Community healing and reconciliation have been a focus of many nations in response to civil war, genocide, and other conflicts. There also has been an increase in the number of high-profile murders of young African Americans at the hands of law enforcement in the United States. In 2020 this problem was even more real and growing with the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and Ahmaud Arbery. These tragic incidents have led to public outcry, civil unrest, and police protests for social change moving from a threshold of peaceful assemblies to violent confrontations across the United States causing the world to take notice and posit the question, “do Black lives really matter?” To answer this question a critical overview of gun violence, a reflective aftermath of the killings of two African American youths in Sanford, Florida and Cleveland, Ohio, and the community’s voice and reaction and the community’s resiliency towards healing and reconciliation are examined. Community model initiatives are introduced of the two cities affected in bridging police-community relations through acknowledging and addressing historical injustices with police and systematic racism and how they attempted to bring positive change, healing and reconciliation.
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Community Healing and Reconciliation
Joshua Kirven and George Jacinto
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Critiques of Trauma-Informed Systems
Wendy Shaia, Temeka S. Bailey, Christopher Beegle, and Maura Tennor
Much of the trauma experienced by individuals, families, and communities, especially in historically marginalized areas, has been created by a series of social phenomena such as structural oppression, racism, and discrimination. Public-serving systems are uniquely positioned to counter the perpetuation of retraumatization that disproportionately impacts oppressed groups. Therefore, trauma-informed care (TIC) and trauma-responsive care (TRC) must evolve through the conscious application of an antiracist and antioppressive approach, thereby preventing the further harming of already marginalized groups. Macro accountability is established by analyzing power systems through a culturally responsive lens rather than blaming and pathologizing individuals impacted by historical and persistent racialized trauma. Applied to TIC and TRC, the SHARP framework renders more effective social work services at the personal and individual, professional and organizational, and political and societal levels more just and humane. A compare and contrast analysis of adverse childhood experience studies, summarizing TIC and TRC, and a case study of the application of the SHARP framework to human services work may shed light on guiding public-serving systems and promoting opportunities for posttraumatic growth and transformative change necessary for dismantling policies, protocols, and practices that increase vulnerability and long-term adverse outcomes in socially disadvantaged communities.
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Digital Technology
Gina Griffin
As technological advances continue to develop, delivering macro human service through social work innovations becomes a new priority for the discipline. Digital technologies offer potential applications using tablets, smartphones, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and wearable technology to enable whole new possibilities for human services. As a result, policymakers and community organizers alike can access the existing information much faster, and potentially connect with hard-to-reach communities to make meaningful decisions. Incorporating the latest digital trends from business and industry settings to macro social work practice are highlighted. By utilizing digital technology, human service organizations can become more proactive and citizen-centered, potentially transforming personal and economic capacity.
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Post-Disaster Trauma and Recovery
Tara M. Powell, Shannondora Billiot, and Leia Y. Saltzman
Natural and man-made disasters have become much more frequent since the start of the 21st century. Disasters have numerous deleterious impacts. They disrupt individuals, families, and communities, causing displacement, food insecurity, injury, loss of livelihoods, conflict, and epidemics. The physical and mental health impact of a disaster can have extensive short- and long-term consequences. Immediately after a traumatic event, individuals may experience an array of reactions such as anxiety, depression, acute stress symptoms, shock, dissociation, allergies, injuries, or breathing problems. Given the economic and human impact of disasters, social workers are often quick to respond. Historically, the social work profession has provided services on the individual level, but initiatives have expanded to address community preparedness, response, and recovery.
This article will explore the complexities of disaster response and recovery. Health and mental health impacts will be examined. Resilience and posttraumatic growth will then be discussed, exploring how individuals overcome adversity and trauma. Individual and community level preparedness mitigation, response, and recovery will explore how the field of social work has evolved as disasters have increased. Followed by an exploration of how social work has evolved to develop individual and community level preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery activities as disasters have increased. Finally, the article will examine special populations, including those with disabilities, children, indigenous people, older adults, and social service workers in all phases of disasters. As disasters grow more frequent it is vital for social work professionals to improve their efforts. We will conclude the chapter by examining the coordinated efforts the social work profession is involved in to help communities recover and even thrive after a traumatic event.
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Racism and Accountable Policing for Black Adults in the United States
Robert O. Motley Jr. and Christopher Baidoo
Racism is a public health concern for Black adults in the United States given its prevalence and association with adverse health outcomes for this population. The frequency of high-profile cases involving police use of gratuitous violence against Black adults has raised concerns regarding racially discriminatory law enforcement practices. In this article, racism is defined and a discussion is offered on its impact on the health and well-being of Black adults in the United States; the intersection of racism and policing; contemporary racialized policing practices; emerging evidence on prevalence rates for exposure (direct and indirect) to perceived racism-based police violence and associated mental and behavioral health outcomes; and police accountability through executive, legislative, legal, and other remedies.
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Suicide and Public Policy
Janelle Stanley and Sarah Strole
The historical context of suicidal behavior and public policies addressing suicide arose simultaneously within the United States, and both reflect a culture of discrimination and economic disenfranchisement. Systems of oppression including anti-Black racism, restrictive immigration policy, displacement of American Indigenous communities, religious moralism, and the capitalist economic structure perpetuate high-risk categories of suicidality. Suicidal behavior, protective factors, and risk factors, including firearms, are examined in the context of twentieth and early twenty first century public policy. Recommendations for public policy will be discussed with consideration for policies that impact communities disproportionately and social work ethics, such as right to die laws and inconsistent standards of care.
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Womanism and Domestic Violence
Selena T. Rodgers
Domestic violence is a public health problem shown to inflict severe mental and physical injury on millions of individuals and has considerable social costs. Absent from the literature is an examination of womanism ideologies, which provide a greater understanding of the full praxis that black women who experience domestic violence engage. Drawing from initial conceptualizations of womanism and later contributions of Africana womanism, this article brings into focus pervasive acts of violence perpetrated against black women, their racial loyalty to protect black men, and the limitations of existing domestic violence models and interventions. This entry addresses how these three interconnected areas are treated within the conceptual framework of womanism. An overview of violence against black women reveals the historical and contemporary forms of knowledge and praxis that have sought to overcome the social problem of intimate partner abuse, including the social construction of controlling images and the Power and Control Wheel (The Duluth Model). This entry also examines the prevalence of violence perpetrated against black women and compounding factors. In addition, this author considers the Violence Against Women Act and its consequences on laws and policies that affect the race, gender, and class experiences of black women coping with domestic violence. Also analyzed is the quintessential role of demographics, the culture of domestic violence, and international debates about womanism, including how black women intellectuals are prioritizing race-empowerment perspectives and a reference point to articulate healthy black relationships are prioritized. The article also reviews social work practice with black women victims/survivors of domestic violence and their families.
