Policy Practice and Social Work: The Who, Why, & What

This presentation is a part of Policy Day . The goal is to give students, faculty, or community members insight into how public policy is developed and how professionals can help shape the higher-level decisions that affect people’s lives. I am joining professionals from other fields to come and present an introduction to policy practice from a social worker perspective. We will do this by reviewing who social workers are and what we do. Then we will explore why social workers focus on policy practice. Finally, we will consider some of the elements of policy practice.

Who Are Social Workers

What kinds of roles do practitioners play?

[Individual Activity] Brainstorm Social Work Job Titles

When you hear about social work as a profession, what jobs do you think they do? Write down as many as you can think of.

􀑉Prize for MOST ideas

[Whole Group Activity] Identify Examples of Ideas

I can start us off: how many of you have something like Child Protective Services (CPS) written down? That historically has been the predominate way people think about social work. If you do, go ahead and check that on your list. When all of your ideas are checked off, you can sit down.

Have people share job titles or roles they wrote down one by one until one (or a couple of people are standing.

Social work is an extremely diverse field. One benefit of generalist social work methods is that we can practice in many different fields. While the specific job titles might not be “social worker” for each of these professions, these are all areas we practice in.

Areas of Direct Social Work Practice and Components

We can go through and identify some of the areas that social workers might practice.

[Whole Class Activity - Discussion] Discuss each of the fields of practice, with potential examples of roles social workers might take: 

Most of the problems that social workers face are complex and could fall in more than one field of practice, and it is important to know a wide range of services.

  • Work with Immigrants: Agencies that provide legal aid, resettlement support, language access programs, and cultural integration services for immigrant and refugee populations. Local examples include Tri-Cities Immigrant Coalition, World Relief (Tri-Cities), Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), and B5 (Bridges to New Beginnings).

  • Housing or Financial Services: Organizations offering rental assistance, homelessness prevention, housing development, and financial counseling. Local examples include the Benton-Franklin Community Action Committee (CAC), Housing Authorities, and the Benton-Franklin Counties Housing Resource Center.

  • Hospital and Health Services: Hospitals and clinics providing acute, specialized, and primary care services to support patients’ medical needs. Also consider hospice. Local examples include Kadlec Regional Medical Center, Trios Health, and Lourdes Medical Center.

  • Mental Health Services: Counseling centers, crisis intervention teams, and psychiatric programs offering therapy, case management, and medication support. Local examples include Tri-Cities Community Health, Lourdes Counseling Center, Comprehensive, private agencies, WISE, etc.

  • Disability Services: Agencies supporting individuals with physical or developmental disabilities through vocational training, life skills development, and inclusive social services. Local examples include Columbia Ability Alliance (formerly Columbia Industries) and The Arc of Tri-Cities.

  • Chemical and Substance Abuse Services: Programs addressing addiction and recovery through counseling, detox, and peer support. Local examples include Choices and Changes, Somerset Counseling Center, and Ideal Balance.  

  • Child, Youth, and Family Services: Organizations offering parenting education, youth mentorship, and after-school programs to support children and families. Local examples include Ignight Youth Mentoring, Head Start/ECEAP programs, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties.

  • Child Welfare: Government or nonprofit agencies focused on child protection, foster care, adoption, and family reunification. Local examples include the Washington State Children’s Administration (CPS), Catholic Family and Child Services, and foster/adoption services through Service Alternatives.

  • School Social Work: Services embedded within school systems to support students’ academic, socio-emotional, and family engagement needs. Program social worker, general social workers in Richland, Mental Health Therapists

  • Working with Aging Clients: Agencies and programs that support older adults in maintaining independence, navigating services, and improving their quality of life. Local examples include the Aging and Long-Term Support Administration (ALTSA), working in a rehab center.

Where is the Problem?

Consider the following problem and who is at fault.

[Whole Group Activity] Four Corners Activity - Problem Fault

A 14-year-old has missed 20 days of school this year. Go stand in the corner where you think the actual problem is.

  • The kid
  • The family
  • The school
  • The rules

[Whole Group Activity] Debrief Problem Fault Activity

  • We do really need more information (what if I said that a couple of the teachers haven’t even asked where the student is, or that the kid was involved in a gang, or that the parents’ immigration status was undocumented and they were concerned about ICE)
  • Social workers consider the person-in-environment
  • Social workers tend to think about a multi prong approach to addressing the problem, both in directly and indirectly addressing the problem

The Parable of the River: A Why for Policy Practice

Today our focus is on policy practice. In social work, we also sometimes call this macro practice, and it fits with our cardinal value of social justice.

To help provide the context, I like to share a short parable about a river.

[Whole Group Activity] The Parable of the River

Tell the story: why we have to go upstream.

Policy Practice: As a Discipline and What We Might Target

Let’s start of with defining some terms: policy practice and policy advocacy

Policy Practice: efforts to change policies in legislative, agency, and community settings by establishing new policies, improving existing ones, or defeating the policy initiatives of other people. By this definition, people of all ideological persuasions, including liberals, radicals, and conservatives, engage in policy practice

Policy Advocacy: we mean policy practice that aims to help relatively powerless groups, such as women, children, poor people, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, gay men and lesbians, and people with disabilities, improve their resources and opportunities.

What Policy Practitioners and Policy Advocates Seek to Change

There are a lot of different types of policies that we might look at addressing. They could be as follows:

[Whole Group Activity] Review Change Areas

  • Regulations: federal minimum wage, housing codes, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and local living wage
  • Needs-Meeting Policies: food stamps, Medicaid and Medicare health benefits, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and rent- supplement programs
  • Opportunity-Enhancing Policies: public education, job-training programs, and vocational education
  • Social Service Policies: mental health, child welfare, and substance abuse programs
  • Referral and Linkage Policies: case management, ombudsman, and outreach programs
  • Civil Rights Policies: prohibit specific infringements of the civil rights of vulnerable populations’ members, including the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, local anti-hate laws prohibiting attacks on members of vulnerable populations and defiling places of worship, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
  • Equality-Enhancing Policies: federal EITC; progressive features of federal, state, and local tax codes, Medicaid, SSI, and food stamps
  • Asset Accumulation Policies: legislation stimulating individual investment accounts, give citizens tax incentives and resources to initiate savings accounts and purchase houses
  • Infrastructure Development Policies: promote construction of roads, parks, bridges, and public transportation
  • Economic Development Policies: tax incentives and loans to businesses that locate themselves in low-income areas
  • Budget-Changing Policies
  • Protective Policies: protective services programs for children and policies that protect women from battering

Reference

Popple, P. R., & Leighninger, L. (2014). The Policy-based profession: An introduction to social welfare policy analysis for social workers (6th ed.). Pearson.

What questions or comments do you have?

That is what I have, but would love to hear questions or comments people have.

Let people share comments or ask questions.

Remember: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

— Che Guevara 1965

It was a letter to Carlos Quijano (titled “Socialism and Man in Cuba”), editor of the Uruguayan weekly Marcha, and the full text is on the Marxists Internet Archive (https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm)