SWK 501 Writing Assignment Resources: Library Resources

A transformative model for community social work rooted in basic social and economic rights is the basis of this timely Brief. With specific chapters spotlighting the rights to health care, nutritious food, and adequate and affordable housing, the book describes in depth the role of community practice in securing rights for underserved and vulnerable groups and models key aspects of rights-based work such as empowerment, participation, and collaboration. Case examples relate local struggles to larger regional and statewide campaigns, illustrating ways the book's framework can inform policymakers and improve social structures in the larger community. This rights-based perspective contrasts sharply with the deficits-based approach commonly employed in community social work, and has the potential to inspire new strategies for addressing systemic social inequality. Features of Human Rights-Based Community Practice in the United States: A conceptual basis for a rights-based approach to community practice. Detailed analysis of legal and social barriers to health care, housing, and food. Examples of effective and emerging rights-based community interventions. Methods for assessing the state of human rights at the community level. Documents, discussion questions, resource lists, and other valuable tools. 

This brief resource sets out a rights-based framework forpolicy analysis that allows social workers to enhance their long-term vision aswell as their current practice. It introduces the emerging P.A.N.E.(Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination, Equity) model for evaluatingsocial policy, comparing it with the traditional needs-based charity model interms of not only effectiveness and efficiency but also inclusion and justice. Recognizedstandards for human rights are used to identify values crucial to informing policygoals. Exercises, key documents, and an extended example illustrate both the processesof creating empowering social policy and its best and most meaningful outcomes. Included in the coverage: Rights-based and needs-based approaches to social policy analysis. Regional and international human rights instruments. Grounding social policies in legal and institutional frameworks. Conceptualizing social issues from a human rights frame. Measuring progress on the realization of human rights. Rights-based analysis of maternity, paternity, and parental leaves in the United States. For social workers and social work researchers, A Rights-Based Approach to Social Policy Analysisgives readers a modern platform for achieving the highest goals of thefield. It also makes a worthwhile class text for social work programs. ​

The 12th edition of Social Work Speaks is a reference tool that can inform organizational responses to policy and legal issues, policy analysis, and advocacy coalitions. This user-friendly resource also serves as a first-rate introductory social policy text, supplemental reading for macro courses in social work, and specific instruction for courses in specialty topics. Social workers in every field of practice can benefit from this informative and thought-provoking text.

For the past decade, political scientist Sanford Schram has led the academic effort to understand how Americans and their political officials talk about poverty and welfare and what impact that discourse has on policy and on the global society. In "Welfare Discipline," Schram argues that it is time to take stock of the new forms of welfare and to develop even better methods to understand them. He argues for a more contextualized approach to examining welfare policy, from the use of the idea of globalization to justify cutbacks, to the increasing employment of U.S. policy discourse overseas, to the development of asset-based approaches to helping the poor. Stressing the importance of understanding the ways we talk about welfare, how we study it, and, critically, what we do "not" discuss and why, Schram offers recommendations for making welfare policy both just and effective.