Competency 5: Engage in Policy Practice
Social workers identify social policy at the local, state, federal, and global level that affects wellbeing, human rights and justice, service delivery, and access to social services. Social workers recognize the historical, social, racial, cultural, economic, organizational, environmental, and global influences that affect social policy. Social workers understand and critique the history and current structures of social policies and services and the role of policy in service delivery through rights-based, anti-oppressive, and anti-racist lenses. Social workers influence policy formulation, analysis, implementation, and evaluation within their practice settings with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Social workers actively engage in and advocate for anti-racist and anti-oppressive policy practice to effect change in those settings.
Social workers:
a. use social justice, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive lenses to assess how social welfare policies affect the delivery of and access to social services; and
b. apply critical thinking to analyze, formulate, and advocate for policies that advance human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.
Competency #5 In Practice
What social work brings to the table that most other helping professions do not is the ability to take a systematic approach when addressing our client’s concerns. In other words, instead of blaming the client for whatever problems they are facing, social workers take a step back and evaluate the systems that helped create this problem and see what we, as professionals, can do to get to the root of the problem. For example, if a client is missing a lot of work due to health issues that stem from a mold problem in the apartment they are renting; we would not simply tell the person to be more punctual with their employment. Instead, we can advise the landlord that if they do not address this issue, we will take legal action, and by using advocacy to enforce laws that protect our clients, we can advocate for anti-oppressive policies. Policy practice is critical to our profession and is an essential facet that sets us apart from other sectors in the social services world. Engaging in policy challenges me to not relegate my practice to the micro level and instead to address issues on a macro level if that level of change is needed. I will continue to integrate policy practice into my practice by staying informed about local policies that affect my clients.
Evidence from class work:
I created a policy brief for my Social Work Policy and Advocacy class and went on a trip with them to Washington, D.C., to present our findings to our representatives in Congress. We briefly met with Senator Marsha Blackburn, and were able to present our policy brief to House Representative Chuck Fleischmann, and the legal director for former House Representative Madison Cawthorne. Through this opportunity to advocate on the federal level by researching current bills and having conversations with my representatives about why our bill (H.R. 7037) is essential to our communities and us, I demonstrated the ability to identify, engage and advocate for changes in federal policy.
Evidence from field:
While at my practicum, I completed training for and received a Title VI Certification that demonstrates an understanding of the requirements for organizations who receive Federal Funding to not discriminate based on race or country of origin. Discrimination based on country of origin can be more subtle because this includes people who have limited English proficiency. This kind of discrimination can seem to be justified if there is a lack of bilingual staff or an inability to understand the client, so it seems rational to deny services or recommend they go elsewhere. But organizations that receive federal funding are required to use interpreting services in order to not discriminate based on country of origin. With some other staff members, we had a tour and discussion with members of a neighboring non-profit that provides supervision to parents with court-mandated supervised visits. We have referred several families that speak Spanish to this agency and inquired about the resources that had to be effective in working with them. We were told that they did not receive many clients who spoke Spanish and that most of them “could actually speak English and just pretended they could not.” They said that they did not allow parents to speak Spanish with their children because they could not effectively supervise visits that way and that they would love to hire a bilingual staff member but do not have the means to do that at this time. Once we got back to our CASA office, we had a conversation among our staff about the ethicality of their practices. I filed a referral on the federal title VI website, reporting them for violating title VI as some of their grants are federally funded. Through this experience, I demonstrated an ability to advocate for human rights and support policies that prevent discrimination against people’s country of origin.
Other evidence:
Another way I have gotten involved in policy practice throughout my time as an undergraduate student in the school of social work is by seeking out opportunities to follow up on the most promising conversation from our policy trip by pursuing communication with Representative Fleischmann. After our visit, I wrote him a thank you note, reminded him of our policy brief at Southern’s Gala fundraising event, which he attended, and asked him a particular follow-up question on our policy brief during a Southern Votes Q&A event on campus. After this Q&A, I sent him another thank you note thanking him for his time and reminding him of how school social work is needed in his district. I then wrote him an email, (through his website) which detailed my concern for the need of policies to fund school social work in light of the Covenant School Shooting. By strategically building a relationship with our schools’ representatives and advocating for federal policies that support inclusive policies, I demonstrated an ability to engage in federal policy advocacy proactively.
(Also read my Reflective Essay on my Social Work in Policy class.)