Comment on the Draft 2029 EPAS: Name Ableism, Say Who Must Change

CSWE has released Draft 1 of the 2029 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) for public comment. These standards shape what every accredited social work program teaches. The Social Work Disability Justice League has submitted a comment, and we are asking members and allies to add their voices before comments close on November 20, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET.

How to comment

• Read the draft on CSWE's 2029 EPAS page.

• Complete the CSWE feedback survey. You do not need to respond to every section.

• Feel free to borrow or adapt the proposed language below. Comments that repeat specific wording help it stand out.

What SWDJL asked for

1. Name ableism. "Ability" and "disability" appear in Competency 3 as personal attributes. Ableism, the system that turns those attributes into exclusion, is never named anywhere in the draft. As written, a program could meet every competency without ever teaching ableism. Competency 10 already shows the draft can name power, by asking social workers to examine how power and inequities shape access to technology. The same standard should apply to disability.

Proposed language for the Competency 3 narrative:

Social workers examine how racism, ableism, and other structural forms of exclusion are built into policies, institutions, and built environments, and how they shape access to resources and participation.

2. Say who must change. Accommodation depends on someone asking for it and disclosing a disability. So the disabled person does the work of changing an environment that someone else designed and someone else controls. A person-in-environment assessment can name the barrier. Nothing in the draft says whose job it is to remove it. In practice, that job falls to the person, because the client is the one the worker can reach.

Proposed Competency 3 behavior:

When a barrier is identified in the person-environment relationship, determine which actor created or maintains it, which actor has the power to change it, and what obligation follows.

3. Restore advocacy. We also support restoring the 2022 advocacy behaviors in Competencies 5 and 8, so that graduates are prepared to change the conditions behind a barrier and not only to understand them.

Why it matters for social work education

Social work education is itself one of these environments. Disabled students in social work programs face the same request-and-disclose pattern in coursework and field placements. Standards that name ableism and say who is responsible will help programs see that pattern in their own house.

Comments close November 20. Add yours here.