Intro to Social Work

• The primary mission of social work is to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, especially the vulnerable, oppressed, and those in poverty
• Social workers are guided by the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics
• Ethics and values shape social workers' conduct and perspective
• Social workers use their skills and abilities to enhance well-being
• The American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare has identified 13 Grand Challenges as areas of focus for the profession
• Social workers are licensed in the United States
• Social justice (top core value), service, integrity, competence, the importance of human relationships, dignity & worth of each person, are all core values in social work
• Equality involves treating everyone the same, regardless of the situation
• Equity involves giving individuals what they specifically need
• Social workers engage, assess, intervene, refer, follow-up, respond to crises, develop programs, research, and advocate
• Social workers work with individuals, families, groups, communities, organizations, and government at all levels
• Social work career projected to grow 7% from 2022-2032
• Increased demand for healthcare and mental health treatment drives the growth in social work
• In 2023, the median pay for social workers was $58,380 per year, or $28.07 per hour
• The highest 10% earned over $87,300
• Degrees in social work include Bachelors of Social Work (BSW), Master of Social Work (MSW), and Doctor of Social Work (DSW) and Doctorate of Philosophy in Social Work (PhD)
• Social work licensing requirements vary by state, often including a national exam and state statutes exam
• Challenges in social work include helping people, being a source of answers, being personable, and separating work from home life

Generalist Social Work (GSW)

• GSW uses an integrative approach, addressing the individual within their environment
• GSW practice occurs across system levels using various intervention methods based on individual assessment

Requirements to earn a Social Work Degree

• Knowledge of theories, research findings, cultural awareness, and self-knowledge
• Values of service, social justice, integrity and competence
• Skills in meditation, organization, communication, research and public speaking

Social Work Roles

• Case manager, counselor, broker, advocate, mediator, and educator

Levels of Social Work Practice

• Micro: working with individuals and families to effect change on an individual basis
• Mezzo: working with groups and organizations, focusing on changing the whole group or organization
• Macro: involves large-scale change and social action, aiming for systemic change

Planned Change Steps

• Engagement: orient to the problem, establish relationship, and communicate effectively
• Assessment: gather information on the problem
• Planning: set goals, develop a plan based on assessed issues and set targets for intervention
• Implementation: client and social worker carry out the plan to achieve goals at multiple levels
• Evaluation: determine if the intervention was successful and what to do if successful
• Termination: can be expected or forced.

Values and Beliefs

• Honesty, fairness, equality, freedom, justice, safety, loyalty, individual rights, and privacy

Ethics

• A distinct set of standards grounded in human interaction that guides right and proper behavior
• Ethics balances good and harm and evolves through socialization
• Ethics are woven into our culture and may conflict with unjust laws

Six Basic Ethical Principles

• Autonomy/Principle of Human Dignity: Respect rights to make own decisions
• Truthfulness & Confidentiality: Be honest and protect client information
• Justice: Respect all persons and treat everyone the same
• Beneficence: Do good and promote well being
• Non-maleficence: Do no harm, prevent harmful care
• Honesty and assessment of risks and benefits are required
• Involves respecting client autonomy
• Education and information is essential

Digital Age implications

• Includes self-guided web-based interventions, email, text messages, social media, telehealth and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Telehealth is where clients can feel accessible, reduce stigma, allow for continuity of care, and is cost effective.
• Telehealth lacks physical presence, cause trust issues, and challenge privacy & confidentiality.
• Boundaries provide clear roles, reduce risk, and reduce anxiety for the client.

Boundary Violations

• Relationships become unethical, exploiting, manipulating, deceiving, or coercing the client

Boundary Crossings

• Not intended to be harmful, but it can become exploitive and unethical if unmanaged and it can be therapeutic.

Examining Boundary Issues

• Put your client's best interest first, and evaluate whose needs are being served

Ethical Dilemmas

• Challenges in practice include self-determination vs. protection
• Confidentiality vs. duty to warn and obligation to client vs. agency policy

Week 3A

• Impact of words and their meanings can create attitudes, drive policies and laws, influence feelings, affect decisions, and affect people's daily lives
• Words can be hurtful regardless of intent, bring up past negative experiences
• Social workers in a caring and competent way requires the social workers to understand that clients are the experts of their own experience
• When clients feel safe, relationship between provider and client can be one of trust on the part of the client

How to Address Saying The Wrong Thing?

• Listen and acknowledge, and don't dismiss feelings, but do not get defensive
• Learn and adapt, be open to feedback
• If unintentional harm occurred, reflect what has happened and adjust your future communication

Social Construct

• Meaning, phenomenon or category created and assigned to people, objects and events
• Not a reality- constructed by society
• Existence of difference requires collective agreement and acceptance that it exists
• Powerful because it is accepted as objective, it is not necessarily real
• This includes social construction of difference based on race

Week 3B

• Intersectionality: the theory describes how overlapping social identities contribute to specific systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual
• Intersectionality does not only encompass ideas about the past but also current issues, such as exclusion and privilege

Reasons intersectional practices are not adopted

• Intersectionality slows things down
• People can be forced to face their own privileges
• It can decentralize individuals who are used to being the primary focus of movements they are a part of
• People can be required to interact with, listen to, and consider people they do not usually

"If you don't embrace intersectionality, even if you make progress for some, you will look around one day and find that you've become the oppressor of others." (Oluo, 2018)

• Privilege: refers to the "set of unearned advantages that are associated with being in a powerful or dominant social group"

• Whites do not have to seek out white privilege: it is simply provided based on race

• While white individuals can racially benefit, not all benefit equally

• When recognizing privilege in social work one must have awareness of how clients share privilege

• Dominant groups have power and their values, traditions and ways of behaving set the norm for society.

• Oppression is a system that maintains advantage and disadvantage based on social group memberships.

• Privilege opens doors, and oppression shuts them.

• Institutionalized oppression: occurs when established laws, customs, and practices benefit a dominant group at the expense of a subordinate group

• Practice of institutionalized oppression is based on the belief in inherent superiority or inferiority.

Definitions of Racism

• Any prejudice against someone because of their race
• Racism can be reinforced by systems of power
• Institutionalised oppression is oppressive even when people have better intentions

Week 4A

• Social Welfare System: a network of programs and services that provide aid and assistance to people in need and assists people in meeting needs.
• Social Welfare System encompasses programs and services aimed at ensuring a basic standard of living
• Social Safety Net - programs provide temporary aid during hardship or in a crisis, and often is designed for immediate needs
• Private vs Public Nonprofit: private funds received from private sources, public revenue is majority from government
• Neither exists to make a profit
• Both provide services or promote public/philanthropic causes

Social Welfare - Economic and Social Measures

• Economic: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which indicates the economy and tells if it is expanding or contracting
• Social: Nation's health, child abuse and neglect statistics, as well rates of graduation, literacy, and crime

Important Historic Moments of Slavery

• In 1641, slavery became legal in Massachusetts.
• The "Hereditary Slavery law" (1622) decreed children of the enslaved were enslaved for life - The first Anti-Miscegenation Laws were passed in 1691, prohibiting marriage.
• A Virginia Slave code further limited the rights of slaves in 1705.
• In 1808 the importation of slaves became prohibited.
• The Civil War occurred between 1861-1865 followed up with the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), changing the legal status of the enslaved, and lastly The 13th amendment came in 1865, abolishing slavery in the U.S.

How Slavery Thrived

• Economic drive, social division, laws violence
• Family connections were destroyed to control those enslaved

Important Notes on The End of Slavery

• The end of slavery did not mean the end of its impact

• millions died, families separated, culture destroyed

• Historical Trauma continues to this day

• August of 1619: the date when the first African slaves were sold to colonists.

• Elizabethan Poor Law (1620's): brought to America, included legislation where taxes would be used to support those in need

• Assistance was awarded to primarily the worthy

• "Pauperism" (1600's): defined as dependence on public assistance, whites receiving this assistance almost exclusively

• People thought children should be working, in the view that youths are lazy until 1870s

• Overseers of the poor (1632 - 1900s) were elected to administer the needs of the poor

The Poor Laws (1620s)

• The Poor Laws were public welfare that resulted in trends that were hostile to the poor
• They were blamed and deemed less eligible

Beginnings of Social Welfare

• African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E) Church (1794-present), Rhode Island
• "Poorhouses" (1622): focused on order, accepted all
• With aid from the goals preventation of starvation, a deterring of pauperism, lowering of costs, etc.

Week 4B

• Genocide of indigenous people is a destruction goal
• In the 1500s there was a recorded 10-12 million indigenous people, later declining and being less than 2% of Americans in 2018
• There has been historical trauma due to accumulation of emotional and psychological injury over generations, causing a generational loss and never healing

Trauma

• Trauma never fully healing transmitted to next generation and trauma passed via DNA.
• Influences reaction to stress and genes are more likely to negative responses, and the concept intergenerational can shape mental and cultural aspects.

America

• Industrialization involved a booming immigration which was due to fleeing crop failure, with the immigrants being discriminated and taken advantage of
• Caused over working and low sanitation - Men pitted against each other in fear of the job
• The Great wealth caused the gaps between the rich and the poor to become wider

Labor Struggles

• Labor Struggles from the 1870's forward had collective bargaining and legal unions which involved issues of class and ethnicity

Week 5A

• Charity Organization societies were established to fight gaming, efficiency, corruption, and the unworthiness.
• Friendly Visitors were volunteers that oversaw families after being instructed to make changes, however this overtime changed by seeing the issues

Women, Wealthfare and Justice

• Eugenic Burns Hope was first to create and direct a welfare agency in Atlanta
• The NAACP was created for fair association
• Both are apart of community and social justice

White Settlement

• The main key was residency the place where people could live together
• Settlement House Goals were the three R's residence, research reform

Issues & Activities

• All issues and activities can be addressed such as housing, safety, laboring
• Hull House founded by Jane Addams, social reformer as the firs, but it separated till the 1930s

Week 5B

• Black Setllement Houses were created to provided schooling and relief
• Progessive Era was created in the 1000s for social action for all
• Government can create social programs to solve these
• Regulations can ensure safety, regulate work etc

The Great Depression

• Occurred in 1929 and gave the New Deal which brought the U.S out of the crisis
• This Era began assistance provided by government at different areas

Post Civil Rights

• The rights Era began with the 1950s for civil reform

Weeks 6A

• President Lydon B JOhnson passed the Economic and Welfare reform for all
• Progessive Era was created in the 1000s for social action for all
• Recaps the history that can all be linked
• Social Work can lead to Civil Rights

Key Historical Figures

• Whitney Young, Jr, National Association of Black Social Workers
• Society of American Indians Red Progressives
• The American Indian Movement and Jeyapal contributed to education, justice and reform

Week 6B

• Stonewall Uprising, Equal Pay Act, and the Disability Movement set a new standard for Social Justice and Equality
• Important acts are deeply rooted in social activism.
• All of these events had a key impact towards the advancement of Social Work
• Activism and policy shifts have shaped much of modern social work
• Many consider social justice the view point that everyone desires economics and poltics for all. The aim is to ensure that the people have the requirements
• The first organizations began with charity, grew to settlement houses, and lead into social work.