Environmental Practice in the Human Services

Integration of Micro and Macro Roles, Skills, and Contexts

Bernard Neugeboren

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136460517
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Prestazione di assistenza sanitaria

Environmental Practice in the Human Services points to the need for the human services to return to their historic mission of environmental change. It moves beyond the more general conceptual emphasis on person-in-environment toward the development of an environmental practice technology based on an intervention model which prescribes specific micro and macro roles and functions. It may open the way to recapturing the conceptual breadth which characterized the first 40 years of social work as a professional and occupational entity. The "ecological" perspective in social work has fostered an interest in the impact of social environments on service consumers. Environmental Practice in the Human Services tries to rectify the historical imbalance in the human services that has emphasized people-changing methods, giving secondary emphasis to environmental change. It instructs students preparing for practice in the human services, as well as agency practitioners, in the knowledge and skills necessary in environmental practice. Cases in environmental practice are used to illustrate how these skills are utilized in actual practice situations.The book's scope includes practice at the direct service, adminstration, planning, and social policy levels; it integrates micro and macro practice and shows how these two levels of practice are interdependent. This enables human service practitioners to create and/or modify social environments to enhance the functioning of clients being served in human service programs. Topics covered include:

• important skills in environmental practice, including decisionmaking, negotiating, and leadership
• community practice and resource coordination
• social support
• the impact of organizational environments on practice
• environmental practice for the chronically disabledAuthor Neugeboren's approach is unique in its in-depth focus on environmental practice, applying concepts of social environment to specific practice roles. This practice-specific content, which provides tools needed for environmental practice, is in contrast to existing texts on the social environment which are very theoretical and not integrated with practice. He includes material from the field of social ecology which has not been included in existing texts. It shows how practitioners and administrators, planners, and policymakers can facilitate and support each other's work.Reading Environmental Practice in the Human Services will enlighten students and practitioners with specific skills for impacting on different social environments to enhance client benefit. It tells how a direct service practitioner can determine which organizational environments are suitable for particular client needs in making agency referrals. It also provides administrators with information about designing, planning, and managing agencies with functional organizational environments which achieve effective services.

PART I:
INTRODUCTION AND FRAMEWORK
FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE

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Chapter 1
ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE
IN THE HUMAN SER VICES

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Environmental Practice
in the Human Services

I. The Need for Environmental Practice

II. History of Environmental Practice in the Human Services

III. Efforts to Develop Environmental Practice

IV. Case: Child Abuse

A. The Agency

B. The Family

C. Practice in Direct-Service

D. Practice in Administration, Community Organization, Policy, and Planning

V. Issues

A. Changing People vs. Changing Environments

B. Environmental Practice and Professional Expertise

C. Environmental Practice and the Severely Disabled

D. Prevention and Environmental Practice

VI. Definition of Environmental Practice

A. Environment as Context vs. Target for Practice

B. Using vs. Changing Environments

C. Functional Community

D. Organizational Environment

E. Vulnerable Populations

F. Environmental Manipulation

VII. Summary

VIII. Study Questions

THE NEED FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE

Human-service practitioners, whether they provide direct service to consumers or carry out policy, planning, or administration, are compelled to consider the basic policy question of whether intervention should help individuals to adapt to their situation or whether the problem is embedded in a dysfunctional environment that requires modification. In case practice, assessments are made as to whether the individual's capacities are deficient and need to be enhanced or whether external factors should receive priority. If both factors are operating, which often is the case, time and resource limitations, as well as philosophical orientation, require practitioners to make the difficult decision of whether intervention should focus on the individual or the environment.

Garbarino et al. (1980:9) crystallized the importance of the environmental context in child maltreatment, urging that solutions “must go beyond individualistic therapies and rehabilitation techniques to embrace personal social networks, neighborhoods, and communities.” The question for practitioners and policymakers is not simply one of:

How can we cure the individual pathology of a particular parent? It is also, How can we eradicate the pathology of particular environments? How can we foster environments (or “ecologies”) that will relieve the social isolation of families … What can our government-local, state and national-do to ensure that people are not isolated from natural networks and that such networks are nurtured rather than undermined by official actions? (9)

Specht and Courtney (1994) also emphasizes the environment in defining the purpose of social work:

The major function of social work is concerned with helping people perform their normal life tasks by providing information and knowledge, social support, social skills, and social opportunities; it is also concerned with helping people deal with interference and abuse from other individuals and groups, with physical and mental disabilities, and with overburdening responsibilities for others. (26)

Community planners, policymakers, and administrators of direct-service agencies also need to determine where the primary cause of social problems lie, in the person and/or in the environment. Policy analysts formulating legislative initiatives and guides for direct service programs are required to establish the basis for social policy formulation in terms of programs to change individuals/and or their environments. Community planners who assess community needs and allocate funds to direct-service agencies also need to understand the cause of social problems: is it in the person and/or the situation? Administrators of direct-service agencies, in their tasks of formulating goals, designing structures, and implementing programs, make decisions with the knowledge of the differential cause of service consumers' problems in terms of the individual and/or the environment.

HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE IN THE HUMAN SERVICES

Throughout the history of the human services, varying attention have been given to interventions to change environments. Morris (1986) traces the evolution of “caring for the stranger” from biblical times, noting that American social policy has been somewhat ambivalent about acceptance of communal responsibility for the less fortunate. He observes that in 1980s there was a sharp break with past concern for the disadvantaged.

Welfare becomes a proxy term for values, a lightning rod for differing views about the obligations we owe each other, the virtues of selfishness, the limits of obligation, and political behaviors, which will either unify or further divide a multiethnic population, (p. 4)

In 1995, with the Republicans gaining control of the Congress, control of welfare policy is shifting from the national to state government through block grants. Whether this will result in decreased public commitment to the needy has yet to be determined. It is our opinion that decentralization of welfare policy to the states may be beneficial in the long run to service consumers since local authorities are compelled to meet unmet social needs because they impact on the quality of life for all citizens. This increase of communal responsibility could have implications for a greater emphasis on environmental practice.

The profession of social work has long claimed both expertise as well as societal mandate to achieve “environmental manipulation” for service user benefit. Thus, focus on the environment in social casework practice can be traced back to the very origins of the field (Richmond 1922:99–107). However, the commitment of early casework practice to “external” factors has been questioned (Schriver 1987). Brieland (1990) contrasts the individualistic philosophy (with its “moral means test”) of the Charity Organization Society, with which Mary Richmond was identified, with the environmental focus of the settlement house movement represented by Jane Addams. Germain (1994:39–40) cites an incident of Mary Richmond's outraged reaction to Abraham Flexner's address in 1915, “Is Social Work a Profession?”, because he stated it was not a profession because it lacked transmissible knowledge and skill of its own, although it did provide a service by connecting people with resources. It is the position of the author that the knowledge and skill required for environmental practice is complex and comparable to that included in other professions.

Although environmental change as a focus for direct practice has received some renewed consideration in recent years (Austin 1986:35–36; Germain and Gitterman 1980; Glasser and Garvin 1977; Grinnell and Kyte 1974; Grinnell 1973; Meyer 1987; Parsons, Hernandez, and Jorgensen 1988), there continues to be primary stress on individual change models in social work practice (Austin and Patti 1984; Grinnell 1973; Meyer 1987:404; Proctor, Voster, and Sirles 1993), as well as in social work education (Ephross and Reisch 1982:280; Gibelman 1983; Schwartz 1977; Lister 1987). The interests of social work students in working with nonchronic middle-class service users is consistent with the emphasis of practice and education (Butler 1990; Rubin and Johnson 1984).

The “medicalization” of the problem of the mentally ill (Aviram 1990:71) and the elderly (Azzarto 1992) is another example of individualizing a social problem, thereby obviating the view that it is affected by structural factors. This disparity between belief and practice relates to the tendency of American social policy to view personal problems as personal failures (Wilensky and Lebeaux 1958). Corrective efforts are therefore directed at individual competence and emotional capacity, even in public welfare programs (Grinnell and Kyte 1975; Teare 1981:100).

One explanation of the lack of development of environmental practice is the failure to appreciate that individual abilities may be less important than situational effects. This is illustrated in research on the factors that predict vocational functioning of the psychiatrically disabled. Anthony and Jansen (1984) found that such individual characteristics as psychiatric symptoms, psychiatric diagnosis, intelligence, and aptitude and personality tests do not predict vocational performance. Also, a patient's functioning in one environment (e.g., community setting) did not predict a person's ability to function in other settings (e.g., work or hospital). In another example, mentally ill persons living in sheltered care were healthier than those living in institutions or in the community (Segal, Vandervort, and Liése 1993). It can be inferred that these different environmental situations were more important than the individual characteristics of the service consumers. Thus, one's situation can be a powerful determinant of social functioning, requiring environmental interventions.

The lack of consistent development of human-service practice focused on changing environments, particularly on the micro level, may also have been due to the lack of a systematic framework for analyzing dysfunctional environments (Austin and Patti 1984:4). In contrast with the more fully developed individual-change models of intervention, frameworks for environmental change have been somewhat general (Brower 1988:411; Garvin and Seabury 1984:4; Harrison 1987:399; Wells and Singer 1985:319), leading to difficulty in operationalizing them in practice. The ecological perspective developed by Germain (1973) provides a broad conceptual framework for environmental practice, but is not in itself a practice model (Germain 1994:41).

Efforts to develop integrated models of practice for changing both the individual and the situation (person in environment) may have been unduly influenced by the more highly developed individual-change models (Harrison 1989:73). For example, in the Person-In-Environment (PIE) Scale (Karls and Wandrei 1994), three of the four factors included in the instrument (Factor I-Social Role Problems; Factor II-Environmental Problems; Factor III-Mental Disorders; Factor IV-Physical Disorders) focus on individual dysfunction, while only one factor is concerned with the environment. Generic or integrated models of practice have hindered the field from seeing the differences and inter-relationships between micro and macro practice. The differences between these different intervention levels are evident in actual practice. A theme of this book is to explicate the similarities and differences between micro and macro practice.

The movement in social work education to generalist practice, which is evident in the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) accrediting standards for bachelor's and master's education (Curriculum Policy Statement 1992), has further impacted on the need for integration of micro and macro practice. A recent proliferation of generalist practice textbooks (Johnson 1995; Kirst-Ashman and Hull 1993; Miley, O'Melia, and DuBois 1995; Toison, Reid, and Garvin 1994) points to efforts to develop this broader view of practice. However, examination of these texts in terms of the relative amount of content in micro and macro arenas of practice indicates that there is still a primary emphasis on the direct service level of intervention.

Another reason that the theories, tasks, and skills relevant to environmental change have not been applied to the micro level of practice is the lack of transfer of relevant theories and techniques from the macro arena (Abel and Kazmerski 1994:64). The traditional separation between clinical services and the administrative, planning, and social policy areas of education and practice has perpetuated this problem. Macro faculty and practitioners devote their attention primarily to system change efforts because they have not seen the direct practice arena as relevant for their areas of interest and expertise. For example, the exchange theories and techniques applicable to intraor-ganizational and interorganizational coordination have not been adapted to the micro level linkage of service consumers with resources. System theory on the social environment (Martin and O'Connor 1989) needs to be operationalized into concrete intervention roles and tasks. The conceptual model of environmental practice used in this book focuses on specific roles and skills.

EFFORTS TO DEVELOP ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE

Nevertheless, there were and are efforts to conceptualize and implement micro level environmentally oriented practice. The poverty programs in the 1960s included “environmental therapies” that emphasized “brokerage” and “advocacy” techniques for interventions in community systems on behalf of service users (Gil...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I: Introduction and Framework for Environmental Practice
• Chapter 1. Environmental Practice in the Human Services
• Chapter 2. Framework for An Environmental Practice Technology
• Part II: Environmental Practice Inaction
• Chapter 3. Skills In Environmental Practice
• Chapter 4. Community Resource Coordination on the Micro Level
• Chapter 5. Community Resource Coordination on the Macro Level
• Chapter 6. SOCIAL SUPPORT ON THE MICRO LEVEL
• Chapter 7. SOCIAL SUPPORT ON THE MACRO LEVEL
• Chapter 8. Organizational Environments
• Chapter 9. Environmental Practice With Highly Vulnerable PopulationS
• Chapter 10. Environmental Practice Implications
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index