Social workers focus on changing the individual or the environment
Should social workers focus on changing the individual or the environment? Often, social problems require intervention at all levels (micro, mezzo, and macro). At the micro and mezzo levels, social workers engage with individuals and small groups to target individual change. At the macro level, social workers target broader social forces impacting a group experience. For example, a social worker could address sexual assault by providing individual case management or facilitating a support group for survivors. A social worker could also address sexual assault at the community level by raising awareness of consent or advocating for policy change to increase survivors’ access to support and justice.
In this Discussion, consider a client population you might like to work with during your field placement and how you might engage this population at the micro/mezzo and macro levels.
Sample Solution
Human beings may be entering very difficult times with the degradation and potential destruction of our sustaining natural world. Collectively, we may be facing a fundamental shift in values and approaches towards living on and with this planet. Governments are beginning to respond. There are suggestions that society could be in the initial stages of constructing an environmental state much as we created the welfare state in the last century (Meadowcroft, 2007). What relevance does social work have as humankind faces these serious challenges? As a profession with a long-standing declared focus on person-in-environment, social work might be expected to play a leadership role in the planning stages of any new environmental state. Yet we have generally been silent on these serious threats to human well-being and continued existence. Laying the conceptual foundations for the new profession of social work, Mary Richmond (1922) acknowledged the physical environment as an important contextual consideration for practice but perceived its importance in terms of only its social aspects, asserting that the physical environment “becomes part of the social environment” to the extent that it “frequently has its social aspects” (p. 99).
