The week that was Social Work Week 2018: “Social Workers on The Front Line of Real Issues”

Mosaic Home Care, myself (Jane Teasdale), Dina Campeis, Kevin Lopes and our co-op student Laura Lee made our ways to three separate hospitals, Michael Garron, Mackenzie Health and North York General and hosted lunches for the social workers.

The North York General Hospital event was sponsored by Mosaic Homecare Services & Community Resource Centres, Elder Care Home Health and Revera.

The tag line for Social Work Week this year was “Social Workers on The Front Line of Real Issues”.  Sometimes it is easy to see the health system as just the doctors and the nurses, but the gel that holds it all together is represented by the professional social work community.  They are the front line as are indeed the people they serve. 

We also know how tough a job social workers perform day in and day out, and how difficult it must be to work with the limited resources they are given when set against the significant issues of the social front line.  As our society ages and the number of socially vulnerable adults with complex care needs grow this conflict between available resources and the needs of the front line is set to grow.

In fact, we see an ever growing need for increased social worker involvement, especially in the community, as the front line pushes out.  As more and more care is pushed into the community we see the need for higher levels of focus not just on the delivery of care but on the non clinical psycho social engagement and infrastructure critical to social and emotional well being.  We see a strong need for social workers to become actively involved in the growing macro..ness of our communities’ social ecologies, both structurally in terms of looking at how we can all work together as well as organically in terms of facilitating social interaction. 

There is currently a growing interest in the on-going debate between the macro and the micro focus of social work and the following is some interesting literature on the subject:

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND PRACTICE: BRIDGING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN ‘MICRO’ AND ‘MACRO’ LEVELS OF SOCIAL WORK

Balancing Micro and Macro Practice: A Challenge for Social Work Jack Rothman and Terry Mizrahi

Social work and macro-economic neoliberalism: beyond the social justice rhetoric Gary Spolander, Lambert Engelbrecht & Annie Pullen Sansfaçon

Revisiting the Relationship Between Micro and Macro Social Work Practice Michael J. Austin, Elizabeth K. Anthony, Ryan Tolleson Knee, & John Mathias 

Re-Envisioning Macro Social Work Practice Bowen McBeath, Ph.D., MSW

Perceptions of Macro Social Work Education: An Exploratory Study of Educators and Practitioners Katharine M. Hill Christina L. Erickson Linda Plitt Donaldson Sondra J. Fogel Sarah M. Ferguson

ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION EDUCATION FOR MACRO INTERVENTION A SURVEY OF PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS