Project: Part 3: Analysis of a Policy As an astute social worker and professional policy advocate, once you have selected and identified a social problem, you begin the process of creating and impleme
Running head: POWER RESOURCES IN SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE AND ADVOCACY 1
POWER RESOURCES IN SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE AND ADVOCACY
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POWER RESOURCES IN SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE AND ADVOCACY
Post a description of how social workers use power resources in their social work practice and advocacy.
Social workers use power resources in their social work practice and advocacy to engage policymakers in purposeful actions that can help people to advance their rights, human dignity, and opportunities (Nouman et al., 2020). These power resources help social workers to secure the adoption of a policy proposal by changing the state legislature and changing policies. Social workers can use political power, person-to-person power, substantive power, procedural power, and process power (Jansson, 2018).
In the use of political power resources, social workers individuals and groups join political groups or elected positions to promote their values and self-interest of special groups or people with special needs like the disabled in society. Social workers use the person-to-person power resource to secure the adoption of a policy. In person-to-person tactics, social workers exert their power in their discussions with policymakers. In this tactic, social workers can employ expert power where they display their knowledge and personal credentials to convince others to support and adopt their policy proposal (Jansson, 2018). They use coercive power in this tactic to give threats if their policy proposal is not supported. Social workers use reward power to promise inducements like supporting a candidate in campaigns who supports their policy proposal. In substantive power, social workers may shape the content of a policy proposal to elicit support from a specific group of persons. In this tactic social workers may use vagueness or change policy to get one person’s support in the adoption of a policy. Social workers may use procedural power to gain support or change for a policy proposal like through the use of a parliamentary technique where a social worker may route for a proposal increasing its chances of enactment. Social workers use process power through influencing the tenor, tempo, and scope conflict deliberations to get their proposals enacted (Jansson, 2018).
Select a type of power resource you would use in your practice and advocacy.
I would use the person-to-person power resource to seek support for the adoption and enactment of my policy proposal and employ coercive power and reward power. Coercive power may be when I threaten to strike.
Describe the ethical issues or concerns in using the type of power resource you selected
In routing for the support, adoption, and enactment of my policy proposal through the person-to-person power resource I will employ tactics like coercive power and reward power which may be unethical. The use of coercion is unethical because the other party will be under duress to support my interests. If the party under coercion chooses to take legal actions against me I can be charged under a duress crime. In the use of the tactic of reward power, I will cause an unethical behavior of the other party to earn the reward because the person will shift his or her attention away from work obligation and focus on the reward (Hoefer, 2019).
References
Hoefer, R. (2019). Advocacy practice for social justice. Oxford University Press.
Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social justice (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Series.
Nouman, H., Levin, L., & Lavee, E. (2020). Working through barriers: Shaping social workers’ engagement in policy practice. The British Journal of Social Work, 50(4), 1107-1125.
