Panel participants from left: Tricia Bent-Goodley, Stacy Owens, moderator Elizabeth Laviter, Kathy Gurland, Jacki McKinney and Colleen Keenan.

Social worker Jacki McKinney, with her sweet smile and silver hair, could be your grandmother.

But the stories she told a group of screenwriters at Writers Guild of America, west in Los Angeles on March 31 were not sweet fairytales you would expect to hear from a grandparent.

McKinney, 76, MSW, was sexually abused as an infant and was later ostracized by her community because of it. She later developed depression and mental illness, which is common among people who experience severe trauma in their youth.

“There were people who wouldn’t let their children play with me and I was cute and bright,” said McKinney, who now works with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as a consumer advocate for other people with mental illness.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

McKinney was part of a panel to educate Hollywood writers about women’s health issues. Other social workers on the five-member panel were Kathy Gurland, MSW, LCSW, who founded the Peg’s Group cancer care navigation consulting service in New York City after she lost two sisters to cancer, and Tricia Bent-Goodley, Phd, LCSW-C, a Howard University social work professor who is a nationally recognized expert on domestic violence.

 The other members of the panel were Dr. Colleen Keenan, a nurse and interim director of the University of California, Los Angeles Nurse Practioner Program who is an expert on women’s reproduction issues; and Stacey Owens, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2005 at age 20 and is now in remission and works with I’m Too Young for This! Cancer Foundation, a support group for young people adults with cancer.

The event was produced by the Entertainment Industries Council in partnership with the National Association of Social Workers, NASW Foundation and SAMHSA. Also in attendance was past NASW President Suzanne Dworak-Peck, who managed a Hollywood-based entertainment consulting organization for 20 years, and NASW Communications Director Gail Woods Waller.

Kathy Gurland (left) and Suzanne Dworak-Peck.

McKinney, Gurland and Bent-Goodley answered questions from the writers about their work, weaving in stories that could be turned into plotlines or developed into social work characters.

For instance, writers asked Gurland what it is like working with doctors.

There is a slew of medicals shows on television, including “Grey’s Anatomy” and ABC and “Nurse Jackie” on Showtime. However, writers rarely depict the fact that social workers are in hospitals advocating for treatment and services for patients and their families, Gurland said. Often, this advocate role is given to doctors and nurses, which rarely happens in real life.

 Bent-Goodley said the treatment of domestic abuse in Hollywood is too narrow and does not show the complexity of the problem.

The stories that do not get told are that girls as young as 11 to 13 can be the victims of abuse at the hands of boyfriends, and since Americans are living longer women over the age of 55 can also be victims of abuse as they form new relationships.

Domestic abuse also affects women of all socio-economic levels, the effects of the violence can haunt victims long after they escape the abuse, and Hollywood writers fail to capture how resilient and resourceful domestic violence survivors can be, Bent-Goodley said.

Bent-Goodley’s other pet peeve is that Hollywood shies away from how spirituality and religion can sometimes harm victims.

She told the story of a minister’s wife whose husband went online to get sex. When she confronted him alone at church he banged her head against the pulpit.

Jacki McKinney and Tricia Bent-Goodley.

The woman is trapped because her husband is a respected member of the community and no one suspects he is an abuser, Bent-Goodley said. He also plays the role of a faithful husband, driving her to doctor appointments.

“She now has epileptic seizures — she blacks out,” Bent-Goodley said.

Gurland urged writers to go “straight to the source” and seek out social worker experts when writing about medical care and other social issues.

 McKinney said television shows and movies never show people who suffer from mental illnesses getting well — instead they are made fun of or portrayed as psychopathic murders.

Bent-Goodley challenged writers to better educate the public about violence and other issues social workers help people overcome.

“You have the power to break the stigma, to show women are resilient and not just sitting around as victims,” she said. “They are trying to come up with solutions.”

 Maria Elena Rodriguez, a writer who has worked on the 2003 miniseries “Kingpin” and the television series “Resurrection Blvd,” said social workers must work hard to gain influence.

 Rodriguez has written a pilot television program about a social worker in a teen group home but has not sold the project.

She thinks this is because Hollywood is now obsessed with police shows. Crime programs continue to be popular so studios have little motivation to try other formulas, including plotlines that include social workers or issues important to that profession, Rodriguez said.

“There is no shortage of cop shows, no shortage of crime,” she said. The studios “feel it is a place where the well will never run dry.”

Tom Bourgeois, who works in the standards and practices department of CBS, said there is hope Hollywood will turn more to social workers for expert advice and story ideas. Bourgeois said social workers can do this by appealing directly to executives who run television shows, who in turn will direct writers to include more social workers and their issues in storylines.

Bourgeois also said he and other entertainment industry officials came away from the meeting with an interesting new angle for possible future storylines — that social workers in the healthcare field are part of an interdisciplinary team that works with doctors, nurses and others to help the sick and mentally ill.

“That is fresh and new,” he said.

The Entertainment Industries Council, in collaboration with NASW, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation, and the National Association of  Broadcasters, previously hosted “Picture This: Women’s Health.” The event was a forum for health experts and advocates to recommend priorities for writers, directors, producers and other creative talent. To read the report on “Picture This: Women’s Health” click here.

Photo courtesy of Toronto Pictures.

Toronto Pictures is a movie studio on a mission.

The Canadian company is dedicated to making Hollywood quality films that explore different cultures and educate about social issues, including child abuse, modern-day slavery, eating disorders and prostitution.

The studio also listens to social workers and covers issues that interest them. In January Toronto Pictures appointed  social worker and National Association of Social Workers member Silvio Orlando, MSW, and his wife Adriana Hellinger Orlando, to their advisory board. Mrs. Orlando is a former social worker.

SocialWorkersSpeak.org sat down with Toronto Pictures vice president and chief operating officer Daria Trifu to talk about the company and its projects:

Q: How long have you been involved with Toronto Pictures and what can you tell us about the company?

A: I moved to Canada in 1999 (Trifu is Romanian) and became involved with Toronto Pictures in 2000. Toronto Pictures is an independent film studio which develops, produces and distributes Hollywood standard, 35-mm feature films around the world.  Maestro Bruno Pischiutta is the founder, president and chief executive officer of the company.  He is the one who had the vision of using mainstream filmmaking to address issues of our world, thereby bringing them forth to the general public, reaching a large audience with films produced according to top production standards.  Bruno Pischiutta is an internationally celebrated writer, director and producer who is known for his lifelong commitment to fostering the art of filmmaking.

Q: Tell us more about your latest project “Punctured Hope.”

A: “Punctured Hope: A Story About Trokosi and Young Girls’ Slavery in Today’s West Africa,” is the first mainstream feature film which is based on an African story interpreted by an all African cast of professional actors and shot in Africa under the direction of Bruno. ”Punctured Hope”  is inspired by the true life story of an African “trokosi” slave. Trokosi is one of the most widespread forms of women’s slavery that exists in the world today. In fact, today there are 25,000 Trokosi slaves and two million women who are genitally mutilated every year. “Punctured Hope” was an official Selection at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2009 and it has recently been nominated by the Political Film Society as Best Film Exposé  and Best Film on Human Rights of 2009. The film has now qualified for consideration for the Academy Awards as “Best Picture.”

Q: Where is the film being shown and how has it been received?

A: “Punctured Hope” has been screened in Los Angeles since November. Each screening of the film has evolved into an event. The audience included members of Amnesty International, the Green Party, Women in Film (WIF), Films4Change, Veterans for Peace and film professionals. Together with the general public present, they have all chosen to join the movement behind the film and Pischiutta’s cause. Viewers’ reactions have actually created a grassroots movement that identifies with this cause. Future event screenings will follow the film as it opens commercially in New York City beginning in June. When we decided to produce “Punctured Hope” we made the commitment to donate 10 percent of the net profit of the film from the first three years after the commercial release to develop the infrastructure of an African village.

Q: What other projects are you working on?

A: This year, we are producing the film “A Party Girl for the Rat Pack” which originates from the novel “Breaking My Silence: Confessions of a Rat Pack Party Girl and Sex-Trade Survivor” by Jane McCormick. For many years, Jane was very close to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. The film will deal with the relationship between child abuse and prostitution. It will be non-graphic and it will constitute a new genre due to the fact that the structure of this new feature will be something that has never been seen before.This film has a budget of $3.5 million and it will be filmed in Brazil and in the United States.

Q: You recently formed an advisory board that includes social worker and NASW member Silvio Orlando. What is the importance of having a social worker involved with your film work?

A: Education is a big component of our films and, as I have stated before, most of our films’ topics consist of a social nature. The presence of Silvio Orlando and his wife Adriana Hellinger Orlando (who was herself a social worker for many years) on the advisory board is absolutely necessary for us and we are happy and honored to be able to count on their advice. As a matter of fact, when we were following the screenings of “Punctured Hope” in Los Angeles a month ago, we took the time to visit Optimist Youth Home and Family Services, a treatment center for young offenders in Pasadena. We were invited by Silvio Orlando, who has been executive director of the center since 1999. What we saw was amazing; we had the chance to speak with members of the staff and with young residents who were sent there by the courts instead of being sent to jail. OYHFS, rather than a detention center, resembles a resort. We did a walk-through of the entire facility: the chapel, the sport facilities, the art and music classrooms, the high school, the dining and social rooms and, of course, the residential apartments. OYHFS has a rehabilitation ratio record of 80 percent. We were very impressed by the attachment that the young offenders developed to the center, which they communicated to us. We were impressed by the staff’s dedication and we were particularly impressed by Silvio Orlando’s enthusiasm and complete devotion to his mission of rehabilitating these young men and women through his center. The new morality that our cause is aiming to achieve means not only exposing problems to our films’ viewers but also doing something about them. We are aware that the recent California budget cut to OYHFS funds result in a necessity for Silvio to look for private sponsors. Taking all this into consideration, we have decided to donate 10 percent of the net profit worldwide (including theater, TV, DVD, etc.) for the first three years from the commercial release date of the film “A Party Girl for the Rat Pack” to the center. This percentage will come from our producers’ share and it will not affect the profit share of film investors.

Like the people at Toronto Pictures, social workers are dedicated to ensuring equal rights for all in the United States and abroad. To learn more, visit the National Association of Social Workers’ Human Rights and International Affairs Division Web page by clicking here.