Source: Photo courtesy of Danielle Dempster / Photo courtesy of Danielle Dempster
This month, we honor Social Work Month, a time to highlight the invaluable contributions of social workers, celebrate their dedication, and promote the growth of the profession. As we commemorate this month, I’m honored to proudly spotlight Danielle Dempster, a remarkable social worker whose tireless dedication has positively impacted residents in Houston, Texas, since moving to the area in 2017. With her Licensed Master Social Worker (LSMW) degree already in hand, Danielle is currently working towards earning her License of Clinical Social Work (LCSW), a significant step that will expand her professional opportunities and, hopefully, pave the way for her to open her own private practice in the future.
Danielle is also helping fellow social workers earn their licenses by creating the “Study In A Flash” card game, which simplifies the complex material found on the challenging LCSW exam. The innovative tool is designed to make studying more accessible, enabling more social workers to obtain the credentials they need to advance in the field. The exam presents unique challenges for Black applicants, often creating obstacles to success. According to a 2022 report from the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB), 90% of white social workers eventually pass the test, while only 57.7% of Black test takers do. Danielle wants to change this disparity.
During a recent exclusive interview with MadameNoire, the Philadelphia native’s passion and pride beamed brightly as she reflected on her long and challenging career in a field that demands immense resilience. Social workers often grapple with high levels of burnout, heavy caseloads, ongoing exposure to clients’ traumatic experiences, and insufficient support systems. Yet, through it all, she remains locked in and committed to making a meaningful difference in the lives of those she serves. In Danielle’s words, “I didn’t choose social work; it chose me.”
At 51, Danielle understands deeply how vital social work services are, having faced her own share of life’s hardships. As a teenager, she entered the foster care system while her mother struggled with alcoholism and schizophrenia. Little did she know, those early experiences inside her all-girls West Philly foster home were laying the foundation for the compassionate social worker she would become.
Here Danielle opens up about the moment when social work became her true calling, her thoughts on addressing medical mistrust within the Black community, and how her “Study In A Flash” card game is helping Black social workers gain the education they need to successfully pass the LCSW exam.
MadameNoire: Let’s take it back to where it all started for you. When did you know social work was your calling?
Danielle Dempster: [My foster mother,] would tell the girls that would come there that I was her niece. I would run the show at my foster home, telling the girls, ‘Well, you didn’t do curfew, you didn’t do your chores.’ I would keep the girls in check. On her deathbed years later, my foster mother said, ‘You’re good at this.’ That was my turning point. This is all I know how to do [and] this is what I love to do. That’s when I decided this profession chose me.
Do you see a little piece of yourself in any of your clients?
When I ended up working as a social worker for kids in foster care, I remember a meeting with this teenage boy and his foster family. He stood there one day and said, ‘No one at this table understands me.’ At that moment, something moved me. I put my pen down, and I said, ‘I want you to know, I understand.’ I realized that for me to better serve people, to better be able to understand them and have a very non-biased mentality and judgment, I have to put myself in their shoes. I was able to connect with him. Years later, I found out he graduated from high school, changed his behavior and went to community college.
Sometimes we want to be sheltered with what we share with people because people are judged by what they have gone through, which is so sad because I didn’t choose any of the things that I have gone through. But I realized there’s a purpose for me to share with other people and tell them that I am no different than you are, you can get through this. There’s a piece of everyone in me. I know the struggle of having a mother with alcoholism, I always see a piece of something.
What are some unique challenges you face when trying to provide social work care to our community? There’s a long history of medical mistrust in the Black community due to factors like medical racism and bias. Black people were also historically denied access to critical social work care long before it became widely practiced in the U.S. From your experience, what’s one approach that has been effective when talking to Black individuals and encouraging them to seek the services they need?
I believe that the biggest thing is just building trust. Having a very, very nonjudgmental approach is so important. You have to meet them where they are. That is social work 101: be on their level. For example, I don’t need to sit and talk to Miss Johnson with all the technical terms, I build that trust. Then, I go into the avenues that she may want to explore, such as the healthcare system, therapy, and mental health. My job is advocacy. I have the biggest mouth.
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You mentioned the example of Mrs. Johnson, but does building trust also play a role when reaching out to Black men in the community? Research shows that service access and help-seeking behaviors among African American men are significantly lower compared to their non-Black counterparts, largely due to stigma surrounding social work and mental health services.
I think, for our brothers, it is even a bigger challenge, because the ego gets in the way. That feeling of, ‘She can’t tell me. I’m a man.’ As a therapist and, as a social worker, and as a Black woman, I have to tread real lightly on how I’m approaching him. [I] never make him feel less than what he is, regardless of what he’s doing. [I] never make him feel less than the King that I know God has created him to be. Once you do that, you lose them even further with all of the societal things that they have to deal with. You’re really pushing them down even further.
So, when men come to me, I show that respect and let them know the whole goal. With Black men [the goal] is to uplift because they have been beaten down for so long. I let them know it’s okay to ask for the help. We have to let them know they are stronger because you’re able to ask for the help. That it is not a weakness, but a sign of strength. If we can condition them and change that mindset, it goes a long way.
Do you think more Black professionals are needed in the field today? Just to put things into perspective, according to 2025 data, the majority of licensed social workers are white (58.5%), followed by Black or African American (19.9%), Hispanic or Latino (12.3%). Additionally, 83.9% of licensed social workers are women, while 16.1% are men.
Absolutely. Back in the day, therapy was so taboo within Black culture. It was like, ‘I’m not talking to no counselor. I ain’t crazy.’ It’s like this labeling of being crazy. We find ourselves talking to our girlfriends, our sisters. This is why over the years we created this whole Black sisterhood thing, and it kept our mamas and mamas’ mamas and all these people going. Now, the system is broken. I think today we’re gluing it back together.
But over the years, and especially over my 51 years of living, it got broken into so many pieces. The advice I tried to give is that therapy and having that professional source of someone to talk to, does help. It makes you feel like, I’m not alone. Talking to someone who walked the walk, and that has been in those shoes is crucial. I’ve been through divorce. I’ve been through heartbreak. I’ve been through being a single mom, being in foster care [and] beating breast cancer. I tell my people when I’m doing therapy work, I really understand what you’re going through.
You’re currently trying to obtain your license in clinical social work (LCSW), which can be tough for many workers in the field. Why is it so important to you?
Working on my LCSW and having my LMSW, will open more doors. So that’s the goal— to reach that level of branching off into my own business. I feel like God is moving me to say, you have so much more to share. As social workers, I believe we are the glue to this society, to the world because we’re teaching people how to heal.
One of the biggest challenges that a lot of social workers face is passing the LCSW exam to obtain their license. The 2022 ASWB study found that 45% of Black applicants passed the test on the first try, compared to 83.9% of white test takers and 72% of Asian test takers, which was crazy to me. What’s the hardest thing about passing the exam?
It is a barrier. It was one of the biggest challenges. I have a friend out here in Texas. She’s an OBGYN, and she’s white. I remember studying for the exam. Well, she looked at the cards I was using to study and all these different things. She said, ‘I didn’t have to go through this becoming an OBGYN. I don’t understand.’ She was like, ‘This is crazy!’
The exam is four hours long, 170 questions. This is why most people stop at the LMSW. Each time you fail it, you have to pay $260. I’m just a social worker. I’m far from rich. Like, how am I going to keep paying this $260? It is very tedious, but it’s one of those things that once you get over that hump, it is needed. Do I think it needs to be that tedious and that strenuous? I don’t think so.
Thankfully, you’re helping so many in the field today with your “Study In A Flash” card game. Tell us how you came up with the idea for the game to help social workers like yourself not only understand but pass the exam.
I used to work at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston at the medical center. I remember one day having my [study] index cards inside a zip lock baggie. I was playing with my cards trying to study to pass this exam, and my co-workers gathered around and were excited about it, because it’s like a matching game. But it’s a little more tedious because it’s color coded. So, one of my co-workers said, ‘When you finish with that, can I have that?’ And I said, ‘I’m gonna make you one!’ I had this brilliant idea to actually make it into a game. And I did. It took a lot of work. But it’s universal. I studied books from my LMSW and one from LCSW, and I just combined those things into a game.
A friend of mine, who passed the exam, was telling me, Danielle, the questions on there are more geared towards the mindset of what a white person would think.’ And it’s true! The answers can be so tricky.
How do people purchase your “Study In A Flash” game?
I have a PayPal link people can use to purchase. I created flyers for it, so I posted the flyer to our social media outlets. It will be on Amazon soon.
You’re making such a big impact, helping so many people through various challenges. How do you stay motivated and avoid compassion fatigue?
I realized that it’s so important to compartmentalize things. You have to see it from a bird’s eye view. That really helps me. I also look at myself and say, ‘Am I doing what I’m supposed to do and taking care of myself?’ That self-care piece is the most important piece of dealing with social work. You have to take care of yourself. You have to mentally decompress hearing some of the horrible stories. And my go-to has always been holding on to my faith, just believing in God.
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