This article asserts that macro practice is increasingly important in today’s rapidly changing and complex practice environment. It briefly explores the history of macro practice in U.S. social work, summarizes its major contributions to the profession and to U.S. society, and provides some suggestions for how social work programs can expand interest in macro practice among their students and increase the number of students who pursue macro-oriented careers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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6352

ISSN:

1043-7797

DOI:

10.1080/10437797.2016.1174652

Accession Number:

116620400

Database:

Academic Search Complete

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Why Macro Practice Matters.

Contents

1. The disappearance of macro practice in social work

2. Underlying assumptions

3. Definition and components of macro practice

4. Macro practice and social justice

5. A brief history of macro practice

6. The Progressive Era (1890–1918)

7. The New Deal

8. World War II and the postwar period

9. The War on Poverty

10. Recent trends

11. Conclusion: An eye to the future—Making macro practice matter

12. Acknowledgments

13. Footnotes

14. References

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Introduction: The changing environment of social work practice

This article asserts that macro practice is increasingly important in today's rapidly changing and complex practice environment. It briefly explores the history of macro practice in U.S. social work, summarizes its major contributions to the profession and to U.S. society, and provides some suggestions for how social work programs can expand interest in macro practice among their students and increase the number of students who pursue macro-oriented careers.

The social work profession faces many challenges in today's dynamic, complex, and uncertain environment, including persistent ideologically motivated attacks on the concept of social welfare itself and on government as a problem-solving institution; the changing role of the nonprofit sector; the wide-ranging impact of economic globalization; privatization of social life; the overall decline in civic and political participation; the devolution of political authority and power to local governments and the for-profit sector; the industrialization of social work; the impact of social media and the news cycle that runs 24 hours, 7 days a week on the public's perception of social issues; and the conflicts produced by increasing demographic and cultural diversity (Reisch, [24]).

Although some of these issues have existed for years, they have acquired new urgency as a consequence of domestic and international developments. As a consequence of economic globalization, human migration on a massive scale, the effects of climate change, and the spread of digital technology, the world is much more interconnected. The effects of public health crises, civil conflicts, and natural disasters, once confined to nations or even to communities, now give every problem an international dimension. The rapidity and global reach of communication speeds the dissemination of information and simultaneously demands more rapid and often less thoughtful responses to crises. Instant communication also illuminates the persistent gulfs that exist among and within nations even about the meaning of these events.

In the United States, serious divisions exist over the Black Lives Matter movement, marriage equality, Affirmative Action, transgender, and reproductive rights, and over what would constitute an effective response to terrorism, climate change, and increasing inequality. This fragmentation is also reflected in our vocabulary and in the composition of our society. Words such as empowerment and social justice are used to rationalize fundamentally different goals. By 2040 people of color will be the majority of the U.S. population. The backlash against this demographic certainty is already reflected in our politics with profound implications for our nation's future, our sense of community, and social work practice (Reisch & Jani, [30]).

The disappearance of macro practice in social work

It is ironic, therefore, that in an era when macro interventions have become increasingly critical, macro practice has become "a marginalized subfield in social work" (Fisher & Corciullo, [ 9 ], p. 359). Statistics from the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE, [ 6 ]) indicate that less than 9% of all MSW students are enrolled in all the macro practice areas combined. A 2014 survey of accredited MSW programs found that only 23% had advanced practice concentrations in community practice, management practice, or policy practice (CSWE, [ 7 ]). Data from the survey also indicated that in 2014 only 6% of 37,699 MSW students were in macro-oriented placements, that is, placements that emphasized community development or planning, administration, advocacy, or social policy (CSWE, [ 7 ]).

Trends in social work education have implications for social work practice after students graduate. Research by the National Association of Social Workers' (NASW) Center for Workforce Studies found that social workers spend "only two percent of time each week ... [on] community organizing and policy/legislative development," and less than 1 in 7 social workers "identify macro as their practice focus" (Whitaker & Arrington, [41], pp. 7–8). These trends have produced a considerable shortage of macro social workers particularly in low-income, low-power communities where they are most needed (Mott, [19]).

The roots of this problem may lie in the climate and curricula of many schools of social work. A survey conducted by Rothman ([32]) found considerable resistance among social work faculty to integrating macro practice into BSW and MSW curricula that primarily emphasize education for clinical careers, and is a devaluing of macro content by some deans and directors and results in a general lack of interest in or understanding of macro practice among many students. Many program directors pay scant attention to macro content either in their course work or field placements, although generalist practice has been the core of social work education for several decades and is purportedly the focus of BSW programs and the foundation year of all MSW programs.

Yet if the social work profession is to realize its goal of social justice in an increasingly diverse society, the need for the structural approach at the heart of macro practice has become more urgent (Hasenfeld & Garrow, [10]). Macro social workers play an essential role in transforming private troubles, such as unemployment, domestic violence, homelessness, and mass incarceration, into public issues (Mills, [16]; Schwartz, [34]) and in developing strategic interventions that translate awareness of these troubles into concrete policies and programs that address them. They promote systemic and institutional changes that address people's problems that are not or cannot be solved solely by interventions at the individual or family level. Such changes often involve the replacement of critical actors through leadership development and enhanced civic participation, the redistribution and redefinition of social and organizational roles, the revision of society's reward structure, and policy changes that affect the allocation of resources, rights, benefits, opportunities, status, and obligations (Mizrahi & Morrison, [18]).

Macro social workers play a critical role in each of these change processes by expanding our understanding of community structure and dynamics and the intra- and interorganizational processes that affect the design and delivery of social services (Homan, [12]). They help empower people through collective efforts, develop and administer innovative policies and programs, and create new, more responsive services to enhance people's lives and well-being (Burghardt, [ 5 ]). They recognize how issues affect diverse communities differently and how race, ethnicity, class, gender, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, ability, and immigration status influence people's lives and life chances. Because of their ethical commitment to individual and social change, all social workers need to appreciate this interconnectedness.

Underlying assumptions

One underlying assumption that guides macro practitioners is that most societal conditions often accepted as givens, such as poverty, are neither natural nor inevitable. Macro social workers even question whether the damages caused by natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are entirely natural. By looking at the world and our practice environment through this different lens, macro social workers pose critical questions such as, Who defines what is a problem in our society or in the organizations where we work? Who interprets why these problems exist? Who decides which problems get attention and of what type? Who defines what constitutes a need and acceptable forms of helping? Merely posing these questions helps reveal new truths and increases the possibility of systemic change (Mizrahi, [17]).

Because all social workers practice in systems that are often indifferent or hostile to the interests of our clients and constituents, macro practitioners pay particular attention to how issues are defined and by whom, how their extent or severity is assessed, who or what is defined as the target of intervention, and what causal factors are excluded or treated as marginal. They focus on change goals and change processes (Reisch & Garvin, [29]). This dual emphasis is essential in today's fractious political climate because of the importance of asking, Who determines a policy or program's goals? Who initiates and controls a change effort? How are the people affected by a proposed change involved? How is the success or failure of the change defined? And, Who will assess the outcome of the proposed intervention and by what means?

Definition and components of macro practice

Widely accepted definitions of macro practice include two common elements. Macro practice involves intervention "with organizations, communities, and groups of people" (Meenaghan, Gibbons, & McNutt, [15]), and its goal is "to bring about planned change [emphasis added] in" those systems (Netting, Kettner, McMurty, & Thomas, [21]). In other words, macro practice is a collective and collaborative form of social work that seeks to create purposive change. The components of macro social work have been further divided into more specific functions (see Table 1). Through these forms of practice, social workers help communities perform their five major functions (Warren, [38]): production, distribution, and consumption of tangible and intangible goods; socialization; social control; social participation; and mutual support and help in creating more responsive organizations.

Table 1. The components of macro practice.

Community Practice	Management	Policy Practice
Neighborhood and community organizing	Developing and managing stakeholder relationships	Identifying and assessing the impact of problems and issues that affect individuals, families, and communities
Organizing functional communities	Modeling appropriate professional behavior	Analyzing the effects (positive, negative, and unintended) of existing policies
Social, economic, and sustainable development	Initiating and facilitating innovative change processes	Developing alternative policy solutions and creating and implementing strategis to acheive them
Inclusive program development	Demonstrating effective cross-cultural interpersonal and communication skills	Implementing policy decisions
Social planning	Encouraging active involvement of all staff and stakeholders in decision making	Evaluating policies and programs in terms of their effectiveness, efficiency, and effect
Coalition work	Establishing and promoting the vision, philosophy, goals, objectives, and values of the organization
Political and social action	Planning, promoting, and modeling lifelong learning
Movements for progressive change	Designing and developing programs
	Strategic planning
	Building interorganizational relationships to enhance service delivery

3 Source. From Weil, Gamble, & Ohmer ([39]); Hassan & Wimpfheimer ([11]); Jansson ([14]).

Macro social work practice is the integration of all these forms of practice. It pushes the boundaries of the profession by fostering a big-picture perspective that enables social workers and society as a whole to analyze people's issues outside the box and focus on the prevention of problems, not merely their amelioration. Macro practice explicitly embodies social work's commitment to social justice and social change by promoting structural solutions to systemic inequalities and various forms of oppression that go beyond individual adaptation and resilience.

It is important, therefore, to clarify a few key points about macro practice that are often obscured by our professional rhetoric and, unfortunately, are sometimes transmitted to social work students. Contrary to frequent usage, macro social work is not indirect practice. All social work practice occurs in a community context, and virtually all social workers work in organizations that are affected by social policies. Understanding the dynamics of communities and organizations and the policy development process, therefore, is an essential component of effective practice with every population and problem with which the profession is involved.

As with practice with individuals, couples, families, and groups, macro practice involves working with people, not merely with or within systems (Burghardt, [ 5 ]). As with micro practitioners, the changes macro social workers seek are purposeful and planned, and they make conscious use of evidence gleaned from research and from knowledge obtained from practice experience. As in efforts to produce changes in individuals and families, macro-level changes require information gathering, effective problem definition and issue framing, resource mobilization (of finances and people), strategic planning, targeted action, and reflective evaluation or praxis (Reisch, [23]). Perhaps of greatest importance, micro and macro social workers alike are committed to the foundational values of the profession: social justice, human dignity, and respect for diversity in all its forms. The means by which they express these values in their practice may differ, but these means are complementary and mutually supportive; they are neither in conflict nor occur on parallel, nonintersecting tracks.

Macro practice and social justice

Although macro practice in social work occurs in a wide range of fields and takes many diverse forms, certain common elements distinguish macro practice, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Common macro practice skills.

Working with task-oriented groups

Individual and group supervision

Resource development, mobilization, and management

Marketing or promoting a service or cause

Negotiation and participatory management

Interorganizational planning and leadership development

Community, organizational, and policy analysis

Program development, implementation, and evaluation

Advocacy, lobbying, public education, and coalition building

Media relations and public speaking

Cultivating and exercising leadership

Managing planned change and conflict

Assessing the strengths and assets of communities and organizations

Facilitating the empowerment of clients and constituents and the groups they belong to

Communicating effectively across class, racial, and cultural boundaries

Analyzing the structure, dynamics, and culture of human service organizations and the communities where they exist

Determining when and how to exert influence in communities and social service systems

4 Source. Paraphrased from Austin & Lowe ([ 3 ], pp. 2–7).

The NASW ([20]) Code of Ethics explicitly and implicitly reflects the social justice values and goals underlying these practice skills:

Social workers should engage in social and political action that seeks to ensure that all people have equal access to the resources, employment, services, and opportunities they require to meet their basic human needs and to develop fully. Social workers should be aware of the impact of the political arena on practice and should advocate for changes in policy and legislation to improve social conditions in order to meet basic human needs and promote social justice [emphasis added]. (pp. 23–24)

Throughout the history of the social work profession, macro practitioners have played a particularly critical role in this regard. Although few in number, macro practitioners have been leaders in translating the profession's ethical imperative of social justice into strategies that change the structures and systems that affect people's lives and well-being (Reisch & Andrews, [28]; Wenocur & Reisch, [40]).

Macro social workers embody this ethical imperative in three complementary ways. They emphasize the importance of expanding the genuine participation of clients, constituents, colleagues, and coalition partners in the identification of human needs; development and implementation of various strategies to address these needs; and evaluation of which strategies are most effective. This emphasis, which helped shape the profession's core concept of empowerment (Simon, [35]), assumes that people can and should use existing institutions as a means to achieve democratically determined ends, and, when necessary, work to restructure these institutions or create more responsive, alternative institutions.

Macro social workers also embrace a more inclusive, nonhierarchical definition of expertise that reflects a belief not only in the efficacy and utility of nonpartisan, scientific problem-solving processes by objective experts (e.g., evidence-based practice) but also in the ability of clients and constituents to identify their needs and interests and contribute their insights and experience to the processes required to address these needs effectively.

Finally, macro practitioners value an inclusive definition of leadership that underscores the need for efficient decision making in community groups, social service agencies, and advocacy organizations, and the importance of cultivating new indigenous leadership from within the diverse communities with which they work.

A brief history of macro practice

Before the emergence of professional social work in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, people of every racial, ethnic, and religious background organized services to meet their needs, mobilized their communities to fight perceived injustices, and advocated for reforms that would improve their lives and make the nation more democratic and more equal (Fisher, [ 8 ]). Although the label macro practice is a fairly recent invention, under other names its earliest practitioners recognized the interrelationship between meeting basic human needs and creating meaningful social and political change. Efforts to combine these goals were most effective when they responded with sensitivity to demographic changes and new cultural norms and values, were open to new ideas from multiple sources, recognized the relationship between social movements and community-based services, integrated research findings into practice in a manner that reflected the profession's values and ethics, and took the necessary risks to propose, develop, and implement innovative solutions to long-standing problems.

The roots of macro practice, therefore, cannot be found merely in the soil that produced mainstream social work agencies, such as Charity Organization Societies, settlement houses, and public welfare departments. Macro practice also emerged from workers' struggles to organize unions, from radical political organizations and diverse social movements, immigrants' rights groups, and, perhaps above all, from the self-help or mutual aid organizations that excluded and marginalized minorities created for their own survival purposes (Betten & Austin, [ 4 ]; Fisher, [ 8 ]). Over the course of the 20th century, macro practice in the social work field evolved in response to rapid socioeconomic and political change; the impact of external events, such as depression and wars; the influence of new ideologies, domestic and foreign; ideas developed by new identity-based social movements in the 1960s and 1970s; and the interaction of the heterogeneous communities that make up U.S. society (Rothman, [31]).

The Progressive Era (1890–1918)

During the Progressive Era when organized social work first appeared, macro practitioners such as Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, George Edmund Haynes, and Forrester Washington, played a major role in establishing the foundation for the U.S. social welfare system. They developed public and nonprofit social service organizations at the local and state levels; conducted research on poverty, child welfare, juvenile justice, factory conditions, and public health issues; and trained a generation of social researchers. They helped organize labor unions, especially for women and immigrants. Through their involvement in advocacy efforts, various social movements, and interracial coalitions, they helped pass laws that banned child labor and created mothers' pensions; established public health standards, housing codes, and occupational safety requirements; and introduced many of the features of modern urban life (e.g., playgrounds, street lighting, and kindergartens) that we take for granted today. Without these efforts, the social work profession would have lacked the organizational, community, and societal bases it required to develop and thrive (Wenocur & Reisch, [40]).

The New Deal

After the decline of the progressive movement, most members of the social work profession turned inward in the quest for higher occupational status—a pattern that has repeated itself down to the present. Macro practitioners, however, advocated for social reforms, such as social insurance; expanded the concept of community and community participation; used social scientific research to analyze persistent social issues; and modernized the concept of human services administration. During the 1930s their efforts began to bear fruit. Macro practitioners such as Harry Hopkins, Frances Perkins, and Mary McLeod Bethune were key architects of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Others, such as E. Franklin Frazier, Jacob Fisher, Bertha Capen Reynolds, and Mary van Kleeck, criticized the Roosevelt Administration for its failure to provide sufficient assistance to millions of Americans, particularly African American and Latinos.

Macro social workers also participated actively in the reform and radical movements of the era, often in leadership roles. They promoted the democratization of industry through labor unions and of social service organizations through the creation of more active roles for clients and the influence of the democratic values of social group work (Reisch, [22]). Reflecting the tenor of the times, they embraced a conflict model of practice in the community organizing field, first developed by Saul Alinsky in the working class "Back-of-the-Yards" neighborhood in Chicago (Hurwitt, [13]).

Between the world wars, macro practitioners also attempted to define the core knowledge, skills, and values underlying their work. They published numerous texts and articles that articulated the intellectual basis and interlocking components of group, community, and organizational practice (Austin & Betten, [ 2 ]). As a result, just prior to World War II, the profession recognized community organization and group work as core social work methods.

World War II and the postwar period

During World War II, macro practitioners developed and administered new child care and health care services for the burgeoning wartime workforce, organized relief for refugees, and helped military personnel and their families cope with the stresses of loss, separation, and readjustment to civilian life. After the war, they led the struggle to expand the New Deal to include fair employment practices, civil rights, and universal health care.

The anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy era, however, repressed much of this activism. From the late 1930s through the early 1960s many macro practitioners endured professional blacklisting and legislative persecution (Reisch & Andrews, [28]). Consequently, once again the organized social work profession redirected much of its efforts away from social and community change to the provision of individually focused social services and to status enhancement through credentialing and licensing. Even macro social workers rejected conflict-oriented approaches to practice in favor of more politically appealing methods, such as top-down, expertise-driven community planning; an emphasis on organizational efficiency and professionalism; and incremental strategies for policy change (Specht & Courtenay, [36]; Wenocur & Reisch, [40]).

The War on Poverty

The War on Poverty of the 1960s revived interest in social and political change among macro practitioners and the profession as a whole. Macro social workers developed new models of service, such as Mobilization for Youth in New York City, and directed Community Action Programs throughout the nation, which shifted the locus of power and resources within low-income communities. Macro practitioners such as Whitney Young, director of the Urban League, held leadership positions in the NASW, the National Conference of Social Welfare, and government agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. They helped create Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act, the Food Stamp Program, and the Economic Opportunity Act. Inspired by the new social movements of the period, macro social workers also helped organize the National Welfare Rights Organization, the United Farm Workers, and various civil rights and antiwar groups (Reisch & Andrews, [28]).

Recent trends

During the last quarter of the 20th century, the conservative political environment required macro practitioners, particularly those employed in large public and nonprofit organizations, to adopt defensive strategies to protect the fragile gains of the 1930s and 1960s and to survive during a period of fiscal austerity and anti–social welfare ideology. Yet, even in this climate, macro practitioners heightened public awareness of long-standing social justice causes, such as poverty, and raised awareness of emerging issues, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic, domestic violence, chronic homelessness, environmental racism, the needs of immigrants and refugees, and the importance of international human rights. They developed new conceptions of practice that guided the identity-based organizations that appeared during these years and designed new organizational models, such as those based on feminist practice; new forms of service delivery, such as wraparound models; and new tactical approaches to community work and advocacy that made creative use of media. Macro practitioners also became increasingly involved in electoral politics as candidates and as campaign staff members.

In the 21st century, as a consequence of the widespread impact of economic globalization, macro practitioners recognize more than ever the need to forge local-international linkages in their work to address new issues such as climate change, global poverty, civil conflict, human trafficking, police violence and mass incarceration that affect communities of color, LGBTQ rights, and growing socioeconomic inequality. They are using new technologies, particularly social media, creating new multicultural, cross-national, and interdisciplinary alliances in their advocacy and community organizing efforts and adapting to practice environments that are increasingly interdisciplinary and shaped by new fiscal realities (Mizrahi & Morrison, [18]).

In sum, as Table 3 illustrates, macro practitioners have played a major role in shaping the profession of social work and in achieving its mission and goals. Without macro practice, social work in the United States would be a dramatically different profession. In the future, the profession of social work will confront new practice challenges and practice realities that require the presence of macro practitioners more than ever.

Table 3. Past accomplishments and future challenges for macro practice.

Past Accomplishments	Future Challenges
Analyzed root causes of inequality and injustice Demonstrated conflicts between market-oriented values and those of social welfare and social work	Increasing social and political inequality, persistent racism, sexism, and homophobia
	Fiscal austerity and social welfare cutbacks
Critiqued cultural norms that stigmatized marginalized individuals and groups	Impact of privatization on social services
Raised public consciousness about critical issues	Competition for scarce resources
Promoted alternative visions of society,
community, and social services
Emphasized the importance of power dynamics at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels	The impact of technology on services
Focused on revising existing organizations or creating new ones to meet human needs	Increasingly complex client needs
Created new, more responsive, and more participatory forms of service
Promoted structural and institutional change
Shaped social work's conceptual vocabulary
Provided much of the profession's leadership

Conclusion: An eye to the future—Making macro practice matter

In the years ahead, macro practitioners will have to revise their definitions of community and community intervention, develop new measures of practice effectiveness, reconcile the often conflicting interests of multiple actors and constituencies, clarify the meaning of terms such as empowerment and social justice, and forge new alliances to overcome persistent social and cultural divisions in the United States and the global environment (Reisch, [25]). To be effective in this environment, macro practitioners will need to adapt to unprecedented cultural, demographic, economic, and technological developments. The type of knowledge and skills that macro practitioners possess will be even more critical than in the past. Schools of social work will need to play a critical role in educating nimble and strategic students who can assume leadership at the tables of influence where policies are made and implemented.

Social work educators and programs can do a number of things to increase students' understanding of macro practice and enhance their interest in pursuing macro social work roles during their careers. The following are a few suggestions that by no means exhaust the list of possible steps.

First, social work program administrators should expand their recruitment efforts in breadth (where they identify prospective students) and depth (at what point in students' education they are targeted). Many young people, inspired by contemporary social movements, new forms of social activism, and increased concern for the problems affecting their families and communities, could be attracted to social work as a career if they were better informed earlier in their education about the opportunities available for them to pursue these goals in the social welfare field and if social work educators reached out to them in more sophisticated ways (e.g., social media) and in arenas beyond educational institutions. Based on our experience and conversations with colleagues, many potential macro practitioners, particularly in communities of color, do not view social work as an occupation that would allow them to express their values and fulfill their career aspirations. Consequently, they gravitate to other fields—law, business, public health, public policy, and public administration—instead of social work. This ultimately decreases the profession's impact on the critical issues facing our society and diminishes its stature in the communities where it is most needed.

Second, directors of social work programs need to reexamine what students are taught through their formal curricula and through the informal cultures of their educational environments. The recent dilution of content on the history of social work (Reisch, [27]) and the widespread failure to integrate macro practice theory and practice skills into generalist content (Austin, Anthony, Knee, & Mathias, [ 1 ]; Reisch & Jani, [30]; Rothman & Mizrahi, [33]) could be corrected without adding more courses into an already overstuffed foundation BSW or MSW curriculum. Students could be informed of the history of the profession's role in social and policy change through online methods, speakers, and the use of multiple media formats during lunchtime presentations throughout their first semester or prior to students' entry into field instruction. Program administrators could find ways to be more flexible in their approval of advanced-year placements—as they were in the 1960s and 1970s—to overcome the current exclusion of many macro-oriented organizations that lack an onsite staff member who possesses an MSW. The ongoing significance of community, organizational, and policy practice could be reinforced through the development of community-based integrated course and field education programs such as those developed by the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland. These combine students' internships with team-taught classes, offered in community agencies, and community-based research projects. These integrative programs demonstrate the connections between micro and macro theory and practice through real-world applications. They also educate students on the impact of domestic and international economic and cultural forces, community and organizational power dynamics, politics, and the policy-making process on the services social workers provide (Reisch, [26]).

Changes in the informal curriculum could be introduced in several ways. Beginning with students' orientation, program developers need to rethink what students are taught about the current nature of the profession, the role of licensing, and their future career paths. In many social work programs, educators make scant attempts to correct the widespread misimpression that social workers must work with individuals and families before they pursue macro positions. In so doing, they continue to portray the macro component of social work as marginal rather than integral to the profession's work. In addition, educators could clarify the role of research in promoting program and policy change and underscore this relationship by improving the dissemination of faculty scholarship beyond academic journals to the public, the media, and policy-making circles. Finally, educators could alter the vocabulary of the profession, for example, by eliminating the use of such terms as direct and indirect practice that overlooks the fact that all practice is based on interpersonal relationships, by assessing the applicability of certain components of the NASW Code of Ethics to macro practice, and by taking concrete steps to narrow the gap between our social justice rhetoric and current practice and research realities.

If the profession is to honor its commitment to social justice and human dignity, future practitioners must learn how to practice in an environment in which definitions of need and the meaning of giving or receiving help have significantly changed and are applied differently based on an individual or group's demographic and cultural characteristics. Today, categories of need and societal responses to need are primarily determined not by those who experience them but by powerful individuals and groups that often lack substantive expertise and whose values are often at odds with our ethical commitments. Overcoming these conceptual and political obstacles will be a fundamental challenge for all social workers in the years ahead.

As briefly described earlier, macro practitioners have played a critical role in addressing these challenges throughout the profession's history (Rothman, [31]). Through often risky social and political action, macro social workers have given the profession the moral cover it needed to engage in work that is often unpopular, unrecognized, and underfunded. Today, macro practitioners are primed to take a proactive stance in rebalancing micro and macro perspectives and interventions in the classroom and field (Austin et al., [ 1 ]; Rothman & Mizrahi, [33]; Stone, Austin, Berzin, & Taylor, [37]). It is our contention, therefore, that the survival of macro practice is in the collective self-interest of the social work profession as a whole and of the people with whom the profession works with. Social workers can no longer promote their field as a value-based profession, committed to social justice, human dignity, and human rights, without recognizing the importance of organizing and advocating for these values at the community, organizational, societal, and global levels, and of playing a leadership role in formulating and implementing policies and programs that reflect these values(Wronka, [42]). The responsibility for ensuring the survival of macro practice in social work lies with its major professional organizations and with the schools of social work that contribute the knowledge that informs our practice and educate the workforce of the future (Rothman, [32]).

Acknowledgments

This article was originally commissioned by the Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work established by the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration in 2013. It is an outgrowth of the commission's outreach to macro social work educators and practitioners who were asked to respond to Why Macro Matters in 2014.

For further information about efforts to promote macro practice in social work or to get involved in such efforts, please contact the commission's co-chairs: Darlyne Bailey, dean and professor of the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, and Terry Mizrahi, professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work at [email protected] and [email protected].

Footnotes

1 This is an invited article.

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By Michael Reisch

Reported by Author

Michael Reisch is the Daniel Thursz Distinguished Professor of Social Justice at the University of Maryland, School of Social Work.

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