SOCW 6361

Running Head: SOCIAL CHANGE PROJECT 2

SOCIAL CHANGE PROJECT 2

Social Change Project

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There are a number of social problems in existence that require to be solved, and social workers play an important role in this. This part will look back at the social problem in existence in accordance to the week six assignment. The social problem addressed is domestic violence, with two policies being proposed to deal with this problem. This article will look at the strengths and weaknesses of this social problem, how a change in the social policy will affect the clinical social workers and the clients with finally an update of advocacy activities provided earlier being given.

The policies to address domestic violence provided in week 6 are the 1970's and 1996 domestic violence acts. In accordance with the 1970 domestic violence act, this was the first one to be put in place, and it calls for domestic violence being regarded as a grave crime (Domestic Violence, 2020). The second policy proposed for use in week 6 is the violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Domestic violence is considered a national crime while also being broken down into federal laws in this policy. This policy goes against people crossing state lines and within the state to violate individuals (United States Department of Justice, 2020). A major strength of these policies is how they are able to protect women. When violence is considered a grave crime, the major sentence set is considered a threat to domestic violence suspects. Therefore, this goes ahead to influence the reduction in domestic violence cases. On the weaknesses of the social policies in place, the policies majorly address women's issues while assuming men's issues. This is assuming that domestic violence only happens against women, while it is assumed that men do not face domestic violence incidences. For this reason, this is a weakness of the 1970 and 1996 domestic violence since they only try to solve one issue while assuming others.

On clinical social workers, it is common for domestic violence to be considered a thing that mostly affects women. When it comes to the men's side, they mostly try to hide issues that affect them. Even when men appear at health facilities for domestic violence issues, it is common to conceal this. Therefore, including men as domestic violence victims will help men come out more to seek help. For clinical social workers, they rarely handle domestic violence cases where men are the victims (Jansson, 2018). If a change in the policy happens, they will handle more cases with men as the victims. This, therefore, means an expected wave of new cases that clinical social workers have to solve. Considering that many of the clinical social workers have not been handling these issues; therefore, they have to equip themselves with new skills to handle these issues. Therefore, clinical social workers have to also change their perception of domestic violence to be able to handle male cases as victims.

As per week six contents of domestic violence advocacy skills, it called for parents' enlightenment on the harm of domestic violence. This is considering the harm that domestic violence has on children brought up in such families. Therefore, it is the parents' duty to ensure domestic violence effects are not extended to the children, a violation of which may lead to the parents' major punishment. When men as victims are brought into this policy improvement, it will lead to reducing the effects of domestic violence on children.

References

Domestic Violence | Encyclopedia.com. (2020). Retrieved 19 September 2020, from

https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/crime-and-lawenforcement/domestic-violence

Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social

justice  (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Series.

Chapter 10, "Developing and Using Power in the Policy-Enacting Task" (pp. 372-419)

United States Department of Justice. (2020). Federal Domestic Violence Laws. Justice.gov.

Retrieved 24 October 2020, from https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtn/victim-witness-program/federal-domestic-violence-laws.