Responsible Advocacy: Social Workers as Partners, Community Members as Experts

Overview: This workshop provides discussions and hands-on techniques about teaching advocacy in the social work classroom. We emphasize the ways that advocates, particularly in very vulnerable populations, have to prioritize serving as partners instead of experts.Proposal text: Hoefer (2019) defines advocacy as an aspect of social work practice in which social workers act systematically to “defend, represent, or otherwise advance the cause of one or more clients…to promote social justice” (p. 3). Social work education may be preparing students for advocacy representing their communities more than with their communities (Maylea, et al., 2020; Saunders, 2019). In this workshop, we will examine the ways in which advocacy training within the classroom can provide social work students with the structure to engage in advocacy within highly vulnerable communities in ways that prioritize the voices of community members as “expert” and the social worker as liaison of information and active facilitator of social change. Rooted in the assertion that “Empowerment comes through essential dialogue in which the client is the expert, the teacher of his own experience, and further” (Rose & Black, 1985, p. 49), and based on our own experiences with advocacy related to voting and community-based programming in oppressed communities, presenters will guide participants through several activities.
The workshop will start with an overview of the advocacy process using Lane and Pritzker’s (2018) version of a common advocacy model, which includes five steps:
Determine the specific purpose of the advocacy effort;
Assess the internal (organizational) and external (environmental) context for the advocacy effort;
Identify the long-term, intermediate, and short-term goals of the advocacy effort;
Select specific targets for the advocacy effort; and
Identify and select the tactics that will be used in the advocacy effort.
During this section, workshop participants can reflect on their experiences teaching advocacy in the classroom and the ways in which their own identities and those of their students affect the advocacy process.
Second, the presenters will walk through an advocacy exercise to be used in the classroom that focuses on highly vulnerable communities, which is designed to help social work students to advocate for the communities within which they live and work in ways that are supportive and empowering rather than prescriptive. This exercise includes a contextual aspect, where participants will explore the cycling conceptions of ‘worthy and unworthy poor’ by assessing how this concept reemerges over modern US history in myriad social and political contexts (Black Codes, Gilded Age, Tammany Hall, The Patriot Acts, modern-day policing, etc.). After this socio-historical foundation has been established, participants are provided a series of discussion questions to focus on the imperative use of cultural competence and assessment of self in community engagement.
Questions include:
What is a social worker’s role in community work?
Why is Cultural Competence essential?
What is the end goal of community work?
How do we liaise accurately and responsibly between clients and policymakers?
What happens when we skip important steps in the process?

The social work profession calls on practitioners to empower communities to engage politically (NASW, 2021). The final step of the workshop puts the above sentiment to action in a sample classroom activity, a theoretical needs-assessment in a highly vulnerable community. Participants will walk through an interactive small-group planning session.