ADVOCACY
Candyy31
Response3.docxResponse 1
YesterdayLocal: Feb 8 at 12:29pm<br>Course: Feb 8 at 1:29pm
The Advocacy I engaged in this term would classify as a cause advocacy. I corresponded with my local Senator in regards to changing a state law. Several attempts have been made in the past to change the law. For various reasons, the ‘Bills’ to change the law did not pass or did not even make it to the senate floor. I have corresponded with and will continue to correspond with the District Director for my State Senator to see if some changes may be made. The advocacy I engaged in was to change the laws for ‘Grandparents Rights’ in Pennsylvania. At this point I am advocating for visitation rights for grandparents as there are no established laws in Pennsylvania in regards to this.
At the onset, my advocacy appears to outside the boundaries of social worker advocacy. From the resources this week, my topic is in bounds. The concept of "social justice” is difficult to define definitively, however, as it means different things to different people. Making matters difficult for social workers who want to follow the code of Ethics’ call to work for social justice is that the code does not define the term”. Hoefer, R. (2016). The national seriousness of this issue is substantiated on the webpage https://www.change.org/search?q=grandparents%20rights&offset=0. The grandparents I am advocating for have been marginalized. They also have been put into a position of powerlessness by the judicial system, in regards to having no input in any part of their grandchildren’s lives.
The Social Work Dictionary states social justice is the perfect situation where all people of a society have the same rudimentary rights, protections, opportunities and social benefits. The first premise for my advocacy is that grandparents and grandchildren are people in society and should have basic rights. For this cause I am going to narrow the definition down to the situation of a grandparent where their child is deceased. Meaning the parent of the grandchild is deceased. It would be ideal if the grandparent were able to have same rights and opportunities to be in the child’s life as the parent would have if they were still alive. That would be the ultimate goal. But, some advocacy takes years to obtain very concrete goals. For example, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863, yet the Civil Rights Act was not granted until 1964. This is why I am advocating for some custodial (Pennsylvania does not call it visitation) rights. To ask for equal rights as to the parents’ rights is not the beginning point, but the end point. Social workers must be involved in advocacy practice if clients’ situation are to improve. If social workers do not act as advocates, their policy ideas and even more importantly, their values will not be represented in the in policy-making circles' Hoefer, R. (2016).
The Code of Ethics states, "social workers challenge social injustice" (NAS 2008, Ethical Principles).The code elaborates on what this principle means by declaring, "social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people Hoefer, R.(2016). The vulnerable and oppressed individuals for this advocacy are the grandparents. But it could also be the grandchildren that are not permitted to have any with their grandparents. The children are vulnerable since they have no one to speak up for them if they wish to see their grandparents, and they are oppressed by their parents when they want to see their grandparents and are not permitted to do so.
One potential risks that may exist for a social worker who serves as an advocate for changing laws is the risk of misrepresenting the client properly. Dealing with the law is very complicated, thus challenging. The misrepresentation is due to the limited knowledge of laws by the social worker. Social workers lack the skills of conflict management, and so do not want to be active in inherently conflictual arenas Hoefer, R. (2016). In other words, the social worker may risk getting into an area of more conflict then they desire too, or anticipated. Another risk may be not researching the topic enough before advocating. Different social workers will have different opinions of how to resolve a situation. "Social workers should carefully examine relevant issues and their possible impact on clients before deciding on a course of action" (NASW Sec.3.10[b]). Another risk would be the absence of support from co-workers and supervisors. Time is another factor. The risk is the social worker not having enough time to devote to the cause to see it to completion. Finally, the social worker may risk appearing as aggressive and as an opponent to those who have the power to change the situation.
References:
Kirst-Ashman, K. K., & Hull, G. H., Jr. (2018). Empowerment series: Understanding generalist practice (8th ed.). CENGAGE Learning.
Hoefer, R. (2016). Social justice and advocacy practice. In Advocacy practice for social justice (3rd ed., pp. 23–42). Oxford University Press. Advocacy Practice for Social Justice (3rd Ed.) by Hoefer, R. Copyright 2016 by Oxford University Press-Books (US & UK). Reprinted by Oxford University Press-Books (US & UK via the Copyright Clearance Center.)
Belluomini, E. (2014, Winter). Using digital self-advocacy to empower social work populations. The New Social Worker. http://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/technology-articles/using-digital-self-advocacy-to-empower-social-work-populatio/
Response 2
Response 2
During this term, I engaged in cause advocacy. However, I would describe it as starting out as case advocacy and then turning into cause advocacy. While the incident mostly affected my client initially, it ultimately affected a larger group of people.
Background of what took place that led to the cause
As I believe I’ve mentioned during this course, I am a Juvenile Court School Liaison for alternative school programs for youth that have deferred expulsions (most of these teens have weapons and drug charges) On Monday January 23rd, 2023, one of the schools I work at had a school shooting which resulted in the death of my client, death of a former student of mine and my colleague was shot and was in serious condition. This was a targeted act by another student in the school and it was a gang related street issue that they brought into the school. This was during a school day, so as anyone could imagine, this was hard on everyone involved. This is our second school shooting where I live and a student died in the first one as well.
Since then, I, along with other staff have been trying to get more active shooter training in place; we must take one when we get hired but it is online and not a hands-on drill. While we all understand how stressful it could be to act out this type of incident, we believe it should be an option at least for the employees in the schools to have this training, as this unfortunately is becoming the norm in our school district. While it is nice to think that we would try to be a hero in this situation, we can never be too prepared. We have also been advocating for a metal detector in that school, as we house the students with the most significant issues.
The concepts our staff utilized while advocating for this case were power and looking at the in-person environment. With power, there are five observations to help understand it but the observation that is important in the work I did is that people who hold power generally have greater access to resources than people with less power. My colleague that was injured during this incident is the president of this alternative program and has lots of donors with power, such as the governor of Iowa and the Des Moines Police Department. By having these types of relationships, our concerns have become priorities for them and they have approved putting safety measures in place for us to return, such as metal detectors and wands. Those relationships also influence the decisions the school district makes moving forward. For example; prior to this second shooting, juveniles with weapon charges were allowed in the alternative programs, however, now the school district has made the decision that youth with weapon charges cannot be in school buildings or on school properties and will need to enroll in the virtual school option.
In this model, clients are never seen as existing separately from their environment. That is, clients both influence and are influenced by their environment (Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2018) While advocating for this cause, we believed that by acknowledging types of environments our youth are growing up in, the culture of the school environment and the outside influences brought in, we could get a clear message out. By bringing in our partners and donors into the school building and allowing the students to share their personal stories if they chose and their fears, this helped communicate the need for certain safety measures to be in place.
For this situation, I believe the risk is more so with how community members will react or how they’re already reacting. Some people in our community don’t feel bad about what took place and voice this, as they believe if you are involved in gang activity, you brought that on yourself. As a social worker, if you are being shown advocating for this cause which was caused by gang activity and you go to another school and begin working with a family who has been rubbed the wrong way by this incident/follow up to this incident, you may receive some push back when working with them.
A few other risks associated with advocacy that I’ve observed are getting in trouble with your agency, emotional strain on the worker, interference with regulations or funding and depending on certain clients, it could blur their perception of the working relationship.
References
Kirst-Ashman, K. K., & Hull, G. H., Jr. (2018). Empowerment series: Understanding generalist practice (8th ed.). CENGAGE Learning.
