Center for Diversity: Diversity and Justice Practice

The Center for Diversity and Social & Economic Justice provides social work education with the opportunity to support greater diversity and social and economic justice in education, teaching, research, curricula, and leadership development.

The Center is also a resource to prepare social workers with the knowledge and skills to engage in effective practice with diverse populations and to help transform social systems in pursuit of more humane and equitable conditions.

COVID-19 surprised the world because of its unique etiology and its impact on global society. Self-introspection took me to my country of origin—the Philippines, a distant archipelago of 7,641 islands. How could social workers in the Philippines effectively provide services during this pandemic when, according to the Asian Development Bank, more than 16% of the population lives in poverty?

Under these harsh conditions, social workers lucky enough to retain employment were faced with a new reality—figuring out how to manage their caseloads or lack of work under COVID-19 while also sustaining their health and the needs of their families. Acknowledging and handling emotions and fatigue and the need for self-care in this pandemic is a major ethical challenge facing social workers across the world, based on data from a recent study by the International Federation of Social Workers. 

A growing body of literature suggests that lack of cultural adaptation of behavioral interventions is associated with disparities in service use and poor intervention outcomes in minoritized communities (Rathod et al., 2018). Furthermore, research consistently shows that culture and social context influence almost every aspect of assessment and treatment (Bernal et al., 2009). The aim, therefore, is for practice to be grounded in the lived experiences of communities, including their cultural backgrounds. 

We created an annotated bibliography of published empirical research on culturally adapted and culturally grounded practices with diverse communities. These adaptations range from basic language translation, to the involvement of community members in the provision of services, to more fundamental restructuring of methods of care. 

The studies illustrate variations on cultural adaptations across a range of behavioral interventions and are based on multiple research methods, including randomized control trials, quasi-experimental design, community-based participatory research, qualitative studies, and systematic reviews. We developed abstracts of the publications extracting the following information: behavioral health condition, target population, intervention, cultural adaption, method, and major finding. The studies are meant to be illustrative; we invite you to critically assess the body of research in your specific field of practice.

This Diversity & Justice Practice resource in criminal justice focuses on the system of punishment that is part of U.S. imprisonment. Referred to as the carceral system, it involves “the comprehensive network of systems that rely, at least in part, on the exercise of state sanctioned physical, emotional, spatial, economic and political violence to preserve the interests of the state.” (See also the University of Michigan’s Carceral State Project and Michigan State University’s The Carceral State and Prison Activism.) We focus on prisoner segregation using solitary confinement. 

An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people are being held in solitary confinement cells in our nation’s jails, prisons and immigration detention centers, many for years on end. In a practice described by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as coming “perilously close to penal tombs,” the psychological and physical suffering of the people inside these solitary cells is incalculable.

We offer a comprehensive overview of solitary confinement that ranges from hearing the voices of those who have been impacted by it, to the ethical dilemma of health and social service providers who work in the criminal justice facilities, and finally, to humane alternatives. A searchable resource database provides an extensive set of materials that can be used in a range of social work courses, including practice courses, in mental health, policy, community organizing and advocacy, social justice and human rights, and courses in criminal justice.

The resource is compiled by Social Workers Against Solitary Confinement (SWASC), an organization that aims to combat the use of solitary confinement and seeks the support of social workers in its fight against this social injustice, brings this hidden practice to light.

Teaching tools include curriculum guides, readings and multi-media sources, and syllabi. Informational materials are drawn from current scholarly as well as highly credible advocacy and other sources. A detailed list of experiential pedagogical approaches  to teaching about solitary confinement, and incarceration more broadly, are included. Over 300 entries are indexed by keyword and resource type using search terms under four general categories:

» The carceral system and prison practices and conditions

» Mental and physical health effects of solitary confinement on prison inmates

» Issues for social work and heath care professionals in correctional settings

» Advocacy, legislative, and policy practice in criminal justice

Resource: Solitary Confinement and Mass Incarceration: Social Work Curriculum Educational Resource Database

Contributor: Moya Atkinson, MSW, who served as the liaison with CSWE in the creation of this resource, is co-founder and steering committee member of Social Workers Against Solitary Confinement. Now retired, she served as the Executive Director of the NASW-MD Chapter for nearly ten years (1993-2002). The descendant of human rights activists, she works fiercely and in solidarity with groups that oppose torture. Ms. Atkinson holds a master’s in social work equivalent from Queen's University in Northern Ireland, where she also did her undergraduate studies in German language and literature.

This Diversity & Justice Practice resource provides a foundation for integrating disability content into social work practice. Given the prevalence of disability, social workers will encounter people with disabilities in a wide variety of settings including health systems, schools, and mental health agencies, and through agencies serving older adults, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and individuals with physical disabilities. Considering the systemic discrimination that many individuals with disabilities face, social work educators, with the profession’s commitment to social and economic justice and the promotion of the dignity and worth of all persons, have a clear mandate to help students gain skills for disability-competent practice across populations and settings.

To this end, the Curricular Resource on Issues of Disability and Disability-Competent Care was designed with two objectives in mind. The first is to outline how content on disability aligns with specific values and competencies of social work education as defined by CSWE’s 2015 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. The second is to provide specific classroom resources for social work educators. The guide incorporates the framework of the disability-competent care (DCC) model, a person-centered care approach. The DCC model is based on three core values: the individual needs of the participant, respect for the participant’s choices, and the elimination of medical and institutional bias. Educators can draw from the various teaching resources provided here to fit their teaching objectives. Teaching resources include in-class exercises, fact sheets, media examples, assessments, slides assignments, personal stories, and readings, including a searchable database by type of resource and competency. An informative video and webinar are also included. See also pedagogical approaches (Q&A) to using the Curricular Resource in the classroom.

Contributors 

Jeanne Matich-Maroney is an associate professor of social work at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY and co-chair of the CSWE Council on Disabilities & Persons With Disabilities. As a social work educator and researcher, she draws on 15 years of practice experience in mental health and intellectual disabilities and has particular research interest in the trauma impacts of sexual abuse on adults with intellectual disabilities. Dr. Matich-Maroney earned her BS (social work), MSW, and PhD at New York University Silver School of Social Work.

Dr. Matthew Bogenschutz is an assistant professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Social Work and co-chair of the CSWE Council on Disabilities & Persons With Disabilities. He is social work core faculty for the interprofessional Virginia Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Program and has a research affiliation with VCU’s Partnership for People with Disabilities, where his federally funded work concentrates on policy solutions that can enable full community inclusion for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Dr. Bogenschutz earned his MSW and PhD at the University of Minnesota.