Social Work midterm

Social work profession

Requires specialized, formal training and education that leads to credentialing (e.g. state license).

Unique purpose of social work

To assist with and advocate for change in the lives of individuals and in communities to reduce or eradicate the effects of personal distress and social and economic inequality. 

Graduate with

• A bachelor’s or a master’s degree

• Social worker is considered to be someone who has received a social work degree and has become certified or licensed by the state in which they practice. 

Role is to work with people to secure the basic human needs, rights, and values: 

Food, water, shelter, and intangible resources like emotinal, economic, and social support. 

Voice for social work

National Association of Social Workers (NASW)

• Considers social work an applied science and art

CSWE

The body that accredits schools of social work

Social work goals

1. To enhance people’s coping, problem-solving, and developmental capacities

2. To link people with systems that provide opportunities, resources, and services

3. To promote the effectiveness and humane operation of systems that provide people with resources and services

4. To develop and improve social policy

5. To promote human and community wellbeing

Generalist Practioners

Not limited to a single perspective or set of methodologies

• Role at undergraduate level

Culture

The customs, habits, skills, arts, values, ideologym science, and religious and political behaviors of a group of people in a particular time period

Norms

The rules of behavior—both formal and informal—and the expectations held collectively by a culture, group, organization, or society. 

Diversity

Social workers meet and interact with diverse people from multiple backgrounds.

• They have a chance to learn about the strengths, needs, uniqueness, values, causes, and traditions associated with various forms of human difference.

Erikon’s Stage Theory

Every period of life, or life stage, is characterized by some underlying challenges and orientations that modify one’s behavior and priorities. 

Socioeconomic status (SES)

A categorization of groups and people according to a specified demographic variable, such as level of income or education, location of residence, and value orientation.

• Sociologists often categorize classes as upper, middle, “lower”, and working class.

Advocate

For social work client, who may be vulnerable and possibly affected by social injustice.

Class

• Social work clients marginally employable due to discrimination in the workplace, low educational attainment, and work records. 

• Experience financial insecurity

• Struggles with transportation, affordable day care, mental health issues, physical challenges, and affordable health insurance.

• Need advocating for a rewarding family life, stable housing, adequate nutrition, educational opportunity, and emplyability with adequate pay. 

• Use of public assistance not because of personal shortcomings

Gender and sexual orientation

• Social workers partner with women’s rights groups, educators, and other professionals to advocate for and develop positive and meaningful services and programs for women in

• Education, employment, reproductive services, child care, civil rights, and the political arena

• Gender identity is a person’s internalized psychological experience as a female, a male, a blending of both, or neither.

• Social workers counself LGBTQ+ individuals facing prejudcie and convene groups with them to discuss ways to cope with both subtle and agressive discrimination.

• Social workers may also advocate for the LGBTQ+ population on a community, state, or national level through organizing activities and policy development.

Race

• Social workers show the desire to increase racial and cultural awareness, sensitivity, and humility by avoiding and confronting stereotypical images and generalizations.

• Social workers engage in and promote lifelong learning to advance cultural awareness and education and to advocate for social justice for population groups.

Ethnicity

Social workers support ethnic centers, immigrant enterprises, language diversity, and cultural events that showcase ethnic pride and provide a forum for the public to learn about specific thnic values and traditions. 

Age

• Social workers work with older adults to improve or rectify life situations

• Older adults struggle with fixed incomes, housing, health problems, and loneliness

• Services such as home-delivered meals, transportation, and medical coverage may be underfunded.

Intersectionality

Coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, refers to the entirety of a person’s dimensions of difference and social identies.

Social workers are committed to

Evidence-based practice, or using a select intervention for an issue, problem, or condition based ont he results of research. 

NASW Code of Ethics

Serves as a social and moral compass for social work profressionals.

• 4 sections are Preamble, Purpose, Ethical Principles, and Ethical Standards.

• 6 purposes are

1. Identify core social work values

2. Summarize broad ethical standards

3. Identify professional obligations when conflicts arise

4. Hold the social work profression accountable

5. Socialize new particpants to social work’s mission, values, ethical standards, and principles

6. Define unethical conduct

Conscientious and mindful use of self

• Combining knowledge, values, and skills gained in social work education with aspects of your personality, belief systems, life experiences, and cultural heritage.

• 5 perspectives:

1. Use of personality

2. Use of belief systems

3. Use of relational dynamic

4. Use of anxiety

5. Use of self-disclosure

• Self-awareness is a crucial skill used to be cognizant of one’s hidden personality traits so taht relationships with other people may be enhanced.

Professional identity

An extension of one’s social identity by virtue of embodying 3 key qualities—connectedness, effectiveness, and expansiveness.

• Social workers must be in tune with their own personal values and beliefs and understand how their life experiences and gender role expectations have shaped them.

• As a social worker’s professsional identity develops, every area of their life will be reflected on. 

Self-awareness

The ability to clearly understand one’s own strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, and beliefs

• Journey to be a social worker is developing this—with classmates, professors, and clients who countiously challenge your thinking.

• When you deepen self-understanding personally and professionally, you can develop a greater capacity to attend objectively to your clients’ wants and needs.

Advocacy

Activities that secure services for and promote the rights of individuals, families, organizations, and communities.

Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS)

9 core competencies: 

1. Demonstrate ethical and professional behavior

2. Engage in diversity and difference in practice

3. Advance human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice

4. Engage in practice-informed research and research-informed practice

5. Engage in policy practice

6. Engage with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities

7. Assess individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities

8. Intervene with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities

9. Evaluate practice with individuals, familes, groups, organizations, and communities 

Bachelor of Social Work (BSW)

Readies graduates for generalist social work practice

• Goals are to cover social welfare, practice skills, and provide a liberal arts education to become informed citizens

• Liberal arts include social welfare history, communication skills, human behavior theories, and diversity and the human condition

• Courses like human biology, economics, statistics, and political science enhance knowledge about human behavior and social policy development.

• ASL or foreign language also helps

Master of Social Work (MSW)

Readies graduates for advanced, specialized professional practice.

• Viewed as a terminal degree

• 5 core areas:

1. Human behavior and the social environment

2. Social work practice or methods

3. Social policy

4. Research methods

5. Human diversity

Private practice

Clincians or therapists

Cultural competence

• Social workers need to be able to work with multicultural groups in agencies, organizational settings, and communities.

• Social workers need to advance cultural competence within and beyond their organizations,

• Need to challenge structural and institutional oppression and build and sustain diverse and inclusive institutions and communities.

Field education

• Field where you get a chance to apply what you have learned, under the supervision of a credentialed social worker who is approved by the college or university’s social work program

• Placement settings for field education range widely

• Include hospitals, courts, domestic violence shelters, prisons, schools, mental health facilities, child welfare agencies, nursing homes, or community planning sites, or with political canditates, or NASW chapter offices. 

• You engage in practice and apply theoretical concepts and intervention skills learned in the classroom. 

Social advocates

Working to influence, develop, and evaluate social policies and legislation affecting clients and in their communities. 

Level of practice

The size of the client system with which they intervene:

• Micro: Individual or couple

Eg. Counseling a traumitized woman who has been raped or a couple who are debating divorce

• Mezzo/meso: Family, group, or organization

Eg. Facilitating a cancer support group or delivering a presention on the needs of military families

• Macro: Community or society

Eg. Working for a political campaign or advocating for legislative changes

Cultural neuroscience

Explains how early childhood experiences affect physical and mental health across the life span.

Social welfare

The array of governmental programs, services, and institutions designed to maintain the stability and well-being of society. 

Social welfare policy

The services and programs made available to certain people for a specified period of time, based on established criteria, are the product of this.

Safety net

• Social welfare policies create this

• Services that protect people from spiraling downward economically or socially and hitting rock bottom.

• In the U.S. today, political ideology has a great deal of influence on how people feel about the social safety net.

Means testing

Assessing whether the individual or family possesses the means to do without a particular kind of help. 

• If not, the government will provide assistance for a designated period of time

• Temporary bounce upward, does little to improve their overall status in life 

Conservative

• Tend to favor personal responsiblity for one’s own well-being over any form of government support or federally sponsored relief.

• Premise is that people in the top echelon of society have worked hard, made smart choices, and earned their lot in life;

• People in distress have caused their own problems and should “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps”

Liberal

• Support a capitalist, free-market form of government

• Support a more robust safety net for economically disadvantaged people to address social issues through social intervention and change

• Support various types of checks and balances within the government

• Support regulatory and protective policies to help ensure fair competition in the marketplace

Radicalism

• Can lean toward a conservative or liberal perspective

• Radical right supports limited government at all levels, few regulations related to business, minimal taxes, and a powerful national defense system

• Radical left supports government regulations and services to provide for people who are economically disadvantaged to enhance overall social and economic equality

• Radical left wants changes like universal health care or tuition-free college, as well as advocating for higher taxes for people in upper economic brackets and policies that ensure a standard of living throughout the life cycle.

Social control

• Nation’s social welfare system raises issues of this

• Policies and practices designed to regulate people and increase conformity and compliance in their behavior.

• Social workers in policy arena helps our society address individual needs and confront social control

• Also shift or redistribute economic and political power so that the economically disadvantaged and vulnerable can better help themselves.

Social justice

• Social workers share the common goal of this

• It’s the endless effort to protect human rights, address socioeconomic inequality and oppression from discrimination, and provide for everyone’s human needs such as safety, housing, food, education, and health care, especially for those in greatest need.

Goals among social advocates across time and circumstance

• Fairness: All citizens have the right to access resources and opportunities 

• Equality: All people are entitled to human rightss without regard to race, gender, age, economic or educatoinal status, sexual orientation, ability, or other distinguishing features. 

• Freedom: People share the need for independent thought and a sense of security. 

• Service: The most socially and economically disadvanted people of any scociety require the most committment. 

• Nonviolence: A peaceful approach to collaboration, mediation, or negotiation is more respectful of otheres’ rights than is any form of violence. 

Mutual aid

• In colonial America, welfare assistance took the form of this.

• Colonists releid on one another in times of need. It was the community’s responsiblity to provide asistance when there awas a hardship like a disease or a home fire.

• Public attitude toward poor and needy people was respectful and benevolent because the harsh living conditions of the colonies placed all the colonists potentially in harm’s way.

Elizabethan Poor Laws

• Response to England’s feudal system, the reduction of the labor force, and industrialization, which increased the need for healthy workers.

• Deserving poor included orphan children, older adults, and people with debilitating physical conditions, who could not provide for themselves by no fault of their own.

• Nondeserving poor were able-bodied vagrants or drunkards, judged as lazy and unwilling to work for a living.

• Consequently, work and a person’s capability or willingness to be self-sustaining through work became an integral part of the U.S. social welfare system.

Settlement laws

• Feature of Elizabethan Poor Laws

• Designed to control the distribution of public assistance, they were the domain of small units of government and specified a period of residence for the receipt of assistance. 

• Harsh penalties for crimes, regulations on social order, and efforts to manage poverty and public health.

• Implemented throughout the 13 colonies as a standard requirement for receiving welfare assistance and as a method for localities to monitor the cost of such assistance.

Outdoor relief

Provided assitance to the deserving poor in their own homes and communities.

• Non-monteary relief in the form of food or clothing

Indoor relief 

Provided assistance in institiutions where the nondserving poor were sent to work. 

• Taking the poor to almshouses, admitting the mentally ill to hospitals, and sending orphans to orphanages. 

Charity Organization Society (COS)

Focused on individual factors related to poverty, such as alcoholism, poor work habits, and inadequate money management. 

Friendly visitor

A volunteer committed to helping COS clients was assigned to a family and asked to conduct regular home visits. These volunteers would address the individual character flaws and encourage clients to gain independence and live moral lives.

Settlement movement

Turned attention to the environmental factors associated with poverty.

Eg. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House (a settlement house) in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood where immigrants lived in overcrowded conditions.

Cause to function

Porter Lee, the director of the New York School of Social Work, reported that social workers had shifted their professional attention from this—from a concern with politics to a concern with the efficienet day-to-day adminsistration of a social welfare bureaucracy.

• It was the turn toward the “function” of social work and gave rise to expansion of practice settings for the profession, to include private family welfare agencies (charity organizations), hospitals, schools, mental health facilities, guidance centers, and children’s aid societies.

Trickle-down economics

The idea was that reducing theh tax obligations of the rich would stimulate them to spend more on the consumption of goods and services. 

• In theory, the prosperity of the rich would “trickle down” to middle-class people who were economically disadvantaged via the creation of new industries and jobs. 

• Nothing to prevent the rich from simply holding on to their profits, purchasing eisting enterprises, or investing in enterprises overseas. 

Living wage

Ideally, changes in social policy would give underpriviledged groups greater access to jobs that pay this.

• Also equip them with tools needed to raise their status in society, such as good education.

• Nation’s social welfare system does little to move working-class and economically disadvantaged people from their current socioeconomic class.

Generalist social work practice

The goal of this is to address problematic interactions between persons and their environments or their surroundings.

Direct practice

The one-on-one interactions with clients. 

Liberal arts foundation

Courses within include

• Biology, psychology, sociology, economics, political science, diversity studies, and statistiscs.

Self-determination

The right of people, groups, and communties to make choices, design a course of action, and live as independently as possible.

Critical thinking

The ability to reflect on and integrate information from an array fo soruces to form a position, opinion, or conclusion. 

• Essential skill for generalist social workers, who need to be able to express tehir veiws confidently and support them when questioned. 

Systems theory

The knowledge of this facilitates a dynamic understanding of client interactions from various perspectives and in several settings.

Client system

Might consist of an individual; important family members and friends; relationships in the workplace, religous groups, and other organizations; and elements of large-scale institutions such as the economy.

Ecologocal map

A type of diagram that social workers use to represent a client system 

Eg. include: Family or household members, extendeed family, school, friends, clubs and group membership, recreation, social weflare, work, health care providers, faith affilations, community affilation, etc. 

Ecological perspective

Focuses on people and their environemnts

• Those environments include physical and social settings where a person resides or experiences life situations

• Eg. Familes and neighborhoods, communties and workplaces, culture and instiutions, liek places of wrship and the education system.

• All part of a person’s environment

Person-in-environment perspective

• Generalist social workers learn to think of people as constantly interacting with ther environment, a habit of mind called this

• Highlights how people are affected in positive and negative ways by their surroundings

Fictive kin 

Individuals who are not biolocially or legally related to a child or family but have an emotionally significant relationship with them

Eg. Close family friend, a mentor, a teacher, or a neighbor

Empowerment theory

An intervention social workers use to help marginalized people build control and autonomy in their lives. 

• Promotes self-development and awareness and helps people address the oppressive forces that block them from thriving. 

Strengths perspective

Gives credence to the idea that every person has strengths to call on in solving their problems.

Group work

Mode of interention at the mezzo level

• In generalist practice with groups, a social worker may serve as a consultant, evaluator, facilitator, initiator, resource person, therapist, or a combination of these.

• Group interaction, support, and interdependence have great potential to foster change, as group members experience and lend mutual aid to one another.

Engagement

• Sets the tone for the change process

• Skills in verbal and nonverbal communciation are crucial for understanding clients and putting them at ease

• A key time for people to get to know each other and begin developing rapport

Assessment

• Second step in the change process

• Bidirectional in nature—a two-way street

• Social worker is asessing the problems and strenths of the client

• While the client is assessing the personality, professional skills, and demeanor of the social worker.

• Parallel asessments begin to intersect as they build on postiive engagenent and remain nonthreatening.

Planning

• Third component for change process

• Figuring out what to do—purposeful action—given the situation.

• In many cases, a written case plan, a contract designed collaboratively by the social worker and client, is developed. These plans include short-term and long-term goals and corresponding strategies for achieving them.

Implementation

• Typical next step in change process

• Actual performance of activities outlined in the plan for reaching stated goals.

Evaluation

• Final step in the change process, but is integral throughout.

• Purpose of evaluation is to monitor the implementation of the plan and to ensure that designated activities are effectively accomplishing intended goals. 

• This step marks progress, provides insight into the success of initiatives, and informs future plans—including aftercare activities. 

Case advocacy

Advocacy can involve one case (often an individual or a family) requiring some kind of change, which is known as this.

Cause advocacy

Advocacy may take the form of a larger structural or systematic effort to change policies, common practices, procedures, and laws to advance social justice for a larger segment of society.

• Goals for __ importantly focus on advancing human rights, respect, opportunities, and abilities.

Social action

• Cause advocacy requires social workers to be knowledgeable about this and ways to advocate for and create social change.  

Absolute needs

• The goals of case advocacy are often to meet individuals’ ____, or the basic goods and services that support human survival in the short term

• Eg. Water, food, shelter, sanitation, medical care.

Relative needs

• Goals of cause advocacy involve causes that impact a group of people and, like case advocacy, can encompass ___, or goods and services that promote human dignity and well-being over the long term:

• Eg. Meaningful employment, housing, well-being programs, equal status before the law, social justice, quality education, and equal opportunity.

Empowerment

Clients’ abilities to influence decisions made about themselves, determine the best outcome for themselves, and make life-changing decisions themselves. 

Client self-determination

• With advocacy, social workers are taking up the cause of and with others.

• To promote ___, social workers are attentive to setting aside their personal values, and they attempt to examine an issue or cause from the perspective and voice of the client.

Individual reigns supreme perspective

Equates individual gain and interest with the common good and is useful for seeing how case advoacy has limitations.

Eg. Advocating for a client to receive food asisstance from an organization can be critical for addressing a person’s immediate needs but may have little impact for subsequent people experiencing similar circumstances.

Community reigns supreme perspective

The attitude of placing self-interest in a context of promoting plicies and practices for the common good aligns with the ___. 

Eg. Taking the broader view of advocating with clients to promote just resources and policies for receiving food asisstance from organizations in a community can yield immediate asisstance to a person in need and holds promise for benefiting other people as well. 

Cost of advocacy

All the real, intangible, and unintended ways in which undertaking advocacy can deplete resources and potentially work against the cause.

Eg. Bad publicity, loss of social capital (like pushback and alienation from allies), and false hope can be just as detrimental as the loss of funds and other resources (like the time of advocates) dedicated to the cause.

The advocacy practice and policy model (APPM)

• Systems Theory

• Empowerment Theory

• Strengths Perspective

• Ecological Perspective

Dynamic advocacy model

A way of conceptualizing advocacy, and its four interlocking tenets—economic and social justice, a suportive environment, human needs and rights, and political access—to ensure ethical and effective practice. 

Economic and social justice

Promoting and establishing equal liberties, rights, duties, and opportunities in social institutions (economy, polity, family religion, education, etc.) of a society. 

Relational justice

People’s ability to exert influence over decision-making processes and in relationships with dominant groups.

Distributive justice

Economic justice is captured in the form of __

• The ability to allocate or spread resources, income, and wealth in a manner that ensures that people’s basic material needs are met.

Just practice 

Involves equality, tolerance, and the promotion of human rights, as well as an active attempt to overcome social and economic inequalities. 

Basic human rights

• Personal, civil, and poltiical rights

• Humans should be able to live free of persecution, discrimination, and oppression and have access to important societal resources, such as

• Work, education, health care, and equality before the law.

Poverty

Usually defined in the context of being without basic needs or resources such as money and all that it buys—food, clothing, housing, transportation, and medical care.

• However, defining what exactly are basic needs within those categories and how much should be spent on them fuels the debate on poverty.

Absolute poverty

A fixed dollar amount, generally representing a person’s wages, is used to designate poverty.

• The key factor in this absolute measure is agreement on the exact number that determines who is impoverished and who is not.

Relative poverty

Compare’s a person’s wages with the norm or an average to determine whether that person is experiencing poverty. 

• Defining a relative level of poverty is almost impossible 

• Especially the case when comparing what would constitute poverty in one place with the living conditions in other places—especially when comparing countries worldwide.  

Poverty line

• The U.S. developed the notion of the “Poverty threshold” or “poverty index” under the direction of Mollie Orshansky, director of the Social Security Administration.

• Each year, this is adjusted to account for inflation.

• It is used by social welfare agencies and programs to determine a person’s eligibility for benefits and services.

Poverty guidelines

• Another federal poverty measure 

• Issued every year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• Simplification of poverty thresholds

• Used to determine financial eligibility for certain federal programs and for other administrative purposes

Wealth

• The distribution of income and wealth in the United States covers a wide spectrum

• In this context, __ refers to the accumulation. of valuable resources and possessions

• __ pertains to assets accumulated over time, such as stocks, houses, savings, and cars.

Income

• The distribution of income and wealth in the United States covers a wide spectrum

• A wage for employment and work provided

• __ Is the money that flows into a household in a year

Quintiles

• Annually the U.S. Bureau aggregates the data on income and wealth and divides the nation’s population into ___, or fifths.

• The top __ is the top fifth of the population based on income and wealth

• The bottom __, which is the lowest fifth, is generally the target of progams for those who are experiencing economic hardship.