Policy Practice and Advocacy I
(#201)
2007 – 2008
Fall Semester
Course Description
Policy Practice and Advocacy I examines the principles, as well as the knowledge and skills required for professional social work policy and advocacy practice. Building on the knowledge gained in Community Practice, this course emphasizes finding one’s own voice as an advocate, learning different advocacy approaches, understanding how the policy system is used by advocates to promote policy change. Case studies, examples from the field, and the knowledge gained from interactions with successful advocates are instrumental to students’ learning. The course is informed by concepts covered in foundation courses such as Human Behavior and the Social Environment II and Social Welfare Policy and Services.
Policy Practice and Advocacy I develops student knowledge and skills in advocacy within professional social work, particularly regarding the consequences of the so-called “radical” tradition in social work. The course explores the problems and prospects of protest politics and the implications for advocacy, along with select practical advocacy tactics and strategies. Students learn the importance of critical analysis of current trends in relation to advocacy and activism, as well as enduring challenges for advocacy practice. Special attention is given to the socio-cultural context of social work practice and to issues that can affect policy practice, as well as how agency/institutional practices affect groups differentially and thus raise critical advocacy and practice implications. These perspectives are integrated with the study of the ethical principles of social work practice as outlined in the NASW Code of Ethics.
Policy Practice and Advocacy I is the second course in the three-semester sequence of courses in the concentration. It builds on the Community Practice course, which is the foundation of the concentration, and also lays the foundation for the content to be covered in Policy Practice and Advocacy II, the final concentration course.
Each course in the Policy and Practice concentration integrates students’ field placement experiences to emphasize learning by doing, using case studies and examples from the field to building a rich perspective on policy advocacy as an important form of social work that involves the development of specific skills for producing social change.
Course Objectives
This course will enable students to:
1. demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which race, color, national and ethnic origin, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, gender, and age affect their work with individuals, communities and organizations, as well as their efforts to promote policy change;
2. find their own voice as advocates and demonstrate sensitivity to cultural differences as they engage in policy-related practices, especially with vulnerable and at-risk populations;
3. draw from the NASW Code of Ethics to guide their policy practice and to address ethical dilemmas and value conflicts;
4. work the policy system as an advocate to promote social change;
5. work to mitigate the effects of oppression and discrimination based on race, color, national or ethnic origin, class, sexual orientation, gender, age, and disability and ensure that professional practice with communities and organizations and policy advocacy activities are informed by a commitment to social and economic justice;
6. utilize and critically reflect upon research-based knowledge and evidence of best practices derived from juried professional literature to inform their policy-related practice;
7. apply analytic skills to the integration of theory and research in problem-solving and the development of change-oriented practice strategies;
8. apply conceptual frameworks including behavioral, social-cultural, ecological, organizational, and political theories to inform and improve policy practice;
9. demonstrate critical thinking skills to examine practice perspectives and to enhance policy practice.
Class Policies
Students are expected to attend all class sessions. Please notify the instructor
in advance if you have to miss a class. More than 3 unexcused absences will
result in a grade of Unsatisfactory for this course.
Students are expected to submit written assignments on time. The instructor
should be notified in advance if the student expects to miss an assignment due
date.
Use APA guidelines (5th ed., 2001) for citing all references.
Students are expected to have read all required reading assignments in advance
and come to class prepared to discuss and critically appraise these materials.
Class will begin and end on time with a short break.
Cell phones and beepers must be turned off during class sessions.
Please review orientation materials on ethics in social work and the academe,
especially those regarding plagiarism.
Students who think they may need accommodations because of a disability are
encouraged to meet with their Instructor, early in the semester. As soon
as possible, students should also contact the Coordinator of Access Services,
at 610-526-7351 in Canwyll House, to verify their eligibility for reasonable
accommodations.
Course Assignments
Assignment #1: Thinking Like a Policy Advocate/Program Analyst: Negotiating/Assessing a Field Contract
Due: Week 4
Objectives: connect placement to course, structure placement to serve learning goals related to advocacy, encourage advocacy thinking about negotiation in agency setting
As required for your field placement, you must prepare a negotiated field placement learning contract. A field placement contract, according to conventional standards, ideally includes:
1. A series of explicit personal learning goals that you plan to achieve at your
field placement during the academic year;
2. One or more measurable objectives for each goal that you established for yourself.
These objectives should represent anticipated outcomes associated with your
learning goals; and
3. Identification of the specific action steps you will take to increase the likelihood
that your goals and objectives (outcomes) specified in your contract will be
realized. Included here should be incremental markers by which your progress
will be assessed.
Review your negotiated contract and assess it in terms of whether it will enable you to get the kind of experience that you feel you need in order to become a reflective practitioner who has advocacy at the core of their professional identity. Does the contract conform to the conventional ideal? Are the goal and objectives good ones? Are there issues regarding whether they may not help you learn what you think you need to learn? From a critical social constructionist perspective, are the measures leaving out or mischaracterize things you should be learning? Is measurement a good way to go to track your learning? Your assessment need only be 2-3 pages long (typewritten double-spaced).
Assignment #2: Advocacy Journal
Due: Week 9
Objectives: connect placement to course, learning to become a reflective practitioner, using theory to inform practice
Keep a journal that is your own personal diary about your placement and its ability to serve as a basis for your reflecting on and thinking about how to make advocacy a core dimension of your professional identity as a social worker.
Your journal should have dated entries, each entry should be at least two or three paragraphs long and you should try to have at least two entries for each week.
Your journal is due in class Week 9 but you might want to continue to keep making entries for the entire semester and beyond.
Assignment #3: Policy Campaign Agenda
Due: Week 15
Objectives: learn to plan for advocacy work, apply advocacy theories and concepts to a specific advocacy campaign, develop analytical abilities related to advocacy
Choose an advocacy issue.
Develop a detailed plan for an effective campaign regarding that issue.
Focus on a program for achieving change regarding public policy that affects your issue and indicate why it is important for addressing your issue.
Prepare a detailed policy campaign plan. Specify your constituency and who your campaign is designed to serve. Indicate what sort of relationship(s) you will be developing to your constituency and why those are important for your campaign. Your detailed plan is due one week after the last class. It should be 10-12 pages typewritten double-spaced.
In your policy campaign plan, be sure to:
(1) Specify your advocacy goals, indicating their sources and how they ideally ought to have been developed.
(2) Specify what your overall strategy is for achieving your goal.
(3) Indicate the specific, concrete objectives you think need to be met that will indicate you are taking effective steps to achieve your goals.
(4) Provide detail description of the specific activities that your campaign will undertake in order to achieve its goal of policy change. Include a wide variety of tactical activities or techniques in order to leverage the policy change you are seeking.
(5) Discuss how your plan includes consideration that your campaign will be a dynamic one in which adjustments in goals and objectives need to be made in light of changing circumstances and possibilities.
(6) Indicate how your campaign strikes its own balance between idealism and realism, between pushing for as much needed policy change as possible, while still working to achieve what is feasible. Specify safeguards for avoiding classic pitfalls in such a policy advocacy balancing act.
(7) Provide a timeline, budget, as well as anything else you think is needed to make your plan credible and appealing to relevant constituencies and coalition partners. Mention possible funding sources and why they might want to support your campaign. Provide other relevant thoughts about fund-raising.
Required Texts:
Reisch, M. and Andrews, J. (2002). The road not taken: A
history of radical social work in the United States.
Piven, F. F. (2006). Challenging authority: How ordinary people change
Warren, M. R. (2001). Dry bones rattling: Community building to revitalize
American democracy.
Gecan, M. (2002). Going public: An inside story of disrupting politics as
usual.
Sen, R. (2003). Stir it up: Lessons in community organizing and
advocacy.
Additional readings are accessible via blackboard. Print blackboard readings only as they are assigned; not all at once.
Course Outline:
9/4 Introduction and Overview
Introductions to the course and each other, overview of course, expectations, hopes and dreams.
Field Placement Assessment Assigned
9/11 The Radical Tradition in Social Work
History of social work, especially policy-related social work in its more radical guises, with attention to how we got here from there
Reisch, and Andrews, The road not taken, chapters 1-6.
9/18 The Radical Tradition in the Contemporary Era
How did social work come to go in a different direction than the radicals wanted and what does that mean for doing policy-related social work today
Reisch, and Andrews, The road not taken, chapters 7-11.
9/25 Doing Radical Social Work
Consideration of how it is still possible for radical social work to still be done even in clinical settings, with attention to the risks personally and collectively
Cloward, R. A. and Piven, F. F.
(1975). Notes toward a radical social work. In Roy Bailey and Mike Brake (Eds.)
Radical Social Work (pp. vii-xlviii.)
Field Placement Assessment Due
10/2 Beyond Science to Compassion and Commitment
Thinking critically about how evidence-based practice can have political biases, and how thinking politically is the beginning of advocacy in any setting
Parton, N. (2000). Some thoughts on the relationship between theory and practice in and for social work. British Journal of Social Work 30: 449-463.
Strier, R. (2006). Anti-oppressive research in social work: A preliminary definition. British Journal of Social Work 36: forthcoming.
10/9 Protest Politics: The Power of Disruption
First model for doing social change advocacy, the power and limits of the protest model are to be discussed
Piven, Challenging authority, chapters 1-3
10/16 FALL BREAK
10/23 Protest Politics: The Implications for Advocacy
Consideration of applications to various settings, clinical, community, policy
Piven, Challenging authority, chapters 4-6, epilogue
10/30 Community Organizing
Second model for doing social advocacy, its resilience and its limits
11/6 The New Infrastructure to Community Organizing
Consideration of how the second model is changing today with implications for policy advocacy
Warren, Dry bones rattling, chapters 6-9
Advocacy Journal Due
Social Change Campaign Plan Assigned
11/13 Community Organizer Skills
What do community organizers do and how do they do it, a first-hand account and discussion with the author
Gecan, Going public
11/21 Activist Skills: Tactics and Action
How community organizing is different when not place based and more sensitive to diversity when working with groups experiencing marginalization
Sen, Stir it up, chapters 1-6.
11/28 Speaking Truth to Power: Validating Client Knowledge and Engagement
Consideration of a importance and challenges for doing a more client-centered, bottom-up approach to advocacy
Sen, Stir it up, chapters 7-9.
12/4 Enduring Challenges of Advocacy Practice
How fighting power requires a long-term perspective, a life-time personal commitment that transcends professional obligations
Sen, Stir it up, Conclusion.
Brooks, F. (2005). Resolving the dilemma between organizing and services: Los Angeles ACORN’s welfare advocacy. Social Work 50, 3: 262-271.
12/11 Activist, Advocate, or Organizer? In an Era of Globalization
How does globalization change who you think you are and what you do as a policy advocate
Groarke, M. (2004). Using community power against targets beyond the neighborhood. New Political Science, 26, 2: 171-188.
Sperling, V.
Ferree, M. M. and Risman, B. (2001). Constructing global feminism:
Transnational advocacy networks and
russian women's activism. Signs, 26: 1155-1186.
Fisher, R. and Shragge, E. (2002). Organizing locally and globally: Bridging the divides. Canadian Dimension, 36, 3: 38- 42.
12/19 Social Change Campaign Plan Due