Competency #3: Advance Human Rights and Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice

Social workers understand that every person regardless of position in society has fundamental human rights such as freedom, safety, privacy, an adequate standard of living, health care, and education. Social workers understand the global interconnections of oppression and human rights violations, and are knowledgeable about theories of human need and social justice and strategies to promote social and economic justice and human rights. Social workers understand strategies designed to eliminate oppressive structural barriers to ensure that social goods, rights, and responsibilities are distributed equitably and that civil, political, environmental, economic, social, and cultural human rights are protected. Social workers:

Practice Behavior 1: Demonstrate leadership in advocating for human rights, social, economic and environmental justice

Practice Behavior 2: Design and implement social action strategies

Competency #3 in Practice

This competency asks me to incorporate the social work profession and social work values into my life as a whole. As a social worker, I should be calling and acting for justice, not just for my clients, but for the whole world. It asks that I make the world a better place with everything that I do and create ways for other people to do this as well. It also calls me to vote and advocate for the policies and plans that can benefit my clients, the systems they are a part of, and those who depend on them. This is the epitome of social justice.

Evidence for Practice Behavior 1: As a part of the creation of an organization in my Organizations class, I created a letter describing the fictitious services to a potential donor. This Organization works with families who have low socioeconomic status get the mental health treatment they could not otherwise afford. With the help of the donors the letter is theoretically being sent to, the organization would be able to provide more counseling and parenting classes to those in need. In doing this, I believe I was demonstrating leadership for our (fake) organization and in advocating for these services for the population this organization could serve.

Evidence for Practice Behavior 2: As a part of my Social Policy course during my advanced year, my group members and I created a proposal for a policy change for the legalization of marijuana in Tennessee. We created a social media campaign that I posted to my personal social media accounts and that would also be advertised through radio, tv and newspapers. The plan within the proposal was to roll out a full social media campaign to help advocate for the potential policy. Because this was only an “imagined” campaign, I created only the first post and detailed how we would lay out the rest of the posts. To view this post, please click here. Within the document, it is the only colored picture. Please also see page 26 for the full social media campaign.  

I used the research knowledge that was taught in both my BSW and MSW courses to gather, organize and produce information. The value of social justice helped aid my pursuits in this competency. I was able to find information to help me advocate for the rights of my clients and everyone involved in my studies. This Competency enabled me to use my skills in research and advocacy. For these evidences, I had to gather and synthesize information. The evidences provided made me think about elements critically and organize research. Systems Theory helped me with this competency. I had to assess how systems oppress specific populations.