Scaling Up Social Problems

Abstract

The Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative aims to focus the profession's attention on how social work can play a larger role in mitigating contemporary social problems. Yet a central issue facing contemporary social work is its seeming reticence to engage with social problems, and their solutions, beyond individual-level interventions. Social work research, we contend, must more consistently link case and cause, iteratively developing processes for bringing micro-, mezzo-, and macrostreams of information together. We further argue that meaningful engagement with the initiative requires social work scholars and practitioners to actively scale up practice and research inquiry. We detail two key strategies for employing a scaled-up social work practice and research ethos: (a) employing a critical economic lens and (b) engaging with diverse publics. As proof of concept for these arguments, we offer an early example of progressive era social workers scaling up responses to a pressing social issue: infant mortality.

Convergence of community social work practice, collective impact, and design thinking: What, why, and how?

“…Engaging in virtually any form of community practice, collective impact, or design thinking initiatives requires collaborating with people from a diverse array of backgrounds and disciplines. Thus, it is critical to incorporate interdisciplinary learning opportunities in social work education to assist students in effectively communicating across disciplines, valuing the skill sets and perspectives that others bring, and viewing their skills and contributions in different lights (Nurius et al, 2017; Rodriguez et al, 2017). Interdisciplinary efforts are essential to addressing the Grand Challenges and to facilitating systems change to promote community wellbeing (Wertheimer, 2018).…”

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“…Inherently connected to the increase in scientific focus is the much-needed increase in funding for social work research. Further, to meet the GCSW, which address broad level societal issues, a focus on policy change is necessary despite a current shift within the field toward a more microlevel focus (Rodriguez, Ostrow, & Kemp, 2017). Therefore, the GCSW necessitate renewed efforts toward policy changes that strengthen micro and mezzo level social work efforts and facilitate the big changes needed for real and lasting social change.…”