[Ebook PDF] Social Welfare Policy and Advocacy: Advancing Social Justice Through Eight Policy Sectors – 2nd Edition

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[Ebook PDF] Social Welfare Policy and Advocacy: Advancing Social Justice Through Eight Policy Sectors – 2nd Edition

ISBN-13: 978-1506384061
ISBN-10: 1506384064

Author: Bruce S. Jansson (Author)

Social Welfare Policy and Advocacy presents a multi-level framework to show students how micro, mezzo, and macro policy advocacy can be used effectively by social workers in eight policy sectors: healthcare, gerontology, safety-net, child and family, mental health, education, immigration, and criminal justice. Author Bruce S. Jansson identifies seven core problems within each sector and discusses the skills social workers need, the challenges they face, and the interventions they can use at each level of advocacy. Readers will gain knowledge of social welfare policy issues and be equipped with essential tools for engaging in policy advocacy.

Brief Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Brief Bio-Sketch of Bruce S. Jansson
Chapter 1 • Becoming a Policy Advocate in Eight Policy Sectors
Chapter 2 • Advancing Social Justice With Seven Core Problems
Chapter 3 • How Policy Advocates Advanced Social Justice Through American History
Chapter 4 • Providing Micro Policy Advocacy Interventions
Chapter 5 • Practicing Mezzo Policy Advocacy Interventions
Chapter 6 • Engaging in Macro Policy Advocacy
Chapter 7 • Becoming Policy Advocates in the Health Care Sector
Chapter 8 • Becoming Policy Advocates in the Gerontology Sector
Chapter 9 • Becoming Policy Advocates in the Safety Net Sector
Chapter 10 • Practicing Policy Advocacy in the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Sector
Chapter 11 • Becoming Policy Advocates in the Child and Family Sector
Chapter 12 • Becoming Policy Advocates in the Education Sector
Chapter 13 • Becoming Policy Advocates in the Immigration Sector
Chapter 14 • Becoming Policy Advocates in the Criminal Justice
Sector
Index

Preface
I published the first edition of this book in April 2015. It was the first text to present a multilevel policy advocacy framework that links micro
policy advocacy, mezzo policy advocacy, and macro policy advocacy—and demonstrates how these three kinds of advocacy can and should be used by social workers in the health care, gerontology, safety net, child
and family, mental health, education, immigration, and criminal justice sectors. It was the first text that identified “Red Flag Alerts” that
highlighted opportunities for policy advocacy at three levels in each of the eight policy sectors.
The imperative to engage in policy advocacy at three levels stems not only from the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) but from policy shortcomings in each of the eight
sectors where most social workers are employed. Underfunded programs in the safety-net sector are partly responsible for extreme economic
inequality that is approaching levels of the Gilded Age of the 1890s.
Millions of children lack sufficient or adequate childcare, and thousands of children graduate from foster care only to become homeless in the child and youth sector. Persons with chronic mental conditions lack
sufficient community-based services to help them in the mental health and substance abuse sector where epidemics of drug abuse, alcoholism, anxiety, and depression are inadequately addressed. Roughly one-half of
minority students fail to graduate from many high schools in the education sector, and relatively few of them graduate from junior colleges and colleges. The nation has not prepared sufficient numbers of
social workers, nurses, and gerontologists to help roughly 30 million baby boomers as they become older in the gerontology sector.
Warehousing of inmates and lack of preventive programs have contributed to high rates of recidivism in the criminal justice sector. The United States has readily used immigrants for labor in agricultural,
tourism, construction, and caregiving for seniors but has often failed to provide them with adequate human services and violated their human rights in the immigration sector. Moreover, the Code of Ethics of NASW
requires social workers to engage in policy advocacy with respect to vulnerable and marginalized populations.
I’ve made a number of changes in this edition. I place the multilevel advocacy framework in Chapter 1 rather than in Chapter 3 to highlight it.
This framework was first introduced in the first edition of this book. This framework informs the discussion in every succeeding chapter unlike many other texts on policy sectors that restrict policy advocacy to a
single chapter or section of a chapter. I discuss how policy advocates can move between micro, mezzo, and macro levels with case examples in Chapter 1. I discuss Red Flag Alerts that are specific manifestations of
the core issues such as “a clinic or hospital fails to link its patients to community-based preventive services” under Core Problem 7 in the health sector.
I discuss in Chapter 1, as well, how I developed the multilevel policy advocacy framework in three phases. By examining 800 articles and books, I identified seven core issues discussed in health literature and
research. These seven core issues include (1) ethical rights, human rights, and economic justice; (2) the quality of services and programs; (3)
cultural responsiveness of services and programs; (4) preventive strategies and programs; (5) the affordability and accessibility of social programs; (6) the scope and effectiveness of programs that address
consumers’/clients’ mental distress; and (7) linkages between social programs and services with clients’ households and communities.
Qualitative interviews with hospital social workers and other frontline professionals confirmed that they frequently address the seven core issues in their advocacy interventions. My work in Phase 1 led to the
publication of Improving Healthcare Through Advocacy (John Wiley & Sons, 2011) that Dr. Gary Rosenberg, the director of the Division of Social Work and Behavioral Science at Mount Sinai Hospital in New
York City, called “by far the best advocacy book I have seen.” In Phase 2, I engaged in quantitative research that was funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). This grant
funded the gathering of data from 300 frontline health professionals in eight hospitals in Los Angeles County that include social workers, nurses, and medical residents. The survey confirmed that frontline
professionals frequently engage in policy advocacy on micro, mezzo, and macro levels with respect to the seven core issues. The data showed that these professionals engaged in micro policy advocacy for each of the manifestations of the seven core issues. Data was gathered, as well, about the extent to which the 300 frontline health professions engaged in macro policy advocacy with respect to each of the seven core problems.
As I suspected, respondents reported far lower levels of macro policy advocacy as well as with respect to mezzo policy advocacy, but significant numbers did engage in mezzo and micro policy advocacy as I
discuss in Chapter 1. I cite four peer-reviewed articles in Chapter 1 that discuss validated scales that measure frontline professionals’ engagement in micro and macro policy advocacy as well as validated
scales that predict the extent specific frontline health professionals engage in micro and macro policy advocacy.
In Phase 3, I approached experts in mental health, child welfare, gerontology, education, and criminal justice sectors to see if the multilevel advocacy framework describes the advocacy interventions of
frontline professionals in their areas. They responded in the affirmative as can be seen in chapters on these sectors in this text that contain many Red Flag Alerts that describe social workers’ micro, mezzo, and macro policy advocacy with respect to the seven core issues in these various sectors.
I also discuss in Chapter 1 how the Code of Ethics of NASW requires social workers to engage in policy advocacy at micro, mezzo, and macro levels and requires social workers to engage in advocacy with vulnerable populations, such as the 18 ones I identified in The Reluctant Welfare State (Cengage, 2018), including women; African Americans; Asian Americans; seniors; Native Americans; Latinos; children and
adolescents; persons with physical and mental disabilities; persons with substance abuse and mental health challenges; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons; persons accused of violating laws and residing in or released from correctional institutions; immigrants; low-income persons; homeless people; and white low-income and blue-collar people in rural areas.
I devote Chapter 2 to the seven core issues that provide the basis for policy advocacy. I discuss how ethicists, the United Nations, religious leaders, researchers, courts, the Code of Ethics of NASW, historical
events, and cultural anthropologists analyze them.
I’ve inserted a chapter on the evolution of the American welfare state in Chapter 3 of the second edition for several reasons. I discuss why policy advocacy is particularly needed in a nation that currently lags behind the social policies of 20 other industrialized nations. I discuss the pendulum swings between relatively liberal and conservative periods in the United States, such as the relatively liberal New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s as well as the relatively conservative Gilded Age of the late 19th century and the presidencies of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Donald Trump in the contemporary period. I introduce them to social workers who engaged in policy advocacy during both periods, including Jane Addams, Harry Hopkins, Whitney Young, Representative Ron Dellums, Senator Barbara Mikulski, and Senator Debbie Stabenow.
I also identify many advocates who worked closely with social workers and their causes, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez. I want contemporary social workers to realize that social reforms emanate from the efforts of thousands of policy advocates in both liberal and conservative periods. I discuss how the Social Work Code of Ethics requires social workers to engage in micro, mezzo, and macro policy advocacy no matter the political milieu while also suggesting that social workers can seek to move the nation toward humane policies.
I’ve retained Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of the first edition that respectively discuss micro policy advocacy, mezzo policy advocacy, and macro policy advocacy. They discuss policy practice skills at each of these
levels. They provide vignettes that illustrate policy advocacy strategies and skills, including deciding whether to proceed, assessing the context, placing issues on agendas, engaging in policy analysis, implementing policies, and evaluating policies.
Each of the eight policy sector chapters is organized in the following way. They begin with “empowerment” sections that discuss how social workers can assume critical advocacy roles. I discuss some key policy
defects in each sector as well as promising policy reforms including evidence-based initiatives. Each sector chapter contains a historical timeline that describes how policies evolved and how the nation’s
extreme income inequality impacts clients in each sector. I discuss the political economy of each sector by identifying key players, key interest groups, and important advocacy groups. Each of the sector chapters identifies and discusses Red Flag Alerts under each of the core problems.
They all end with a challenge to students to think big by proposing major policy initiatives.
This is a user-friendly book. It begins with the multilevel policy advocacy framework that is illustrated by scores of vignettes that show how specific social workers engaged in micro, mezzo, and macro policy
advocacy with respect to many Red Flag Alerts in each of the policy sector chapters. The text identifies numerous controversies in each of the sectors while pointing the way to possible solutions. I updated the policy sector chapters to include recent policy enactments during the presidency of Donald Trump.
I describe this book as an “advocacy passport” to different policy sectors. It allows social workers to obtain an overview of different sectors as they move among them during their careers and as they make referrals to clients who need services and resources from different policy sectors. Although this text has extensive materials about policy advocacy practice, it also contains information about scores of policies that impact the lives of clients.