Spring 2026 SOWK 531 Week 10 - Advocacy and Social Action with Populations at Risk

Spring 2026 SOWK 531 Week 10 - Advocacy and Social Action with Populations at Risk

title: Spring 2026 SOWK 531 Week 10 - Advocacy and Social Action with Populations at Risk date: 2026-03-27 20:07:36 location: Heritage University tags:

• Heritage University
• MSW Program
• SOWK 531 presentation_video: > “” description: >

Week 10 is synchronous, with class on Saturday (3/28). Students read in Kirst-Ashman and Hull (2018) about advocacy and social action and watch a documentary highlighting Alinsky’s perspectives on social action. They explore content related to the textbook and shared content, and apply the social action to a case study. During the in-person class, we identify what populations are at risk and explore legislative advocacy. Participation action research is a qualitative methodology designed to address problems affecting underserved communities. The agenda for the in-class session includes:

• Course planning
• Legislative advocacy
• Participation action research

Some of the learning objectives this week include:

• Select and apply appropriate advocacy tactics and persuasion strategies in response to a scenario involving discrimination against a vulnerable population.
• Analyze Alinsky’s social action approach, including his guidelines for social action and his use of conflict as a tool for community organizing.
• Understand the basic structure of the United States Government and how to engage with the political process.
• Define participatory action research and describe its three core components of participation, research process, and collective action.

Plan for Week 10

Agenda

• Course planning
• Legislative advocacy
• Participation action research

Learning Objectives

• Understand the basic structure of the United States Government and how to engage with the political process.
• Define participatory action research and describe its three core components of participation, research process, and collective action.

Midterm feedback

9 Submitted, 6 didn’t

Things Working

• Course content (forums, activities, podcast, lectures, presentations, recorded class sessions)
• Faculty support (responsiveness, feedback, flexibility/care/supportiveness)

Things Not Working

• Textbook reading (not sure what to do)
• More assignment support (prompts/outlines) (What do other teachers have that is helpful)
• Forum structure/visuals on presentations? (said more open ended questions or add visuals to slides, what do other teachers have)
• Community impact project? (“I wasn’t a huge fan of the community impact project due to feeling like we are already doing our practicum and having to implement another project that requires hands-on.”) (Hands on projects/practice perspective)

Potential Changes

• Group member feedback form (I’ll add this to the content next week, but not sure how grading impacted) -> Benchmark example “For me personally, the only thing I am not a big fan of for this course is the group project assigned for this semester. I have a hard time with projects like this because I don’t like to feel as if my grade is dependent on someone else’s work.”

AI Hallucinations & Papers

This week’s episode of the podcast

• Who waters just one leaf because it is withered (or applies food to that leaf)
• AI doesn’t know anything. It just tries to give a probable answer based on the prompt

AI isn’t only in school, I was in one of the plenary sessions… Saw this slide when they were talking about the interventions used at the VA in PR. Does anybody spot the problem? I don’t know who this old white guy is, but he looks a lot like this other one. Insoo Kim Berg (read her book, use a video of her in one of my classes each semester…)

Still grading (hopefully done). Several papers in which students discussed the PREPARE model said it came from the textbook. But then go on to hallucinate a different set of definitions for the acronym.

• This is wrong and unacceptable
• Makes me feel like people don’t read/listen to lecture videos (talked about it during class, did a lecture video on it, and it is in the textbook, exhaustively described multiple times)
• 0, with opportunity to resubmit.
• If I have other that I’m unsure, but seems like it is generated… I’ll likely be asking for explination and description of use to help determine best next steps.
• I don’t want to play like I’m a police officer or something like that…

Within the law, we see fines.

• 2023 Lawyers fined for filing bogus case law created by ChatGPT - CBS News A federal judge on Thursday imposed $5,000 fines on two lawyers and a law firm in an unprecedented instance in which ChatGPT was blamed for their submission of fictitious legal research in an aviation injury claim.
• 2023 Disciplinary judge approves lawyer’s suspension for using ChatGPT to generate fake cases - Colorado Politics A Colorado lawyer has received a suspension for using artificial intelligence to generate fake case citations in a legal brief and then lying about it.
• 2026 Faulty AI Leads to $10,000 Fine for Oregon Lawyer Faulty AI Leads to $10,000 Fine for Oregon Lawyer. An Oregon-based civil attorney is slapped with a major penalty for submitting an AI-written legal brief riddled with citations “contrived from thin air.” Second time in four months

Social work

• I don’t know of any legal consequences at this time, but that doesn’t mean it is ok against our code of ethics. Are you going to rely on it to provide a diagnosis, determine if somebody is potentially suicidal, determine if somebody should lose their rights and go to the hospital, etc.?

3 Branches of Government and The Legislative Branch

I don’t really wanna go into a government 101 presentation, but we thought it would be helpful to frame our discussion in some basics of how our government operates.

• Federal, state, and local governments have three branches of government
• These branches of government are designed to have checks and balances.
• The branches of government include the judicial, executive, and legislative branches.

The Judicial interprets the laws Federal: Supreme Court and other lower circuit courts State: State supreme court, court of appeals, trial courts, juvenile courts, and family courts Local: Municipal courts in some juristictions

The Executive enforces the laws Federal: The president, VP, and cabinet State: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and State Cabinet Local: Mayor or city council

The Legislative creates the laws.

A look at the legislative branch. Our focus today is on legislative advocacy, and so we want to focus on the legislative branches.

Congress (Washington D.C.) Senate: 100 total (Each state has 2 senators) House of Representatives: 435 total WA State: 10 Congressional Districts (1 representative for each district)

WA State Legislature (Olympia, WA) 49 legislative districts total Senate: 49 total 1 member for each legislative district House of Representatives: 98 total 2 members for each legislative district

Find Your Representative

How many of you know who your representatives are

1. Scan QR code (or go to https://app.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/)
2. Enter your home address
3. Identify your Congressional (federal) representatives
4. Identify your Legislative (state) representatives
5. Share with someone next to you!

The 2026 Regular Session adjourned sine die on March 12

sine die = “Without a day specified for a future meeting”

Lots of Great Information

Important information about your representatives

• Contact
• Committees
• Voting records
• Bill sponsorship

Important information about bills

• Easily file a comment
• There are specific times that it is open to request providing written or verbal testimony, comments, or registering a position

Regarding my representative, whom I showed here… I don’t like her. She voted Nay against SB 6346 Tax on millionaires

Keeping Up with Information

The textbook provided a figure listing some organization and their interest areas. All of them are focused nationally.

I want to share a couple of resources with you and think about some ways we can keep on top of all the information coming at us.

These days, we are inundated with so much information and so many different things going on. It feels very impossible to keep up with it all on our own. One of the recommendations that I would have is to find some organizations and groups that you trust that can help keep you updated, and that are engaging in advocacy that is important to you.

The link on the slide takes you to a page compiled by the University of Washington that lists many organizations engaged in social justice, organized by the category they focus on or the population they serve. This is a great place to start.

I also want to share some potential examples of things that aren’t necessarily on this page. Many organizations have political platforms and provide guidance on some of the legislation that is happening throughout the year, trying to come anti developed by within their groups.

Professional Organization

• NASW Washington
• Washington Association of State School Social Workers

Other Advocacy Groups

• OneAmerica
• Children’s Alliance

• WAISN

  Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network

Other Email Lists to Keep Updated

• Various list serves (DOH, etc.)
• OSPI emails

UW List of Social Justice Organizations in Washington State, sorted by issue.

Local Organizations I Follow

• NASW Washington
• Washington Association of State School Social Workers
• OneAmerica
• Children’s Alliance

• [WAISN

  Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network](https://waisn.org)

• Indivisible

Who Do We Advocate For - At Risk Groups

This is not an exhaustive list of populations that may be at risk. Any marginalized group (i.e., those with less power and viewed as less important in society) is potentially a population at risk. Likewise, any group that other groups in our society believe to be “different” can be victimized. Those differences can be based on skin color, intellectual ability, belief systems, gender, age, sexual orientation, culture, political ideology, or class. (p. 418)

Group listed in the text:

• African Americans
• Hispanic Americans
• First Nations Peoples (Native Americans)
• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
• Women
• Lesbian and Gay Persons
• Immigrants and Refugees
• Clients Receiving Public Assistance

[Small Group Activity] Identifying Additional At Risk Groups Working in small groups, discuss other potential populations that we can consider an at-risk group

What is Participatory Action Research?

Before diving into the set up of this study, I also want to clarify what is participatory action research, or PAR. Creswell et al. (2017) describes that PAR is a qualitative methodology that includes collaboration at all levels of the research process and an intention to address a social problem that affects an underserved community.

It really has three parts to it…

• It is participatory: Co-researchers participate in reflection on how to grapple with the target problem, both individually and collectively.
• It is a research process: During the process, the co-researchers build alliances through planning, implementation, and dissemination of the research
• Action and creating change individually and collectively is a third core component: Then the group cooperatively decides what actions are necessary to address the identified needs.

(McIntyre, 2008)

Overview of the Study Phases - Introduction to Study

This slide shows all of the parts of this study, the Trauma-Informed PLC. Sometimes you will also hear me refer to it as my PLC. We will be going through each of the these parts in turn to explain what I did before we discuss the results.

Components of building a trauma-informed PLC

The following graphic describes all of these components that I have gone through and reviewed. They include the foundations of:

• Following a mutual aid model
• Incorporate an Interdisciplinary Framework

The themes of

• Understand How Trauma Impacts Students
• Limiting Re-Traumatization Within the Classroom
• Methods for Increasing Resiliency Factors for Students
• Engaging in Self-Care and Burnout Prevention to Reduce the Impact of Secondary Trauma
• Evaluate and Implement Ideas for Promoting Systematic Changes Within a Classroom and School-Wide
• Develop a Tool or Recommendation for How Other School Staff Could Create Similar Growth in Other Schools

And the learning strategies of

• Engage in the Process of Reviewing Practice Together for Development
• Use Idea Generation to Develop New and Novel Ideas
• Integrated Self-Care Practices Into Groups and Encourage Use to Reduce Compassion Fatigue
• Use Storytelling to Make Meaning and Develop Cohesion
• Include Scholarly Sources and Develop Connections to Evidence-Based Practice
• DefineConcepts as a Group to Enhance Understanding
• Review Protocols for Professional Socialization

Implementing a group focused on trauma-informed care through this format might be an unexpected idea to some. During the orientation meeting, there was a school admin who joined the orientation meeting. They later reached out to me and shared they could not participate in the PLC at this time due to the time commitment. During the orientation, she commented that she hadn’t realized that it was an orientation for an ongoing PLC-style group. She had believed the training would follow a more traditional sit-and-get training, and the commitment was joining for an hour-and-a-half presentation.

I hope this project will provide an avenue for new ways of learning about trauma-informed care practices in schools that can also come from the PLC and the classroom.