Category Archives: Analysis and Commentary

Is social work an anachronistic profession?

Posted on May 17, 2012 by | 2 Comments

In this final post taken from the ideas of The Spirit Level, I’ve been thinking about the evidence from past societies about greater equality, and about how social work values are often in tension, if not outright conflict, with societal ones, and, I guess, about what that says about our profession, and where we fit.

See, if societies grow progressively (no pun intended) less egalitarian as they develop, and if social work’s collective beliefs about the distribution of resources more closely mirror those of the past than today, then what’s the future for our profession? And, of course, for society too?

Evidence suggests that hunter/gatherer societies were more cooperative and less hierarchical because of a clearer sense of interdependence; as natural resources are depleted, will we regain an understanding of just how much we need each other? Will social work values, then, that are obviously more well-suited to ‘flatter’ societal power structures, come back in style?

Or are social workers destined to cope within a dominant value structure that doesn’t reflect our understanding about the way that wealth should be distributed or, perhaps more importantly, about the negative consequences of tremendous inequality?

If that’s the case, then how will we, as social workers, respond? Will we cave to societal norms that devalue redistribution? Will we seek status in order to thrive within that power dynamic, rather than resisting it? Will we spend increasing professional energy dealing with the symptoms of inequality?

Or will we rise to the challenge of turning the tide?

Does it matter, I guess, if we’re ‘out of touch’, if we are true to our value code? Do we, in fact, gain some maneuvering room if we’re operating a bit outside the system? Is there some advantage in being seen, in fact, as distinct, because it helps us to attract social workers who are not only clear about the mandates of the profession with which they are affiliating, but also obviously comfortable with the idea of standing apart?

Will history come around to us, again?

Will we concede?

Or are we content to be anachronistic, since we believe it to be right?

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See–Feel–Change

Posted on April 26, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I’m still thinking about change.

About how we understand it. In order to spark it.

Even though we can never really control it.

I find that these inquiries lead me to rely more than usual on the ‘social-worky’ side of my self, since a lot of what leads people to change depends, to a great extent, on how they connect–to the people in the movement, to the cause, to their own hopes and dreams.

It’s really, really not about the cookies.

One part of Switch that fascinates me is the discussion about the psychological studies of how people make decisions.

See, the way they describe it, we all think that we’re “analyze–think–change” types. In the policy world, too, policymakers always tell us they want more data. But when do they listen the most attentively? When someone tells them a story.

Because they, like us, are really more “see–feel–change”. We respond best to what hits us in our gut, to what we see vividly from a reference of our own experience, to what moves us emotionally even when our brains may not be ready to go anywhere.

This isn’t the same thing as relying on fear or anger or other somewhat negative emotions to catalyze action. We can feel empathy and hope and excitement just as powerfully, and the evidence suggests that they can spark change just as surely.

And it goes without saying that our thinking isn’t totally marginalized in the process. What we feel is shaped in part by what we believe, which is the culmination of many thoughts we’ve had, that becomes our way of seeing the world.

But this see–feel–change process does point us in a different direction, for our policy communication efforts, than we often believe would be most effective. It suggests that the stories that we tell are even more important than the data that we amass, and that wanting people to know something is not, at its core, the same as wanting them to do something.

Here’s what I think it means, for how we talk with people about the problems we face and the policy solutions they demand. And, perhaps even more importantly than how we talk with people, here’s what I think it means for how we show people what’s going on in our community and why they are an essential part of those same solutions.

  • We can’t be so afraid to get people upset. I mean, sure, not instantly alienating our policy targets is always a good idea. But we need people to be somewhat agitated, if we’re going to get them to action. So when things are raw, we can’t be afraid of that.
  • We need to think creatively about what people need to see, and the kinds of emotions we want to prompt. Remember the piles of shoes from Auschwitz? And the way you feel when you see them? Obviously our problems today are not on that scale, but there are still vivid visuals that tell our stories, and we need to bring them into the communication.
  • We need to acknowledge our own emotions. We can’t expect to move people to action, through their felt response, if we are analytical robots who deny the ways in which we’ve been moved to this work. That means telling our story, too, and, when we’re angry or sad, saying it.
  • We need to acknowledge what we don’t know, or can’t yet understand. Sometimes we are so afraid to admit any weakness that we have to pretend that we’ve answered every question, when the truth is that we’re just figuring out what to ask. But we know how we feel, and why it’s not OK, and that has moved us to do something about it. We need to create spaces for others to accept the limits of their analysis, too, and to take the first step anyway.

When have you been moved to act, in the advocacy arena, based on how you felt about what someone helped you to see? Or, perhaps more importantly, can you remember when a piece of data, or some analytical conclusion you reached, is what prompted your advocacy?

We don’t make pro and con lists for most of the biggest decisions in our lives. It’s the same with trying to right a wrong.

We see.

We feel.

And we do.

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Action triggers: how to set them, and how to use them

Posted on April 23, 2012 by | 2 Comments

I’m not, in general, a big fan of “triggers”. As in, no “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” automatic tax reductions when revenues go up. No automatic cuts if the supercommittee can’t reach an agreement.

I don’t even let my online exams grade themselves.

I think that there are activities–including most of self-governance–that still require human consideration.

But we know that automatic works, right? People save more if their savings are deducted automatically. We pay bills on time if a computer does it for us. I use alarms to remind me when my kids need to be where, and what to get at the grocery store, and even when it’s my mom’s birthday.

The less of a ‘lift’ some activity is, the more likely we’ll do it. You know, the whole ‘set your exercise clothes out the night before’?

Except, seriously? Doesn’t everyone just stumble over them in desperate search for their kids’ waffles and, please, a little caffeine?

There’s a part in Switch about how setting action triggers makes change more likely, though, that really appeals to me as an advocate. This is the idea that getting people to imagine how they’ll take action increases the likelihood that they will, and it makes a lot of sense. Now that I’m familiar with the concept, I see it all over; just the other day, the home visitor who comes to visit with the baby and me had me write out how and when and where I could put these ‘new skills’ (maintaining your baby’s interest in a toy) to use, in very specific detail.

So, what about it, advocates and organizers? What if we helped people not just to practice how they, hypothetically, would call an elected official, for example, but also when they’d do it, and from which phone? What if we got people to think of 5 specific people that they are going to see within the next week, and to plan out exactly when and how they could approach those people to recruit them for a campaign? What if, instead of spending most of our energy convincing people that they should take action (and then begging them to please do it) (and then following up to remind them to do it), we instead invested considerable attention in helping them lay the mental groundwork to do it, in the belief that that’s a big part of the journey?

That way, when we’re, for example, sitting down to our computer right after putting the kids to bed, something reminds us that that is, indeed, when we said that we’d call 5 of our kids’ classmates’ parents to talk about the new proposed school finance formula, so it’s more likely to happen then if we only vaguely said that, yeah, we’ll try to get to that when we can.

Hypothetically, of course.

When and how do you use action triggers? How does going through the motions mentally help you to actualize in reality? How can you weave this concept into your organizing, and into your own personal advocacy?

And, then, when and how and where, specifically, are you going to try this out?

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There’s always a bright spot

Posted on April 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

My favorite story from Switch is about the mothers in Vietnam, and how an anti-hunger campaign there, rather than beginning with an exhaustive study about all of the factors that perpetuate the problem of child malnutrition, instead started with a search for where things were going well.

And then set out to replicate those bright spots.

Over and over and over again.

This idea aligns with how I teach social policy from the strengths perspective, taking the stance that policy approaches that build from the good things that are happening, even in the midst of social problems, will be ultimately much more successful.

It’s how I parent, too, consciously trying to spend way more time talking with my kids about what they’re doing well than about what needs to change. Because it’s really true, at least with my 3-year-old twins, that focusing on the problems mainly get you more problems.

Strengths-based social workers spend a lot of our time defending ourselves. Because, no, focusing on strengths does not mean that we ignore the problems. Or that we’re all Pollyannas. Or that we pretend that things will take care of themselves. Strengths-based social policy isn’t unrealistic.

To the contrary: it’s what works.

Because it begins from what’s working.

There are a variety of reasons why focusing on these bright spots–again, even in the context of real challenge (think: child starvation)–works, all of which will be familiar to strengths-based direct practitioners, too:

  • Beginning with a nod to what’s already going well is like starting halfway there, and that breeds hope which, in turn, gives us momentum for greater changes
  • Sometimes we can’t fully understand a problem, but we can zero in on the places where, even inexplicably, things are going well, to try to mirror that
  • In the policy context, we can bring more people to our cause by rallying them around a possibility than guilting them into caring about our disasters
  • Strengths-based policy development builds on a different process, not just a unique product; if we’re going to solve this problem by following the leads of those who have already partially solved it, then we are by default going to involve those folks more actively in the solution, rather than give them a list of directions to follow. It’s no surprise which works better (another way in which parenting is like social change!).

    All of this has me thinking about bright spots, an exercise which, I’ll admit, is a bit foreign to me, as someone who is uncomfortably attuned to the injustices and inhumanities that populate our world.

    But there are some, and I think that we’re already learning from them. What about the teenager who makes it out of a poverty-ridden neighborhood, later to credit the mentor or one caring adult who shepherded her? Why can’t we build systems that provide those shepherds for everyone? What about the welfare office that locates in a school, and sees intake rates skyrocket as barriers are erased? Why can’t we take down hurdles everywhere? What about the backpack programs that send nutritious food home with kids from school and significantly reduce food insecurity? Why can’t we make sure that every hungry child has one?

    Looking for bright spots, to me, is more than just a reflection of an ideological preference for positivity.

    It’s about turning technical problems into political ones.

    Finding what works allows us to stop pretending that we don’t know how to solve the problems that face us–or at least how to begin to solve them–and requires that we focus, instead, on overcoming our resistance to solving them.

    Which means that we need to look for other bright spots, then: the places where movements of people have, as only movements of people can, summoned the political will to light bright spots all over the place.

    To light.

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Taxes Matter. For Real.

Posted on April 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Source, The New York Times

I love those moments in class when you can almost see the lightbulbs going off for my students, when something clicks in a way that you know means that they not only know more, but really understand more, and that that understanding will influence the way that they practice social work.

It’s a beautiful thing.

It’s tax time.

Or, here at Classroom to Capitol, the time each year when we celebrate all that a robust public infrastructure and strong social contract can do for us.

They’re basically the same thing.

And so this year’s reminder that taxes matter come from my students, and from one of those lightbulb moments, when a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and asked, “Why do all of these charts about income inequality start in 1979? What changed in the 1980s that made such a difference?”

And we talked about Reagan.

And about taxes.

And the class grew animated as, together, they realized that we make intentional choices about how we want to redistribute income, or not, and that those choices have lasting repercussions.

And that, if we’re not careful, we can forget how we got here, and start thinking that, for example, a rising income gap is “inevitable”, when we know that it’s anything but.

Here in Kansas, there has been a lot of talk this year about taxes–what kinds we have, how many of them, how much they should raise, and, of course, what we should do with them. It’s a discussion that is unfamiliar for many social work advocates, but it’s one that sorely demands our input, because the past 30 years don’t lie: not all taxes are created equal.

On this tax day, when you’re done celebrating how wonderful it is to live in a place where most people pay their taxes because we mostly still believe that having government services is important, take a minute to think about how the charts might look different if we’d made a different set of choices. And about how we could bend those curves still today.

And about the fact that, for real, taxes matter.

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But our path can’t be that easy, or why advocates can’t be Amazon

Posted on April 10, 2012 by | 6 Comments

Even I, who have not watched television since the 2008 Olympics, have seen those “easy button” commercials. And my husband and I joke about how Amazon.com makes it so easy to order (just 1-click! great!) that we end up buying way more than we really needed (and paying more; we’ll do just about anything to get stuff delivered).

We know that there are two ways to shape behavior: the hard way, which requires motivating people to do something different, even something that they may not really want to do; and the ‘easy’ way, which relies instead on changing the context in which behavior happens, so that we reset the default.

I still think that there’s a lot that we can do to make it as easy as possible for people to advocate, and I still think that’s a fundamentally good idea. There are enough barriers to action naturally that we need to make sure that we’re not constructing any more.

But, the more that I think about it, the more convinced I am that, unfortunately, we just can’t make activism too easy.

If our targets–those decision-makers we want to listen to us and to our concerns–know that it’s that easy, I worry that our impact will be sorely diluted. I mean, the movements that have really changed societies (and, in the process, laws) have required far more than a click from people. And that has been precisely their power, the ability to demand much of people who, in the process, discover much about themselves and their leadership.

I don’t know what the tipping point is, certainly, that spot at which advocacy becomes too easy to be very meaningful. And I’m not going to stop thinking about how we need to build cultures within our organizations and our movements that create as many entry points as possible, that provide people with activism mentors, and that integrate advocacy into people’s lives to the greatest extent possible. To do otherwise is to pretend that “real” advocates will do anything, against any odds, and that kind of martyr complex doesn’t do anyone any favors.

But I’m also not going to spend a lot of time figuring out how to “amazon” our advocacy efforts, how to strip them down to such a low threshold of engagement that we are asking very little of those we want to move.

Because, really, are we moving them much, in the ’1-click’ school of activism?

I get it, I do, that building activist structures is probably easier than helping people connect meaningfully with a cause, and with each other, and overcoming the powerful inertia built into our psyche and our culture in order to bring people together for transformation.

I guess I’m just concluding that our world is a little different than buying books (and loaf pans and tape refills and everything else my husband finds for us on Amazon). Here, there has to be some sacrifice, because the advocacy is a signal to those in power of what we’re willing to expend to address the problems that motivate our action.

There has to be some struggle.

And that doesn’t come with free shipping.

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2010 Turnout Gaps: Our Marching Orders for the 2012 Elections

Posted on April 5, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Yes, I am haunted by voter turnout statistics.

And you should be, too.

Because this report from Nonprofit Vote has some fairly alarming data about what happened to voter turnout in 2010, particularly compared to 2008.

All of which matters tremendously for 2012.

And these figures should serve as a challenge for nonprofit organizations, because we are uniquely positioned to move the needle on these particular populations’ voter turnout.

And so we must.

Some of the “highlights”:

  • Only 24% of youth (ages 18-29) turned out in 2010, a sharp drop from 51.1% in 2008. When so much is at stake for future generations–the state of the economy, the future of entitlements, the availability of higher education, the likelihood of future foreign conflicts–allowing these decisions to be made, essentially, with only marginal input from those most affected is unconscionable.
  • There was a 20 point turnout gap between members of lower income and higher income households. Nonprofit organizations have strong relationships in many low-income communities, and significant presence as institutions shaping their lives. If we want to be a true, vibrant democracy, we’ve got to do better than this.
  • Only 35% of those with a high school diploma or less turned out in 2010, compared to 61% of those with a college degree or more. We will end up with policies that only work for those highly-educated, if only those who have been so advantaged are writing the rules.
  • There was a 34 point turnout gap between individuals who had resided in their home for less than a year (28%) and those who had resided in their home for at least 5 years (62%). Because this is often a proxy for both age and income, and because mobility is associated with some technical difficulties in actually registering and voting, we should make it a priority to reach out to those who are new in our communities, and to pursuing public policies (same-day registration, anyone?) that remove barriers to voter participation for these more mobile citizens.

There’s nothing magic, or even all that shocking, about these statistics; we know that those who are marginally connected to our political life 364 days a year–separated from the policies’ development, although certainly not from their impact–do not magically connect on Election Day.

But these statistics should be alarming to us, both because of what they represent about the failings of our representational system, and because nonprofit organizations need our constituents, including those who fall into the categories above, to participate in the electoral system if we hope that it will ultimately reflect our concerns.

So, I see these data as a to-do list. We know who we need to target for voter registration and Get-Out-the-Vote work, and we even have some benchmarks that can guide our definition of what “success” looks like.

Let’s produce some different figures in 2012.

And close the gaps.

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Horrible stuff I wouldn’t even dare to make up

Posted on April 1, 2012 by | 2 Comments

I thought about, for this April Fool’s Day, making up something really awesome in the social policy world. But then I thought that would be super depressing, to find out that it was just a joke.

And, so, then I thought about making something up that’s really horrible, because that would make us feel better, right, to find out that it was a trick?

But, then I worried that I’d never be able to make up something so terrible that it would seem at all suspicious. Which was super depressing, too.

So, then I decided that I’d MUCH rather be angry than sad, about the assaults on social work values and on those we serve. So I scrolled through my email archives to find some of the horrible stuff that sounds so outlandishly awful that it should be made up, that I’ve collected over the past couple of months, for a sort of “should be April Fool’s jokes but we’re not laughing, so let’s do something about it” list.

That was too wordy a title even for me.

In no particular order, here are some completely unfunny, all-too-true examples of why social work advocacy is so needed.

No joke.

  • Tea Party group in my own state of Kansas depicts President Obama as a skunk, in an overtly racist smear. I’m grateful not only to the local NAACP chapter for speaking out on this but also for my good friends at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, for helping us see how this connects to very worrisome trends of anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric (and action) within Tea Party groups.
  • City of Topeka repeals its domestic violence law in order to avoid having to pay to prosecute misdemeanors, after the County DA announced that his office would no longer do so, in order to save money. This was really controversial, with some advocates applauding the City Council’s decision as calling the DA’s bluff, but I side with those who feel that it sent a really dangerous signal, in addition to resulting in the failure to charge at least several perpetrators whose crimes were committed during the time during which they were, essentially, not crimes. Women struggling to flee abuse should not be pawns in an intra-governmental budget showdown. Period.
  • 96-year-old African-American woman who voted even during the Jim Crow era blocked by Tennessee’s “voter ID” law. Honestly, I had hoped that I was just being paranoid about these laws being an attack on our most fundamental democratic rights. Obviously not.
  • Alabama. Enough said.

    It shouldn’t be so hard to come up with a list of totally wild things, pulled from our imaginations, that would be instantly recognizable as fabrications.

    Maybe that’s my new advocacy goal: make “ridiculous” mean something again, in the policy context.

    A year from now, I want to be foolable again.

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Third-order Engagement: Friends don’t let friends advocate alone

Posted on March 29, 2012 by | Leave a comment

While I admit that I’m slow to getting around to try out all of the really exciting tools that I learn about on Beth Kanter’s blog, it’s a very fertile place for new ideas about revolutionizing nonprofits, and it’s the first blog I make a point to check in on when I want to be challenged and reconnected to the field.

Often, posts about technology in nonprofit organizations lead me to think, also, about offline applications of the same concepts, which is exactly the case with this post from this archived post about “third-order engagement.”

The idea, after all, isn’t very high-tech: People are more likely to get excited about something that their friends are excited about. And they’re more likely to be receptive to messages that are conveyed by those with whom they already have a strong relationship.

As the blog post describes, this makes sense for for-profit companies that are learning to facilitate consumers sharing information about products with friends who might want to buy them, too, as well as for nonprofit organizations that can see big dividends when they make it easy for donors and others to find out how their friends are engaged with the same organization, too.

And, of course, it has important advocacy implications.

Are our advocacy efforts set up to make it easy for people to “invite” friends to take a stand with them (with talking points that someone new to the effort can relate to, and engaging actions that people will find enjoyable, and explicit assistance to help people approach friends about the cause)?

Are we investing heavily in our strongest advocates’ potential to bring in new activists, rather than pushing out all of the asks ourselves? Are we moving people from engagement to leadership, and encouraging them to bring their friends along with them? Are we recognizing advocates’ successes in enlarging the pool of the committed, as a “win” in itself? Do we actively solicit new contacts from our current cadre, and do we use technology (databases, social networks) that allow advocates to find other friends and to connect relationally with other activists?

Do we spend at least as much time cultivating a grassroots base as we do trying to mobilize that base towards specific targets?

And, as advocates ourselves, do we make sure that our friends understand why we’re engaged in specific causes, and what that work means for their own lives, and how they can play a part in the effort with us? Do they know that they are welcome, and needed, and valued?

The explosion of social media, and their expansion into every aspect of life, illustrates the fundamental truth that we are relational beings.

That’s true in our social change work, too.

No one should be advocating alone, especially not in this connected age, when so many messages and issues are competing for attention.

After all, when we take a stand, wouldn’t we rather not stand alone?

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Overton Windows of Opportunity

Posted on March 27, 2012 by | Leave a comment

From Flickr Creative Commons

It’s very satisfying to find actual, recognized theories for some of the ideas and instincts that float around in my head.

Especially when I’d never heard of them before–it’s like finding a friend you never knew you had, or something.

In some research that I’ve been doing about message development, as part of work on some advocacy campaigns on which I’m consulting, I came across this concept of the Overton Window(there’s apparently a novel by Glenn Beck by the same title, definitely NOT what I’m talking about here).

This Overton Window is related to the idea of political windows of opportunity, except that it’s specifically referring to messages, and the range of such ideas (or policy proposals) on a continuum from unthinkable to actualized policy (with radical, acceptable, sensible, and popular in between–I love that there’s a distinction between sensible and popular because, of course, there is).

But where I think this connects most to our advocacy challenges today, and so why I find it most comforting, is that, while much of what we know those we serve really need, in terms of policy approaches, falls somewhere in the lower ranges, from “unthinkable” (true universal health care as a guaranteed human right) to “radical” (progressive tax policies that would provide a strong foundation for economic justice), there are opportunities to move the window by deliberating building momentum around ideas that are unthinkable, so that alternatives seem quite sensible by comparison.

Conversely, in the realm of messaging, there are ways to couch the policy approaches that are our goals in terms of popular themes, riding the coattails, so to speak, of those frames in order to create space for a particular policy innovation.

What does this mean for social work policy advocates, at least those who aren’t taking my advanced policy course next fall and, therefore, will have to read and talk about this part of political theory as a part of class?

1. We absolutely have to have a sense of the policy and message landscapes around the issues we’re working, so that we can correctly diagnose why a particular idea is struggling to gain traction. There’s a real danger, always, of becoming too myopically focused on our own perspective; what the Overton Window reveals is that, without a “pulse” on the issue, we won’t know where we fall, or why we fail.

2. There is a place for the outlandish in policy debates. As I’ve said before, we’re sometimes too reluctant to appear “radical”, and so we cede wide swaths of the policy debate, which we really can’t afford, especially when we’ve got windows to shift.

3. Events beyond our control can move policy proposals from one end of the spectrum to another, just as critical events can open windows of opportunity in the policymaking process. Strategic analysis must include an assessment of how attitudes and prevailing wisdom are evolving, so that we can anticipate and respond to these changes.

Where do your policy agendas fall on this continuum, and how do you craft messages that increase the likelihood of support for your issues? How do you build momentum around ideas that clearly fall in lower ranges, particularly when they represent your “sacred extremes“? And are there any of your favorite theories, that help to explain your world and the way you see it, that I should know about?

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