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SOCW 6101

Week 5, Discussion

Kirsten Mathis

Image from: Levin, D. (2020, March 31).  Las Vegas places homeless people in a parking lot, 6 feet apart. The New York Times. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/us/las-vegas-coronavirus-homeless-parking-lot.html 

The characteristics of the Las Vegas community are very interesting from the landscape to the people and the array of community services needed. The Las Vegas population is filled with tourists, sex workers, military families, homeless, college students and many ethnically diverse locals. There is a University of Las Vegas (UNLV), College of Southern Nevada and several other education institutes that focus on certain trades.

The strengths of the community include the size, lots of various resources available, great weather, lots of outdoor activities and the cost of living is relatively low. Since Las Vegas is such a large city, the human services department has an array of services for various issues the community encounters and unique challenges with the gambling and sex related issues. The challenges are usually related to sex/human trafficking, drugs, gambling, homelessness and all sorts of crimes.

One of the strengths being its size and the wealth the city accumulates from the tourism and gambling; can also ensure more resources available to address the challenges. The availability of jobs due to the tourism could also help address jobs and donations to address the homeless resources.

In our reading we learned that “macro practice has evolved to include the domains of community practice, management practice, and policy practice to the extent that they are each currently represented by separate social work journals” (Austin et al, 2016, p.274). In addition, authors Austin et al stated that the skills needed in macro practice are policy analysis, case based and systems advocacy and presentation abilities (Austin et al, 2016). Essentially the same concepts we learned in from Kirst-Ashman et al including evaluating results, fun0raising and budgeting (Kirst-Ashman et al, 2018). Since Las Vegas has so many needs, social workers in macro practice must work with local governments to advocate for various communities and implement or strengthen policies that directly affect the community.

References:

Austin, M. J., Anthony, E. K., Knee, R. T., & Mathias, J. (2016). Revisiting the Relationship between Micro and Macro Social Work Practice. Families in Society, 97(4), 270–277. https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.2016.97.33

Kirst-Ashman, K. K., & Hull, G. H., Jr. (2018). Empowerment Series: Understanding generalist practice (8th ed.). CENGAGE Learning.

Levin, D. (2020, March 31).  Las Vegas places homeless people in a parking lot, 6 feet apart. The New York Times. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/us/las-vegas-coronavirus-homeless-parking-lot.html