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Community and Social Justice Perspectives

Chapter 13

This is an exciting and energizing topic, but it can also be quite intimidating to start thinking and working from a social justice perspective. Before I get started though I’d love to hear what kinds of social justice work you all have done in the past. If you were like me in grad school, you may be fairly “green” or new to social justice work, but you may be doing it without even realizing it too. So as we cover the different areas feel free to share your own experiences and stories.

Give them time to share any social justice work they’ve been involved in, either directly or indirectly.

I will give some examples of my own throughout the presentation. We won’t spend much time on this powerpoint but I do want to go over some important concepts, especially since it is our ethical duty to advocate and serve in social justice roles.

Moving Upstream

See pg 464 of text

How does this relate to work of a counselor?

Discuss how you can treat people individually and help people one at a time, but you may recognize trends occurring or themes that occur as a result of problems in the community or within the system you work in. It’s important to recognize when that may be the case and take some form of action in the community or within your system. These concepts apply no matter what setting you’re in- community, school, or higher ed.

Codes of Ethics related to Social Justice

Our codes mandate that we collaborate with agencies, organizations, and individuals

ACA A.7- Counselors advocate to address potential barriers and obstacles

So ethically, we cannot just sit back and tolerate it when we see social injustices occurring!

Remind them that we cannot turn our back when we see injustices occurring. However, keep in mind it’s not to say you’re expected to go over the top with advocating. It’s important to also manage your self care and be aware of when you’re doing so much that it’s taking away from your work as a counselor (and leading to burnout)

Comprehensive Community Counseling Programs

Direct community services:

Preventive education

Indirect community service:

Influencing policymakers

Direct client services:

Focuses on outreach activities

Indirect client services:

Client advocacy

The book reviews different types of services- indirect and direct. We’re not going to focus on all the specifics as you can read about it, but do recognize that advocacy can take on many forms.

Social Justice Perspective

Rests on the assumption that all people have a right to equitable treatment and a fair allocation of societal resources, including decision making

Some of the ethics codes refer to the role of social justice advocacy as an ethical mandate.

Defines social justice perspective- hopefully you have all reviewed this concept in the reading and understand the basics.

Social Justice Perspective

The goal of counseling is to promote the empowerment of people who are marginalized and oppressed in our society.

Courage in dealing with fear is a cornerstone of doing multicultural social justice work.

Empowerment is a big theme of social justice- it’s important to help clients feel they have power to make change as well. It’s important to meet clients where they are at, and you may need to start small.

The second bullet on this slide is important- you will hear this as a counselor if you attend professional associations for sure! Courage in Dealing with Fear… what does that mean to you?? Why would it be said it’s the cornerstone of SJ?

Social Justice Perspective

Referred to as a fifth force that entails a paradigm shift beyond the individual

Although not all counselors will have the time or energy to effect major institutional change, all have the capability of working toward some kind of social change.

It is necessary to acquire a set of social justice and advocacy competencies.

“Fifth force” (four forces according to physics laws)- the 5th force as it’s used here refers to the strong force of a counselor doing advocacy work and pushing for social change.

n physics, there are four conventionally accepted fundamental forces or interactions that form the basis of all known interactions in nature: the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces.

This slide also addresses how you may not have time or energy to effect major change, but to keep in mind that you should be working toward SOME kind of social change.

Alternative Counselor Roles

Change agent

Consultant

Adviser

Advocate

Facilitator of indigenous support systems

Facilitator of indigenous healing systems

Review these roles on your own as there are again a lot of ways you can advocate. For me personally, I have served a number of these roles. I definitely feel accomplished as a change agent within the system. Both at the school level and university level, I notice issues that need to be changed. For example, in the schools one thing I did was focus change on enrolling more minority students in higher level classes. I did a professional development training to encourage teachers to pay more attention to who they are selecting for higher level courses, and in classroom presentations and individual counseling sessions I encouraged students as well. That is one example of a lower level change that didn’t take too much energy on my part.

A higher level example of a change agent is that I have actively participated in three different day on the hill events in Florida. As president of the FL SCA, I led our association to write up a bill and with the support of a lobbyist to get it on the agenda of K-12 subcommittees at the state level. I met with Reps, Senators, and their aides individually in their offices, spent hours drafting guide sheets and memos for school counselors to encourage them to advocate, and worked directly with a lobbyist as a consultant. We ended up not passing the bill, but what did result was a full state study of the state of school counseling. The Office of Public Policy & Government Accountability (OPPAGA) met with me multiple times to design a survey and distribute it throughout the state. They collected data and developed a report that we were then able to use in subsequent years for lobbying. Unfortunately last year, once again our bill did not pass, but they are going to continue the hard work! If anything it opened the eyes of a number of state representatives to recognize that this is a problem. We held advocacy meetings at the state conference and would go to district level meetings to talk about advocacy as well. Without counselors serving in social advocacy roles, nothing would happen and the state of school counseling would be even more discouraging in terms of student to counselor ratio than it is today!

Community Counseling Practitioner

Duties involve:

Ability to support community needs

Develop partnerships in creation and delivery of services

Promote community organization and development of activities

Outreach

Develop strategies to empower the community

This shows different ideas and ways counselors can advocate- we’re going to do an activity and these next few slides may help you come up with ideas.

Community Counseling Practitioner

Duties involve:

Influence policymakers

Consult with community agencies

Evaluate human services programs

Advocate and assist with initiatives

Develop and build community assets

More examples and ideas for the activity

Activity:

Research ACA’s (counseling.org) Government Affairs resources

Learn about AMHCA’s (www.amhca.org) advocacy updates & recent action request

Set ONE goal to take action that you can accomplish within the next week

Set ONE long term goal that you’d like to do within your first 1-5 years as a counselor

Advocacy Competencies

See Toporek et al. article (2009)

Click link: https://www.counseling.org/Resources/Competencies/Advocacy_Competencies.pdf

Lewis, Arnold, House, & Toporek’s model; endorsed by ACA in 2003

You can’t do it alone!

You can try, but it will be difficult!

Form a support team

Look for community groups and resources

Be aware of burnout and prevent against it

Keep in mind…

Relationships Between Counselor and the Agency

If dissatisfied with the “System”, first make sure you are self-aware of your own feelings/motives

Counselors who are dissatisfied with an agency or the system may decide to:

Subvert it any way they can

Conform to institutional policies out of fear

Make compromises between institutional demands and personal requirements

Leave the agency

One thing to recognize is where your dissatisfaction is coming from. For example, is your dissatisfaction with the system due to your feelings of frustration towards either your boss or co-workers? Could you be experiencing burnout and this is leading you to feel the system is at fault? Perhaps you have not fully explored the system policies/procedures to realize that it’s not the system but rather inaction on your part.

Examples of FL Advocacy Groups/Assns:

FL Council for Community Mental Health

NAMI Florida

FL Coalition Against Domestic Violence

FL Coalition Against Human Trafficking

Equality Florida

Pride Center Florida

HRC Florida

FL Immigrant Coalition

FL Coalition for Children

FL Suicide Prevention Coalition

The next few slides are examples of social advocacy groups and resources. I encourage you to explore these as you do the activity.

Activity:

Get in groups of 3-4

You are a group of counselors who share similar passions about some social justice issue of your choice

Look for state and community resources that might help you gain momentum on working towards improving the community/system for an underserved population

Come up with a few ideas for how you could serve in a social justice role. Your ideas can be on both a small level and a larger level.

Identify the type of service (slide 4) and the type of social justice role (slide 8)

In your answer also integrate the ACA Advocacy Competencies (see next slide)

Jot down your ideas and prepare to share a few ideas with your peers when we come back together.