Competency 2: Advance Human Rights and Social, Racial,
Economic, and Environmental Justice
Advanced generalist practitioners understand that every person regardless of position in society has fundamental human rights. Advanced generalist practitioners are knowledgeable about the global intersecting and ongoing injustices throughout history that result in oppression and racism, including social work’s role and response. Advanced generalist practitioners critically evaluate the distribution of power and privilege in society in order to promote social, racial, economic, and environmental justice by reducing inequities and ensuring dignity and respect for all. Advanced generalist practitioners advocate for and engage in strategies to eliminate oppressive structural barriers to ensure that social resources, rights, and responsibilities are distributed equitably and that civil, political, economic, social, and cultural human rights are protected. Advanced generalist practitioners:
- Engage in practices that advance human rights to promote social, racial, economic, and environmental justice contexts;
- Critically analyze the intersections of social, racial, economic, and environmental justice rural contexts;
- Advocate for human rights at the individual, family, group, organizational and community system levels
Competency #2 In Practice
As a social worker, I will have many different roles in many different system levels, and I want to incorporate being an advocate into my practice. Therefore, I will commit to advocating for unaddressed systemic issues and utilizing resources to advance human, social, racial, economic, and environmental rights. This competency will look different in every agency setting and client I work with. Some examples of this are empowering survivors of domestic violence with their social and economic rights to have friends and make and spend their own money. Addressing systemic racial biases in the agencies I work with by being a supporter of blind removal meetings in child welfare settings and being part of grassroots legislative campaigns to hold corporations accountable for environmental harm that may be a by-product of the items they produce.
2.1. Demonstrate leadership in developing and implementing evidence based practice with relevant strategies that advance human rights at the individual, family, group, organizational, community, research, and policy levels; and.
Evidence: In this Student Mission Toolbox website I created, I demonstrated leadership in developing and implementing evidence-based practice strategies with the student mission department at Southern Adventist University. This website advances human rights on all applicable levels by providing psychoeducational resources on working with kids to outgoing and current student missionaries. The individual rights of the child are being advanced by increasing the competence of the student missionaries, families’ rights are advanced by promoting the importance of children living with their families, or in a family-style environment, organizational rights are advanced through the empowering of the non-profits we partner with through equipping them with more prepared volunteers, community rights are advanced through the emphasis on cultural humility and respecting the culture of the community student missionaries are working in, and research and policy is being advanced by starting a trend towards trauma-informed attitudes within the student mission department.
2.2 Implement culturally-informed strategies with diverse populations.
Evidence: In our organizational policy class’s Culturally Informed Strategies section, I synthesize relevant research findings regarding Familia Feliz’s current operations. I suggest ways to help expatriate volunteers be more culturally informed and how the organization can use scheduled interviews to solicit their cultural concerns in real-time, address those concerns, and integrate the solutions they find together as the organization evolves. By implementing these culturally-informed strategies with the diverse populations of Familia Feliz’s clients and volunteers, I demonstrate competency in this practice behavior.