SC Commissioners

Eighteen social work leaders were invited by ACOSA leaders to become commissioners in 2013. As was the case at the outset, these individuals were identified by the ACOSA leaders at the time to include social workers who were active in or members of ACOSA, and while not officially representing the SC, many of the commissioners hold leadership positions in allied social work organizations or are identified as strong allies to advance macro practice in their respective roles. Withdrawal from being a commissioner is voluntary as there are no formal terms of membership. The commissioners function as an “advise and consult” group to the co-chairs and meet quarterly. As the years have progressed, many of the commissioners have taken on leadership of special projects within the SC through action clusters.

SC Staff

All SC members remain volunteers except for one or two paid part-time graduate students or recent graduates of social work programs who work as administrative assistants. They oversee taking and maintaining meeting minutes, organizing calls for national participants, creating and continuously updating the database, to then send out SC-wide communications, including notices, reports, and the annual SC fundraising letters. These staff members meet at least twice a month with the SC co-chairs and are invited to participate in all SC meetings and national and local events and activities.

Investor Schools

Investor schools are social work degree programs that have contributed financially to the SC at least once since the SC’s inception. With the exception of one or two individual donors, the investors have been the SC’s only source of income. Deans, directors, and chairs of social work programs are provided with an update about the SC and asked annually to make a monetary investment. Since 2014 at least 60 have contributed between $250 and $3,000. Bailey in her role as dean (until July 2017), made in-person presentations about the SC to fellow leaders at the National Association of Deans and Directors (NADD) annual meeting that also connected the two entities over the years.

In 2017, in addition to financial contributions made by deans, directors, or chairs, 75 made an in-kind contribution by identifying a faculty member to participate in a National Taskforce to create a curricular guide on macro socialwork education. The Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Macro Social Work Practice (2018) was the product of this partnership between the SC National Taskforce and CSWE.

Phase 1: Initiating the Guide

An ongoing dialogue between the SC and CSWE in 2017 resulted in the identification of the need for the Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Macro Social Work Practice as the fifth in its series of guides. This guide was designed to provide specific, detailed content and resources for social work educators, students, and practitioners to use in creating or enhancing macro curricula in the classroom and field.

To ensure an inclusive and comprehensive process, the SC invited ACOSA, the Network of Social Work Management (NSWM), and “Influencing Social Policy” (ISP) to each designate a focus area team leader in their respective areas of community, administration and management, or policy practice. CSWE and the SC sent a letter to the deans and directors of all CSWE accredited programs asking them to nominate a faculty member to participate in the newly created National Task Force for the Macro Guide. As news of this initiative spread broadly among schools and programs, 75 faculty became engaged members of the National Task Force.

Working with the SC co-chairs and CSWE representatives, the three focus area team leaders each invited three additional colleagues from among the National Task Force to join their team. This collective became the Coordinating Committee responsible for providing the overall direction and guidance of the National Task Force. Additionally, CSWE hired a consultant, who became part of the Coordinating Committee, to provide additional expertise on issues related to race and racial equity.

Phase 2: Convening the National Task Force

In September 2017, the National Task Force held a 2-day meeting at Catholic University in Washington, DC. The participants deliberated in small and large groups and explored the structure and content of the nine competencies as applied to the three focus areas. The task force then formed working teams that cut across the three focus areas to integrate content within each of the competencies for both descriptions and practice behaviors. The members of the National Task Force also invited two experienced field leaders to operationalize the competencies within field placements.

Phase 3: Formation of Work Groups

Following the National Task Force meetings, each focus area team leader reached out to team members for recommendations of curricular resources for each of the competencies (i.e., readings, field activities, class activities, media, assignments, and case studies). These focus area work groups compiled and refined their recommendations regarding definitions, competencies, and behaviors. These were reviewed and finalized by the focus area team leaders.

Phase 4: Integration of the Competencies Across Focus Areas

During this process, the focus area team leaders regularly met and intensively prepared a document that integrated the definitions and practice behaviors for each competency as provided by the collaborative working groups across three focus areas. They shared these integrated definitions and sets of practice behaviors within their respective focus area teams for further review and input for final drafts for each competency definition and set of practice behaviors.

Phase 5: Completion and Production of the Guide

In early June 2018, the macro leadership completed a final draft to send to the 75 National Task Force members and the consultant for review and comment. With a final review and editing by the SC co-chairs, the Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Macro Social Work was completed in summer 2018. CSWE published and distributed the first-ever Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Macro Social Work in fall 2018.

The goal was to provide a highly informative guide that maximally enabled inclusivity, multivocality, accessibility, and transparency. The task force members made steadfast and concerted efforts to avoid a binary gender identification when using pronouns such as he and she by including nouns such as student, faculty, staff, and community members. The intent of this guide was to provide a solid foundation for social work education programs to develop and enhance their own macro content to ensure that their graduates acquired competencies for specialized macro practice or robust macro content in generalist or integrated programs within the EPAS 2015 curriculum design. As of the end of 2020, 4,300 individuals had downloaded the guide beyond those who purchased it. It has been CSWE’s biggest success of all its guides to date.

As of early 2022, the SC had close to 100 institutional investors who have contributed financially and/or in-kind through the guide.

Allies

Allies is the term used for individuals who support the mission and goals of the SC and as such are an integral part of the SC alliance. There is no formal membership requirement to be an ally other than agreeing to actively endorse the SC mission and promote and participate in the steps and activities needed to advance macro practice. Allies are part of SC outreach and its mailing list and thereby receive regular updates on SC activities. They are invited to participate in these activities and encouraged to add their affiliations to the networking list and circulate information and requests from the SC leadership among their colleagues and related organizations. Allies do not have to be classroom educators or even social workers, but, given the history of the SC, most allies are one or the other. Allies participate in the yearly in-person SC meeting held at the CSWE Annual Program Meeting (APM) (held virtually in 2020). They may also join an action cluster or work group as soon described. As of 2020, there were over 500 allies and supporters engaged in advancing the goals of the SC alliance.

In 2017, Bryn Mawr College SC graduate assistant Jenay Smith was asked to conduct research to produce the story of the SC. This research included interviewing many allies and supporters. A co-author of this article, Smith’s findings are included in this article.

Action Clusters and Work Groups

“Action clusters” (ACs) is the term used for small groups of SC commissioners and allies with specific functions and strategies to advance and activate one or both SC goals, thereby also strengthening the knowledge development of macro social work. Each AC has a lead person/convener and a volunteer group of participants who meet as needed online during the year and in-person each year at the CSWE APM. When the APM was virtual in 2020, the SC held its meeting virtually before the opening. The ACs descriptions and work plans continue to be based on the commissioners’ and allies’ knowledge of what needs to be done to improve macro education and practice.

Reaffirmed in early 2021, the four ACs and their overarching goals continue to be as follows:

Fulfilling the objectives of the four ACs also includes seeking social worker educators and practitioners who are macro leaders willing individually and collectively to advance the viability and visibility of the SC.

Communication within the SC alliance (including within the ACs) is done mostly online. In addition to email blasts, since 2018 the SC has conducted qualitative surveys to update the progress that has been made to advance macro practice among social work academic institutions. This survey has also become a major recruitment tool for the ACs and work groups and to provide data on their macro-program directions.

Based on the surveys and quarterly SC meetings, three work groups were created to address specific topics: “Licensing and Macro Social Work” was formed in 2016 to interface directly with the national Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) as it affects macro education and practice (Nienow et al., 2022). Licensing and Macro Social Work became a work group, made up of educators and practitioners from across the United States, that also addresses other fundamental issues affecting our profession. After determining the need for a comprehensive and inclusive definition of the profession, the group underwent an arduous vetting process with multiple stakeholders to create a definition of social work that neither gave preference to clinical social work nor marginalized macro social work (Nienow et al., 2022). The definition was reviewed and then adopted by the SC and presented at several major professional conferences.

In 2018, the “National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign,” an initiative to engage the social work community in voter activities, was endorsed by the SC and other major professional associations. With SC co-chair Terry Mizrahi and Commissioner Mimi Abramovitz at the helm, this work group also became known as an SC partnership.

At the end of 2020, a new work group on the “Macro Workforce” was created to address the challenges and opportunities in pursuing a macro career and make both of those more visible. Its initiatives in 2021 were twofold: First, the creation of a new AC #5, “ACARDA: Advancing Critical Anti-Racism Dialogues for Action,” to make explicit and reify the need for macro interventions in response to heightened public awareness of historic issues of structural and institutional inequities and disparities; and second, a collective macro-informed response to CSWE’s EPAS 2022 draft with broad-based input from within the SC.

As with the ACs, the role of each work group convener is to outreach separately to its identified participants and report at commissioners’ meetings on the progress toward and/or accomplishments of its objectives. Active involvement in and leadership of an AC or work group has been one way to recruit and subsequently invite participants to also become commissioners.

Council on Social Work Education (CSWE)

CSWE was the first and one of the most important organizations for the SC to connect with, especially given the earlier described history of macro education in the profession and CSWE’s role in standard setting for accreditation and reaffirmation of BSW and MSW programs. Shortly after its formation, the SC reached out to CSWE for support and resources to help implement its 20 by 2020 and rebalancing goals. The request, which included the establishment of a unique commission within CSWE to focus on macro curricula, was not accepted. By 2017, CSWE issued a statement of “affirmation,” notably eschewing the term “endorsement.”

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW)

In April 2014, the SC organized what was deemed a “historic first” to raise the profile and increase its collaboration with major social work organizations. Held at the NASW headquarters, it included the CEOs of NASW, CSWE, and the Association of Social Work Boards with selected affirmations listed here.

STATEMENT FROM THE NASW NEWS—JANUARY 2016 CEO Angelo McClain— Editorial: “Taking a Stand Against the Status Quo”

Across the country social work is taking a stand against the status quo. For instance, the Commission to Advance Macro Practice is on a campaign to rebalance social work’s focus to assure that sufficient emphasis is placed on social work macro practice and addressing social injustices. The commission’s mantra “Macro matters” is an important reminder of the enormous power in policies, politics, and people.

STATEMENT FROM THE NASW BOARD OF DIRECTORS—FEBRUARY 2018 President Kathy Wehrmann: “The NASW Board supports the Special Commission’s goals and objectives and will work to collaborate with the Special Commission.”

Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB)

Responsible for the national social work licensing program, ASWB has a strong relationship with independent state social work licensing boards. Since 2016, ASWB has accepted the invitation to meet regularly at CSWE with the SC licensing work group to examine the impact of regulation on macro practice social work.

The group continues to meet and engage with individuals and organizations about the role and impact that regulation and licensing has on the profession. They have identified three primary recommendations related to social work regulation, which include encouraging state adoption of the Model Practice Act regulation language, pursuing graduate category licensure for social workers focused on macro practice, and linking title protection to degree versus license. The members of the work group are committed to advancing these recommendations through research, education, and policy advocacy.

National Association of Deans and Directors (NADD)

As per its website, NADD is “a volunteer membership organization dedicated to promoting excellence in social work education.” Founded in 1986, NADD members are deans, directors, and chairpersons of graduate social work programs in the United States and Canada.

The NADD Board of Directors wholeheartedly endorses the Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work and supports its goal of “20 by 2020.” We strongly feel that the Special Commission is an important endeavor and will work with these colleagues to achieve this goal that is central to the future of the social work profession.

—Martell Teasley, MSW, PhD, President of National Association of Deans and Directors, (personal communication, October 2017)

Influencing Social Policy (ISP)

A collaborating organization with the SC since its inception, ISP was a one of three macro partners in the production of the SC’s Specialized Macro Curricular Guide (with NSWM and ACOSA). The mission of ISP is to actively engage social workers in policy research, practice, and teaching to advance social welfare policies that promote human well-being and social justice. In 2020 ISP began proactive work to become an antiracist organization and is reassessing its mission, core values, and bylaws via an antiracist lens. ISP sponsors an annual policy conference and teaching institute and was a major sponsoring organization for the United for Macro 2021 Conference.

Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy (CRISP)

CRISP is a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging and facilitating social workers’ engagement with Congress, created in 2012 by Charles E. Lewis.

CRISP supports the goals and agenda of the SC to promote macro practice including the policy and political components. CRISP continues to collaborate with the SC and other macro organizations to rebalance the micro and macro end of the social work profession.

—Charles E. Lewis, Jr., MSW, PhD, Director, (Personal communication, September 2016)

The Network for Social Work Management (NSWM)

Started in 1985, the mission of NSWM focuses on the education and development of “social impact leaders.” NSWM is one of the SC’s United for Macro partners.

NSWM started its Human Services Management Certificate program in 2015 and is aligned with the journal Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership, and Governance (formerly Administration in Social Work).

NSWM also shared insights learned about establishing a certificate program with ACOSA to help launch ACOSA’s 2020 Community Practice Certificate.

The Network for Social Work Management is pleased to be a United for Macro partner with the Special Commission and other macro organizations.

—Lakeya Cherry, MSSW, DSW, CEO, June 2016

Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR)

In 2017, the SC created a work group with members active in the SC and the SSWR to focus on macro social work research. As a result of discussions with SSWR leadership, increased collaboration with the SC has occurred. SSWR is continuing to promote the importance of macro policy, politics, and social justice agendas for all social work educators and scholars by having as its keynote speakers Angela Davis in 2019 and Stacy Abrams in early 2020. The following is an excerpt from SSWR’s statement of support for the SC:

The SSWR supports the Special Commission agenda and has been moving in a similar direction on many of the issues identified by the Special Commission… . We agree wholeheartedly with the following two recommendations, and also believe that they are well underway within the association… . (1) Providing top-level support, such as special lectures, pre-session and post session activities… . (2) Extending support to researchers to amplify their macro findings/implications.

—Ruth Dunkle, PhD, President, (Personal communication, May 2018)

Macro Social Work Student Network (MSWSN)

The SC collaborates with the MSWSN, a national, student-initiated project with ACOSA. MSWSN has helped create student-led chapters and supports macro social work student organizations in the United States and abroad. The organization also works to increase the voice and visibility of current and future macro students and those interested in obtaining macro skills and professional connections.

Furthering Outreach Within and Beyond Our Professional Organizations

Expanding the alliance has allowed the SC to impact how organizations and key players in organizations understand and can align with the SC mission. Building on the foundational support, endorsements, and affiliations of the current partnerships to establish greater degrees of formality and interdependence comes with issues of heightened risk (Bailey & Koney, 2022). Nonetheless, exploring this increase in formal connections is the expressed, desired next step in the SC evolution. Such structural and system changes would enrich the work of the ACs and work groups and provide opportunities for the creation of new ones as well. Examples include to produce and publicize a series of podcasts that demonstrate successful interventions and initiatives to address social, economic, and racial justice for students and agency staff and make better use of the SC webpage on the ACOSA site or create a new SC website.

The SC is mostly known through “word of mouth” and its visibility at some national meetings of sister organizations, but many feel that the SC is not doing enough to reach a larger audience. One consideration is the development of its own social media communication channels. Movements like integrated health and education utilize online forums when communicating with their members; this creates greater visibility (Taub, 2001). Social media via Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have not been created or utilized by the SC thus far.

Relatedly, a closer link can be created with one of the SC’s allied macro organizations #macroSW, a twitter account, especially as the digital world remains a largely untapped resource in the social work field (Castillo De Mesa et al., 2019). Goals include the following:

Identify and Engage Macro Liaisons

There are now more individual allies who have prominent connections to the organizations with which the SC can continue or begin to partner. Coordinating these people and putting their connections to mutual use also enables the SC to be more efficient (Yeung, 2009) and is key to moving forward important goals (Walter et al., 2012). Reaching out to faculty members and field instructors from MSW and BSW programs to serve in this capacity hopefully will enable enhanced reciprocal communications—that is, the SC better learns what is happening in the programs and the field, and SC recommendations can be more easily distributed for feedback, refinement, and collective action. To this end, the 2021 SC survey asked the SC members if they would be willing to serve in this capacity. Deans, directors, and chairs of social work programs will also be asked to identify a faculty member to serve as a liaison to seek and provide information from and to their colleagues, students, field instructors, and so forth. All liaisons will become allies as well with, again, mutual gain as the desired goal.

Establishing macro liaisons can also well serve the SC investor schools and programs. To date, these members of the SC alliance have not been held to any specific criteria or expectations when they are designated as investor schools and institutions. They are asked to donate to the SC because they are schools of social work but not sufficiently tied to the work of the SC. The investors function like the weak and strong ties explained by Daly (2011); they have exercised strong and much needed ties in relation to funding but have weak ties to additional roles such as advancing 20 by 2020 or rebalancing micro and macro curricula. Working through the macro liaisons could increase funding and sharing of other resources. To better meet the needs of the Investors, the SC would learn more through the liaisons as to the type of resources and support the investors need to increase their macro agenda.

Relatedly, allies are not required to maintain dues to be a part of the SC and its work. This could be an area to reconsider. One challenge is that the members of the SC also pay dues or membership fees to ACOSA and other social work and related organizations. Another option is to ask individuals for monetary donations. Because they are not asked for a specific financial or in-kind contribution ironically, they might not feel as much a stake in the SC as they could have.

Moreover, allies could work with macro liaisons in approaching investor schools and programs to contribute financially each year, prioritizing new deans/directors/chairs to cultivate a relationship with the SC. Based on survey findings, it is clear that most everyone is continuously drawn to the SC because of the progress being made toward its goals. In the future, additional ways will be explored to elevate the accomplishments and enlist deans and faculty in addressing challenges and dilemmas and further share successful strategies as well. As long as the momentum keeps building and people are continuously invested in the SC work, fundraising can expand.

Reconfiguring the Special Commissioners’ Roles and Responsibilities

The SC will also explore possibilities for more formal representation from other social work organizations that are part of United for Macro, for example, ISP, #MacroSW, NSWM, ACOSA, and the MSWSN. In so doing, commissioners will be further supported in issuing more public statements about the impact of policies on individuals, the social sector organizations that serve them, and the communities where they live.

The commissioners can set more specific criteria and measurable objectives so that new allies know exactly what is expected of them moving forward. Additionally, this will give allies more latitude in creating and following through on their own macro projects and provide even minimal resources—in-kind or, if available, financial as well. This is how some of ACs were birthed. According to the 2017 report, respondents answered that their voices were being heard.

Furthering Outreach to the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education (GADE) and Baccalaureate Program Directors (BPD) While Deepening the Collaboration With the Network (NSWM)

Actions here would include more intentionally reaching out to doctoral faculty and chairs to discuss ways to increase macro-level research and dissertations and develop macro career-track opportunities. Additionally, steps can be taken to engage more BSW faculty and department chairs to identify and support how they integrate macro content into their BSW curricula. Joint activities with the NSWM would greatly further the knowledge base of organizational leadership curricula in our schools and programs.

Enhancing the Strategic Agenda with CSWE, NASW, and NADD

Activities here would include

Challenges in Measuring 20 by 2020 Success

Questions still arise about the definition of a macro concentration and how one evaluates it. In 2012, eight percent of students in master’s level social work programs were enrolled in a macro-equivalent concentration (Rothman, 2013). Because CSWE has had inconsistent and changing criteria for defining the various types of macro concentrations or specializations, it has been difficult to measure whether the SC’s specific goal of 20% by 2020 was met; an informal self-assessment by the authors has that percentage between 15% and 18%. That said, macro concentrations are largely defined individually by each school. There is no universal standard for schools and programs to measure a macro or macro-like concentration.

In the coming years, the SC will work toward identifying additional criteria to ascertain the attainment of rebalancing macro and micro in BSW programs and in MSW programs with generalist/integrated orientations. It will continue to work with the CSWE to determine common macro-practice competencies that will be used as the standard for each program. In so doing, if students are in a generalist social work track that satisfies the macro competencies, they can be accurately counted. This may increase the numbers included in the pool of students who have obtained a rebalanced micro-macro education. With the expectation among the SC commissioners, investors, and allies that the SC continue to advance macro social work practice at individual institutions and profession-wide, exploring the use of an SC electronic data-collection system to collect different tiers of information may also be necessary.