (formerly their School of Social Work) selected for their inaugural Hall of Fame. Her professional papers and memorabilia are divided between the Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, Goucher College, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. In 2019, SaraKay was one of five graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice inducted into its Inaugural Hall of Fame.