Time Schedule:
Tina Aiko Schaefer
SOC W 512
Seattle Campus
Focuses on ways in which management activities contribute to service effectiveness for clients and quality of conditions for staff. Various managerial roles, functions, and skills examined. Impact of agency structure, culture, and mission on staff, clients, and organizational outcomes discussed with emphasis on ways social work managers influence change. Offered: W.
Class description
This is the first of a two quarter course sequence that prepares students for entry-level macro social work practice. Using an anti-oppression lens, students develop foundational skills in assessment, intervention and evaluation with groups, organizations and communities; and in policy construction and implementation. These arenas are viewed as both tools and targets for change efforts. This process is driven by the principles of economic and social justice, multiculturalism and anti-oppression practice and requires social workers to become critical thinkers and reflective practitioners engaged in and capable of facilitating an action-oriented model that reflects social work’s core values.
Student learning goals
Apply an anti-oppression lens to analyze critically the effects of power, inequality and diversity on organizational, community and policy practice.
Critically understand and apply relevant theories regarding human behavior in the social environment to groups, communities and organizations, while recognizing their implications for social and economic justice
Utilize culturally competent intervention skills at the organizational, community and policy levels, including: problem definition, assessment, creating visions for change, identifying alternative options, values and goal clarification, development and implementation of action plans, monitoring and evaluating the change efforts
Identify the influence of particular social, economic, political and cultural factors and assumptions as these affect the definition of social problems and their solutions.
Describe the process of policy development and implementation at the organizational level and in the legislative arena and at the organizational level
Apply intervention skills at the group, organization, community and policy levels including: advocacy, community organizing, coalition building, and social marketing, with particular attention to collaborating with disenfranchised populations in the quest for social and economic justice.
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
