Professor Darlyne Bailey Co-Edits Encyclopedia of Macro Social Work Practice

Darlyne Bailey, professor and dean emeritus at the GSSWSR, is the lead co-editor-in-chief of the inaugural Encyclopedia of Macro Social Work (EOMSW), with Terry Mizrahi. The EOMSW was published in January 2023 by Oxford University Press and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). The EOMSW includes close to 200 long-form overview articles written by 334 diverse authors and was peer-reviewed by a 13-member editorial board. GSSWSR professors Tamarah Moss and Cindy Sousa, doctoral candidate Sangeun Isabel Lee, and MSS alumna Jenay Smith are among those whose scholarship is included. All articles cover the history and context of a given topic; challenges and opportunities for social workers; future trends and directions; and relevant issues that advance social, racial, environmental, political, and economic justice.

Bailey’s breadth of experience in advancing macro social work practice set her up to become a leader in the making of the Encyclopedia of Macro Social Work. She and Mizrahi polled social work programs around the country to ensure that all types of institutions, academics and practitioners of diverse social identities were represented within both the editorial team and the authors in this publication. Bailey and Mizrahi read literally every article in the EOMSW before it was published.

“This project was not an easy undertaking, yet a true 'labor of love' that required constant coordination among multiple people for the final product to be published,” says Bailey. “Our incredible editorial team alongside our Oxford colleagues-turned-friends learned a lot in the process as in many ways, in the words of Paulo Freire, we made the road by walking."

Bailey hopes that the EOMSW will serve as an essential resource for not only macro focused social workers, but for the entire social work community serving individuals, families organizations, communities, and policy development while elevating the important contributions of macro social workers within the field at large. 

Clinically-licensed, Bailey has been a macro social work leader for many years. Among her national leadership positions in social work, Bailey is the founder and director of the Social Justice Initiative (SJI) at the GSSWSR, which convenes community-based services and integrates participatory research and education to advance the knowledge, values, and skills necessary to dismantle structures of injustice, recognizing that racial inequities are central to these structures of oppression. She is also editor-in-chief of the 25+ year-old double-b Lind peer-reviewed journal Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping.

In July 2013, Bailey was asked by a blue-ribbon group appointed by the national Association for Community Organization and Social Action (ACOSA) to chair a special commission that would formally become the “Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work.” Bailey asked that Mizrahi of Hunter College join her in this leadership. This commission was convened in response to the now legendary report written by Jack Rothman and Tracy Soska, following a survey of ACOSA members and faculty of macro programs in social work schools around the country. The "Rothman Report" revealed the “clinicalization” of social work that marginalized macro practice in social work education and has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of social work students pursuing the macro track. The goals of the commission were twofold: for 20 percent of all graduate-level social work students to specialize in macro social work within M.S.W. programs that offered it as a specialization by the year 2020, and for social work curricula to be restructured in M.S.W. programs to include an equal amount of micro and macro course content. In 2018, the Special Commission partnered with the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to create the first-ever Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Macro Social Work Practice, for which Bailey was co-chair of the coordinating committee. Celebrating its 10th year, this January, the Special Commission became its own nonprofit. Bailey continues to co-lead the newly titled “Special Commission to Advance Macro Social Work”, with its now over 1,100 volunteer members, serving as commissioners, investor schools and programs, and individual macro allies. Among its new goals, the Special Commission looks forward to working with other Macro organizations and CSWE to update the Macro Curricular Guide to correspond to the new 2022 CSWE accreditation competencies while furthering attention to issues of equity and justice.