As social workers, our purpose is to promote the human well-being, and to advocate for people’s rights in society. Social work is a profession that gives individuals the opportunity to support and help those in need. Social workers help those who are vulnerable, oppressed by society, and victims of poverty or discrimination. Micro and macro-level theories are two different ways to help individuals, and they differ in their strategies and the type of population. In one hand, micro level covers people’s needs individually by applying therapy that help one person in specific. On the other hand, macro level instead of working with individuals, it focuses more on problems and situations that affect the entire population. It advocates for a social change that benefits society. Even though both levels are great in order to help people and the community, is it possible that one can be better than the other one?
A group of social workers argue that the social workers’ mission of achieving social justice is disappearing. Jacobson states that, “...its leadership role in innovative systems reform and social change work, has virtually disappeared” (2001:51). Jacobson
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Hull House was one of the first settlement houses founded in the United States by James Addams and Ellen Gates. They started this project to help individuals and provide better services. In the Hull House, they were helping not just the people that were living there, but the community as well. As they grew up, they were able to create more programs that involved the community. Abramovitz mentions that, “they provided community services, supported unions, and undertook vigorous crusades to remedy the social ills of the day” (1998:514). Settlement houses used the micro and macro level by helping people to find their individual strengths and the same time, improving the community
No other place in the world could rival the US’s diversity, leading to many greats things in the US immediately, and in the long term. For example, Doc 3 shows Chinese workers in a salmon cannery, bringing along their knowledge of fish and how to prepare it. Something as small as this proves the larger idea that foreign immigrants bring along with them their traditions that make the US a more complex and interesting place to live. Due to this new diversity, places such as the “Hull House” were created to help immigrants adapt to life in the US, as well as a place to interact with other cultures. As Hilda Statt Polacheck said, “Hull House was an oasis in a desert of disease and monotony.
This type of social worker can be responsible for informing people about protecting their environment or how to help make the environment even better. 7. Explain and illustrate with an example the following client systems. Microlevel: Mezzo/Midlevel: In this system works with small to medium sized groups. A prime example of this is a social worker who works with schools or even neighborhoods to improve the community that is surrounding their clients.
She attended medical school later and traveled a lot (Biography.com Editors 1). When she got older, she visited the Tonybee Hall in the East End of London and saw a settlement house with her friend, Ellen Gates Starr. In 1889, both of them started the Hull House which is one of the first settlement houses in the United States. The Hull House helped the less fortunate and was a center for social reform. She also started organizations to address problems of crime.
Social workers have several responsibilities. They have to provide service, justice, and dignity to a client. They have to possess integrity, competence, and patience. Social workers need to possess knowledge of human rights, and how to perform scientific inquiry. Social workers occasionally have cases in which problems ensue and a solution is not found within a certain time frame.
The purpose of the Hull House was to ease the transition into American life for new immigrants (Lecture 9, slide 7). Addams, a middle-class woman, creates a community of middle-class professionals who are devoted to embracing these immigrants, but also shed light on the struggles they face. Addams has a holistic approach and focuses on how, regardless of class, progress is about mutual aid and focusing on “the neighborhood as a whole, men, women, and children taken in families as the Lord mixes them” (Addams, 5). She demonstrates that “hospitality still survives among foreigners” when recalling the educated Italian immigrants visiting and helping around Hull House every Saturday, while the Americans reciprocated by helping interpret papers and listen to stories of the home country (Addams, 6). Addams directly argues with Carnegie when she states, “theory that wealth brings responsibility… in these cases fails utterly” (Addams, 3).
Newly arrived settlers, known as "sod busters," looked for land which featured a stream or creek and small rolling hills which served as windbreaks. Easy access to planned railroad lines was also an asset because it made it easier to ship goods and livestock to market. Once the land was selected, the homesteader went to the Land Office to make sure that the property was not already taken and to file a claim. One of the requirements for fulfilling the claim was building a "home" to live in within six months.
Addams describes the settlement in her book, Twenty Years a Hull-House, “A settlement is above all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those who have a passion for the equalization of human joys and opportunities are early attracted” (184). Addams pushed for sanitation, safe working conditions, womens rights and suffrage, tenement house regulation, child labor laws, eight hour work days, and fair wages. Jacob Riis was a mukracker and photo journalist who chronicled immigrant life in urban cities (Nguyen 6). Riis started as a police reporter/photographer in New York and used his experience to put together, “How the Other Half Lives.” It was a piece exposing the horrible lives of the immigrant working class; furthermore, the book displayed pictures of people sleeping on floor mattresses, dirty children wondering the alleys, no windows in crowded tenement houses, and kids digging through human waste in the city (Nguyen
1) The Immigration Act of 1907 created the Dillingham Commission to review U.S. immigration policy. In 1911 the Dillingham Commission produced a report that highlighted the differences between Old Immigrants vs New Immigrants and the effect on the social, cultural, physical, economic, and moral welfare of the nation. The Dillingham Commission Report favored the "old immigrant" who had come from North Western areas of Europe as opposed to the "new immigrant" who came from South Eastern areas of Europe and other parts of the world. The argument of Old Immigrants vs New Immigrants concluded that immigration from southern and eastern Europe posed a serious threat to American society and should therefore be greatly reduced. 2) Jane Addam founded Hull-House in Chicago, which would eventually become the most famous settlement house in the US.
During the Progressive Era there was a large increase in uneducated immigrants coming into America. At the Hull House immigrants from all different countries could be educated. There were nurseries for children of working parents. There were also counseling and recreational
Personal Identity and Managing Personal Values Who I identify as, the groups that I belong to, and the values I have will knowingly and unknowingly attach a level of privilege and power that can and will impact my professional identity and the work I do as a professional. The purpose of this paper is to examine how my identity could impact my work as a social worker, how my personal values conflict with my professional values, and to recall a time when I reduced the participation in oppression. The groups of which I belong can impact my ability to help individuals and communities in a number of ways.
The 17th America was a farmland. People were poor and some migrated to this country in the hope of quick wealth. Individuals from England and Europe began to migrate to America. The book gives a detailed account of the first houses, or rather huts which have been built in America.
These settlement houses provided housing, food, English lessons, day care services, and tips on how to adapt to American culture for the destitute immigrants who had nowhere to
Modern social workers are frequently tasked with certain objectives by their agencies, which leave little room for any work beyond specific treatments and timeframes (Gitterman & Knight, 2016). Although social workers are bound to the set of ethics put forth by the NASW, practitioners are often limited to focusing on the issues of the individual rather than the larger societal issues that may be behind those concerns. Additionally, many social work students end up working in direct practice, rather than macro work. There is a need for social workers to engage at the macro level in order to facilitate community organization and empowerment. Critics suggest this theory may not take into account the unique experiences of each individual and perhaps key characteristics of the individual or group are not taken into consideration (Sadan, 1997).
Introduction Integrating theory into social work practice is essential in defining why social work is needed and how to practice it effectively. This paper will discuss two theories; intersectionality and life course theory, as I believe that these two theories are collectively suitable and effective in interrupting the cycle of oppression. I will draw upon both my own experiences and literature to analyze the strengths and limitations of intersectionality and life course theory. This discussion will exemplify how intersectionality and life course theory enhance each other and can work synergistically to inform my social work practice. Intersectionality Intersectionality is a macro theory, which looks at the complexity of an individual’s identity
This is as to how the social worker and the population interact. It involves the people making sense in their interaction. This theory enables the social worker to study the behaviour of the people he or she is involved with. This is demostrated on her role as a consellor and educator.