Whether they are aware of it or not, most social workers are advocates.

They might help a client apply for certain benefits or access needed services. Perhaps they assist someone with navigating the complicated process of applying for health care coverage. However, few clinicians move beyond that work with individuals to engage at a broader level, advocating for changes in their organizations or society as a whole.

A new book by Bruce Jansson seeks to break that trend, offering tips and strategies for social workers to embrace advocacy as a tenet of the profession.

“It’s a tool to empower social workers to move beyond traditional counseling roles to become active in trying to change policies,” said Jansson, who holds the Margaret W. Driscoll/Louise M. Clevenger Professorship in Social Policy and Administration at the USC School of Social Work. “It opens a door to them to get into advocacy at higher levels.”

In Social Welfare Policy and Advocacy: Advancing Social Justice through 8 Policy Sectors, available now from Sage Publications, Jansson extends his previous work on policy advocacy by exploring issues specific to topics such as gerontology, education, criminal justice and mental health.

Using case studies and video vignettes, he describes how serious issues such as violations of ethical rights or poor quality of services can affect clients, families and communities. In addition to analyzing the effects of specific policies, the book illustrates how social workers can engage in what Jansson terms micro, mezzo and macro policy advocacy to address those problems.

“People have done policy work for hundreds of years, but what he has done is matched the ethical principles of social work with analysis of the core components of different policy work,” said Sam Mistrano, a clinical associate professor who oversees the foundation policy curriculum at the USC School of Social Work. “Jansson has made it theoretically sound to work on policy from the social work perspective.”

Bringing policy to life

Although Jansson coined the term policy practice approximately three decades ago, he said social workers often view themselves as direct practitioners whose only task is to help individual clients.

In addition, policy is generally seen as a dry and uninviting topic, focused largely on analysis of certain programs or understanding legislation related to social welfare.

“It can feel very abstract and disconnected,” said Gretchen Heidemann Whitt, who completed her PhD at the USC School of Social Work and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Whittier College. “What does this have to do with the client who is sitting right in front of me?”

Heidemann Whitt coauthored a chapter in the book on mezzo policy advocacy that outlines how social workers and other professionals in the human services can move beyond one-on-one work with clients to consider the effects of policies in organizational and community contexts.

“So much of what goes on at the decision-making level of the agency affects our work with clients,” she said. “I hope this is a call to arms for these direct practitioners to become more aware and step up to the plate to become leaders.”

Leveling up

To illustrate how a social worker might move among the various levels of advocacy, Jansson described a case study from the book involving a pregnant teenager. Although pregnant teens in public school have the legal right to decide whether or not to stay in their current school or go to a continuation school, in this particular instance, the girl was not aware of that right.

A social work intern at the school recognized the issue and informed the girl that she did not have to transfer to a continuation school, which might have negative consequences such as affecting her likelihood of graduating. Moving to the mezzo level, the social worker considered why the school didn’t inform the girl of her rights.

“Probably because counselors don’t know the legal rights of pregnant teenagers,” Jansson said. “So she helped develop a training program for the staff.”

At the macro level, the social work intern delved into whether state laws are clear enough regarding the rights of pregnant teenagers and broader issues such as sex education.

Red flags

Jansson describes these specific manifestations of core social problems as red flag alerts and peppers the book with various examples in each of the eight sectors he examines as part of his strategy to engage readers in the world of policy.

For instance, many older adults don’t receive adequate information to make an informed decision about end-of-life options such as palliative and hospice care, he said. They might not know about their legal rights regarding living wills and advance directives.

“We still have roughly 16 million Americans who don’t have health insurance in the United States, even with the Affordable Care Act,” Jansson said. “This applies to these other sectors — people can’t afford key elements of the service, so they don’t go, or they are denied eligibility.”

In the criminal justice sector, can groups reform the prison system, ensuring that public safety remains a priority while providing opportunities for incarcerated individuals to receive rehabilitation and skills to become contributing members of society?

Heidemann Whitt, who coauthored the chapter on criminal justice, said the book offers practical approaches that will help social workers fulfill the expectation that they will advocate on behalf of their clients.

“Our code of ethics mandates us to be aware of what is going on in the world and how policies affect our clients and the populations we serve,” she said. “We are also mandated to promote social justice and engage in advocacy.”

“We are a reform-oriented profession going all the way back to Jane Addams,” Jansson added. “That is deep in our DNA as a social work profession, and we work with many vulnerable populations that face dysfunctional policies of all kinds. I hope this book enriches social work practice, and in the end, I think advocacy is something we ethically have to do.”