Practicing Rights

Human rights-based approaches to social work practice

David Androff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781134632121
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Gesundheitsversorgung

Social work Codes of Ethics of professional organizations around the world appeal to the concept of people having 'rights' that social workers need to respect and advocate for. However, it isn't always clear how social workers can actually incorporate human rights-based approaches in their practice, whether domestic or international. This book fills this gap by advancing rights-based approaches to social work.

The first part gives an overview of the relationship between human rights and social work, and outlines a model for how rights-based approaches can be integrated into social work practice.

The second part introduces the rights-based framework across five mainstream areas of practice – poverty, child welfare, older adults, health, and mental health. Each of these substantive chapters:

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• introduces the area of practice and traditional social welfare interventions associated with it

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• outlines relevant human rights frameworks

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• explores case studies showcasing rights-based approaches

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• presents practical implications for implementing rights-based social work practice.

The book ends with a discussion of the limitations and criticisms of rights-based approaches and lays out some future directions for practice.

This accessible text is designed for all those interested in learning how to introduce human rights-based interventions into their practice. It will be of particular use to social work students taking direct practice, macro practice, social policy, international social work and human rights courses as part of their program.

1 The Relevance of Human Rights to Social Work

DOI: 10.4324/9781315885483-1

Human rights are a critically important means to protecting people from abuse and oppression. Many people engaged in human rights work are on the front lines of protecting vulnerable populations. This is true of social workers, who labor to improve the quality of life of people, to prevent, minimize, or ameliorate social problems, and to maximize human potential. Social workers are said to be doing human rights work, insofar as they are responsible for implementing political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights, and increasingly environmental rights. Yet the two fields lack awareness of each other; both sets of professionals ignore each other’s practice tools even as they grasp towards each other. The social work profession has embraced the rhetoric of human rights and has much in common with human rights, yet there remains significant divergence between the two fields. How can the social work profession avail itself of human rights to strengthen social work practice?

This chapter makes the case for the relevance of human rights to social work. The main focus of this chapter is upon analyzing social work’s relationship to human rights, and exploring the basis of social work as a human rights profession. The first section concerns the current emphasis upon human rights within the social work profession. This includes a review of the ethical codes and statements of major professional organizations that reference human rights, the recent major scholarly and educational publications with a focus on human rights, the major professional conferences and meetings with a focus on human rights, curricula developments relating to human rights, and the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development’s relationship to human rights. It presents overlapping histories and priorities between the two fields and examines the gaps that separate them. The chapter demonstrates that human rights are an idea whose time has come in social work and examines the ways in which human rights and social work converge. Excavation of the common ground between human rights and social work builds the case that these fields could be and should be better integrated, therefore raising the importance of identifying and incorporating rights-based approaches to social work practice.

The relevance of human rights to social work is that it can make social work more relevant. This book aims to promote rights-based approaches to social work practice. This chapter contains the rationale for this book by outlining the potential for rights-based practice approaches to revitalize social work and to bring the profession to greater prominence in society and closer to its own social justice commitments. This chapter ends with a brief discussion of the book’s methodology.

The state of human rights in social work

There is growing attention to human rights from within social work. Several recent examples include the ethical statements of professional organizations, the global definition of social work, the development of the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development, international conference themes, curricula developments, and rapidly expanding publications including journal articles, books, edited volumes, and dissertations.

Definitions

In a 1988 Policy Statement on Human Rights, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) proclaimed that “social work has, from its conception, been a human rights profession, having as its basic tenet the intrinsic value of every human being and as one of its main aims the promotion of equitable social structures, which can offer people security and development while upholding their dignity” (IFSW, 1988, introduction; UN, 1994, p. 3; Wronka, 2008). The 2000 international definition of social work adopted by the IFSW and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) includes in its final line the statement that “principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work” (IFSW & IASSW, 2000). This was the first time that human rights were explicitly linked to the definition of social work, and was influential. This definition became widely cited, and as the product of a process of compromise and consensus, this definition was criticized for including the human rights perspective as a bias towards Western and individualistic approaches, and another period of review, consultation, deliberation, and consensus was launched to revise the definition. In 2014 at the Joint World Conference of Social Work and Social Development in Melbourne, three of the major international social work professional organizations, the IASSW, IFSW, and the International Council of Social Welfare (ICSW) endorsed a new definition with the revised statement that “principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility, and respect for diversities are central to social work” (IASSW, IFSW & ICSW, 2014).

Global Agenda

In an effort to unify and amplify the voice of the global social work profession for greater impact and advocacy globally and locally, the IASSW, the IFSW and the ICSW, in consultation with social workers around the world, developed the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development in 2012. The Global Agenda has as one of its four core themes “Promoting the dignity and worth of people”, which is framed in terms of human rights. The Global Agenda calls for the “universal implementation of the international conventions and other instruments on social, economic, cultural and political rights for all peoples, including, among others, the rights of children, older people, women, persons with disabilities, and indigenous peoples, and the end to discrimination on the grounds of race and sexual orientation” (IASWW, IFSW & ICSW, 2012, p. 3).

Codes of Ethics

Human rights have been explicitly linked to social work in the Codes of Ethics of professional social work organizations that provide guidance for the field. Scholars have explored the ethical correlations between human rights and social work (Albrithen & Androff, 2015).

Globally

The International Federation of Social Workers’ (IFSW) Statement of Ethical Principles (2012) notes the principles of human rights as central to social work, and conventions on human rights as relevant to social work. Human rights and human dignity are among the core ethical principles, meaning self-determination, participation, treating each person as a whole, and identifying and developing strengths.

North America

The Canadian Association of Social Workers’ (CASW) Code of Ethics (2005) makes several explicit references to human rights in its ethical values of respect for the inherent dignity and worth of persons, including the directive to “uphold human rights” (CASW, 2005, p. 4). The U.S. professional organization, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), does not mention human rights in its Code of Ethics (2008) . However the term “rights” does appear in two places. It appears under social workers’ ethical responsibilities to clients (1.14) which states that practitioners must “safeguard the interests and rights” of clients who “lack the capacity to make informed decisions”. It also appears under social workers’ ethical responsibilities to the broader society for social and political action (6.04), which includes among others the directive to “promote policies that safeguard the rights of and confirm equity and social justice for all people”. This is not surprising given the cultural reluctance of the U.S. to embrace the language of human rights in the last few decades. However, the NASW Code of Ethics has been identified as aligning with the ideals and principles of human rights (Albrithen & Androff, 2015). Furthermore, NASW has endorsed “the fundamental principles set forth in the human rights documents of the United Nations” and encouraged the adoption of human rights as the “foundation principle upon which all social work theory and applied knowledge rests” (Falk, 1999, p. 17).

Pacific

The Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) includes human rights in the definition of social work with the statement that “principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work” (AASW, 2010, p. 7). It also includes among the commitments and aims of social work “working to achieve human rights and social justice through social development, social and systemic change, advocacy and the ethical conduct of research” by “subscribing to the principles and aspirations” of human rights (AASW, 2010, p. 7). Human rights is listed as a core social work value, linked to respect for persons and social justice (noted as both civil–political and economic–social–cultural). Among social workers’ ethical responsibilities of respect for human dignity and worth is the directive that “social workers will respect others’ beliefs, religious or spiritual world views, values, culture, goals, needs and desires, as well as kinship and communal bonds, within a framework of social justice and human rights”. The AASW Code of Ethics lists the commitment to social justice and human rights as an ethical responsibility for all social workers; this responsibility is detailed to encompass participation, nondiscrimination, empowerment, transparency, self-determination, development, collective rights, and advocacy. In their responsibility to colleagues, social workers are mandated to acknowledge religious, spiritual, and secular diversity within a framework of social justice and human rights. The Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers’ (ANZASW) Code of Ethics (2013) has a chapter on “Human Rights: International Conventions and Domestic Agencies” and mandates that practitioners protect clients’ rights.

Europe

European social workers have long embraced human rights as a foundational aspect for practice. The European regional body of IFSW has a publication called Standards in Social Work Practice meeting Human Rights (2010) which extensively discusses how social workers should promote and realize human rights. It also sets out that “responding to human rights is the responsibility of the social work practitioner and social work educator”. The British Association of Social Workers’ (BASW) Code of Ethics (2012) lists respect for human rights as one of the core values and ethical principles for social workers practicing throughout the world, as the “motivation and justification for social work action” (BASW, 2012, p. 5). The Code refers to “the inherent worth and dignity of all people as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948) and other related UN declarations on rights and the conventions derived from those declarations” (BASW, 2012, p. 8). The value of human rights is detailed to include the principles of human dignity and well-being, self-determination, participation, treating each person as a whole, and identifying and developing strengths. Social workers are mandated to use their authority “in accordance with human rights principles” (p. 13) and to “challenge the abuse of human rights” (p. 14). The Union of Social Educators and Social Workers of Russia (USESW) has an Ethical Guideline of Social Educator and Social Worker (USESW, 2003) that identifies human rights as related to the et...