Adult Protective Services (APS) are empowered by states and local communities to respond to reports and cases of vulnerable adult abuse, neglect, and self-neglect. While incorporating legal, medical, and mental health services, APS programs are part of the social services delivery system and incorporate principles and practices of the social work profession.
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Adult Protective Services
Patricia Brownell and Joanne Marlatt Otto
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Alaska Natives
Sarah (Hicks) Kastelic
Alaska Natives represent less than 1% of the U.S. population but reside in more than 229 Native villages and account for 40% of federally recognized tribes. Most Alaska Native communities shared common Euro-American contact experiences: exposure to western religions, education, and disease. Historical trauma contributes to many of the social welfare problems Natives experience today: low educational attainment, unemployment, inadequate health care, substance abuse, and violence. Service delivery mechanisms, lack of cultural appropriateness, and isolation compound these pressing issues. Locally delivered social welfare services that take into account traditional Native worldviews, values, languages, and intergenerational relationships are effective in addressing many of these issues.
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Bioethics
Larry W. Foster
Bioethics and biomedical ethics are defined. Common bioethical concepts, exemplary moral values, fundamental ethical principles, general ethical theories, and approaches to moral reasoning are reviewed. The scope of topics and issues, the nature of practice situations in bioethics, and social work roles on organizational bodies that monitor and respond to bioethical issues are summarized, as are trends in bioethics. Practice contexts, from beginning to end of life, are highlighted with biopsychosocial facts, ethical questions and issues, and implications for social work—a profession uniquely positioned in giving bioethics a social context.
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Child Protection
Brett Drake and Melissa Jonson-Reid
All children require a safe and nurturing environment for optimal development. Child maltreatment is among the most serious societal problems, with severe behavioral, health, and economic costs. Preventing and responding to child maltreatment is therefore among the most critical services a society can provide. Child protection in the United States is handled by many agencies in a general sense, including law enforcement and health departments. The main agency tasked with protecting children is the Child Protective Services (CPS) system, which is charged with supporting the safety and well-being of children who may be at risk of child maltreatment. Child maltreatment is a common societal problem, with various national studies suggesting that up to a third of children may experience maltreatment before turning 18. CPS contacts about 4% of all children in the United States each year. Among children contacted, about one fifth are substantiated and a very small proportion of all children reported are placed in foster care. CPS serves poor persons at higher rates than wealthier persons, consistent with the higher need for protection faced by those under economic stress. Similarly, Black children are contacted by CPS at a rate almost twice that of White children, consistent with increased risks and stressors faced by that population, largely associated with historical and current racism, particularly as manifested in economic racial stratification. Child welfare practice innovations include, among other things, the increased use of “differential response” programs, in which situations presenting fewer safety risks are handled with less emphasis on investigation, and an increased awareness of the need for preventative services, including services aimed at supporting those under severe economic stress.
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Cultural Equity and the Displacement of Othering
Rhea Almeida
This article proposes social equity as a paradigm to guide social work practice and education. “Cultural equity” encompasses the multiplicity of personal, social, and institutional locations that frame identities in therapeutic practice as well as the classroom by locating these complexities within a societal matrix that shapes relationships of power, privilege, and oppression. Foregoing cultural competency for a cultural equity framework requires both analysis and interruption of the “otherizing” process inherited through multicultural discourses and the legacies of colonization. Through the use of education for critical consciousness, accountability through transparency, community-learning circles, progressive coalition-building, and usage of action strategies, transformative potential is revealed across multiple sites, both local as well as global. Multiple illustrations for the coherent application of cultural equity in social work practice and education are offered.
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Managed Care
Vikki L. Vandiver
Since the mid-1980s, managed care has been one approach used to address the economic crisis in the American health-care system. This entry overviews managed care from the perspective of policy, procedure, practice, and system. Specifically, emphasis is given to understanding the emergence and history of managed care, multiple definitions, how it works, and examples of managed care plans, key legislation, existing research, its future, and implications for social-work practitioners.
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Outcome Measures in Human Services
Bruce Friedman and Rosario Olivera
The field of social work transformed over time from providing relief to less fortunate individuals to a sophisticated profession that looks at evidence-based measures to deliver change. This has been possible by looking at accountability aspects to demonstrate improvement by addressing performance outcomes resulting from interventions. Outcomes operate on all levels from micro to mezzo to macro, and the skills needed include identifying who is being served and the specific goals to be achieved. This article introduces the use of a logic model as a way to explain interventions and outcomes on a short-term, intermediate term, and long-term basis. The section also describes current measures being used to demonstrate how outcomes are used to justify the practice.
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Out-of-School Suspension of African American Youth and Progressive Education Alternatives
Wendy Haight and Priscilla Gibson
Racial disproportionality in out-of-school suspensions (suspensions) is a persistent, multi-level social justice and child well-being issue affecting not only youth, families, and schools but society as a whole. It is a complex, multiple-level social problem that will require an equally complex response. The design of effective remedies will require adequate understanding of the problem as well as the historical and sociocultural contexts in which it emerged and is perpetuated. Progressive educators have offered a number of alternatives to harsh and exclusionary discipline, but research is needed to examine their effectiveness, especially in reducing racial disproportionalities.
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Political Social Work
Suzanne Pritzker and Shannon R. Lane
Political social work navigates power in policymaking and politics to elicit social change. It is grounded in core social work values and ethics, including the professional responsibility to challenge systemic discrimination and institutional inequalities through political action. Political social workers address systemic barriers to social, political, economic, and racial justice, and engage in political action to promote individual and communal well-being through policy processes and outcomes. This article discusses the five domains of political social work: engaging individuals and communities in political processes; influencing policy agendas and decision-making; holding professional and political staff positions; engaging with electoral campaigns; and seeking and holding elected office. It also examines social workers’ political activity in the United States and globally, the role of social work education, and challenges for political social work, including the profession’s legacy of supporting injustices and tensions around the role of political social work, and identifies opportunities to address these barriers.
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Post-Disaster Recovery Services in Taiwan
Wan-I Lin
The 921 Earthquake in 1999 and Typhoon Morakot in 2009 both brought catastrophic damage to Taiwan. In the aftermath of these two disasters many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social workers collaborated with central and local governments to provide post-disaster relief and reconstruction services. Among these, the most important initiative was the launching of a system for providing post-disaster human services, including counseling, education, employment, social welfare, and health care.
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Posttraumatic Growth
Selena T. Rodgers
Trauma literature has seen a paradigm shift from pathology to embracing positive trajectories. Posttraumatic growth (PTG), defined as a positive psychological change resulting from a struggle with traumatic or life-changing events, may occur in a variety of populations and events. This entry, therefore, aims to increase our understanding of PTG. The entry begins with the conceptualization of PTG, followed by a discussion of protective factor associations, measures, and psychometric priorities. Nuanced attention is given to global translations and cultural aspects. The entry then presents debates about the challenges, controversy, and biases, as well as an overview of the empirical literature. The entry concludes with PTG contributions for social-work practice and pedagogy, together with recommendations for future research.
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Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings
Maryanne Loughry
The integration of psychosocial support into emergency responses is a recent development. In the 1990s, the need to address the mental health and psychosocial well-being of individuals and communities affected by emergencies became clear following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia (1991–1992) and the Rwandan genocide (1994). Prior to this, mental health in emergencies was primarily addressed in clinical settings. However, the humanitarian field was divided between the medical sector, which asserted that psychiatric clinical intervention was best, and many nonmedical actors, who preferred a person-in-environment approach. The need for consensus resulted in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) working group’s establishment of the framework of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS), which combined both approaches. The IASC Guidelines on MHPSS in Emergency Settings, published in 2007, are widely recognized as explaining how best to administer psychosocial support in emergencies. This ended decades of tension between mental health and psychosocial experts in emergency and humanitarian settings.
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Rural Practice in Macro Settings
Laura Trull, H. Stephen Cooper, and Freddie L. Avant
Rural social work, the history of which stretches back more than a century, has been revitalized since the mid-1970s. The renewed interest in rural social work has led to an increase in scholarship on rural social work practice, much of which is a direct result of the efforts of the Rural Social Work Caucus and its annual National Institute on Social Work and Human Services in Rural Areas, as well as social work influence in rural organizations in allied professions. Recent research endeavors have moved our understanding of the differences between rural and urban communities beyond the common definitions, which are limited to population and population density. We have also come to realize that there are many different types of rural communities, all of which have different characteristics, needs, and so forth. Rural practitioners and researchers have also reached a better understanding of the following: rural culture and lifestyles, the importance of approaching rural communities from a strengths perspective rather than a deficit or problem focus, and the challenges to rural practice presented by the characteristics that are common across rural communities (e.g., lack of anonymity, dual relationships). Rural areas have also been sharply and uniquely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not surprisingly, the increase in research on rural social work practice has been accompanied by an interest in preparing social workers for rural practice and growth in the number of graduate programs focused on such. The importance of these programs lies in the unique nature of the challenges faced by rural communities. For example, many rural communities are experiencing sharp population declines while at the same time seeing substantial increases in adults who are 65 years of age and older. Other common trends include economic decline and subsequent increase in social issues; substantial issues with substance abuse, especially methamphetamine and opioids; lack of technology infrastructure; concerns related to the environment and/or conversation of natural resources; and lack of services for veterans. The key to successfully addressing these issues in rural communities is involvement from social workers who are prepared to practice in the rural context.
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Social Media
Maria Rodriguez and Jama Shelton
Social media are defined as applications and websites that allows users to share content, usually of their own making. More than just a teenage pastime, social media users include individuals and organizations, across a broad range of social positionalities. Key social work organizations, such as the NASW and AWSB, have begun noting the proliferation of social media usage in education and practice and have begun developing guidelines to govern their use. The American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), in their Grand Challenges of Social Work initiative, has also highlighted social media as an important area of growth for research and education. Despite the field’s nascent enthusiasm, practical and ethical concerns persist.
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Vocational Services
Lauren B. Gates
Vocational rehabilitation (VR) services, provided through a jointly funded state–federal rehabilitation system and available in each state, help people with disabilities prepare for, secure, and sustain employment. Since 1920, VR Programs have helped 10 million individuals with disabilities reach employment. Anyone with a mental or physical disability is eligible for VR services. While a range of services is provided, the services most consistent with VR goals are those, such as supported employment, that promote full integration into community life. Social workers are essential to community-based VR services; however, a challenge for the profession is to assume new roles to meet best practice vocational standards.
