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Advocacy Practice for Social Justice
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Advocacy Practice for Social
Justice
FOURTH EDITION
Richard Hoefer
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hoefer, Richard, author.
Title: Advocacy practice for social justice /Richard Hoefer.
Description: Fourth edition. | New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018035405 (print) | LCCN 2018038031 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190916589 (updf) | ISBN 9780190916596 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190916572 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Social advocacy.
Classification: LCC HV40 (ebook) |
LCC HV40 .H628 2019 (print) | DDC 361.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035405
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
To Paula Homer and Sharon Hoefer, for shaping the past,
making the present, and creating the future.
CONTENTS
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxi
1. The Unified Model of Advocacy Practice 1

Defining Advocacy and Advocacy Practice 2
The Broader Context for Advocacy Practice 12
Conclusion 18
2. Social Work Ethics, Values, and Advocacy Practice for Social Justice 20
Advocacy in the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of
Ethics 21
Social Justice in the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of
Ethics 22
Distributive Justice 23
Examples of Ethical Issues in Advocacy Practice 29
Conclusion 33
3. Getting Involved 36
Why Are Some People Active in Politics? 38
Are Social Workers Politically Active? 39
What Are Social Workers Trying to Accomplish With Advocacy? 42
Influencing the Factors That Lead to Getting Involved 44
Conclusion 54
4. Understanding the Issue 56
Step 1: Define the Issue 57
Step 2: Decide Who Is Affected and How They Are Affected by the
Issue 63
Step 3: Decide What the Main Causes of the Issue Are 65
Step 4: Generate Possible Solutions to the Issue 66
Step 5: Review Proposed Solutions to Determine Their Impact on Social
Justice 70
Conclusion 73
5. Planning in Advocacy Practice 75
Definition of Planning 76
What Do You Want? Using Advocacy Mapping to Describe Your
Agenda 76 vii
viii { Contents
Who Can Get You What You Want? Identifying Your Target 86
When Can or Should You Act to Get What You Want? 87
Conclusion 88
6. Advocating Through Education, Persuasion, and Negotiation 89
Education 89
Persuasion 93
Negotiation 109
Conclusion 113
7. Presenting Your Information Effectively 115
Pre-Suasion 115
Information 118
Presenting the Information 119
Working with the Media 132
Conclusion 140
8. Electronic Advocacy 142
What Is Electronic Advocacy? 142
Organizational Attributes of the Use of Electronic Advocacy 143
The Growing Influence of the Information Age 144
Concepts for Using the Web and Social Media in an Advocacy
Campaign 147
Using Specific Electronic Advocacy Tools in an Advocacy Campaign 151
Conclusion 158
9. Evaluating Advocacy 160
Increase in Support for Evidence-Based Advocacy Practice and
Evaluation 161
Observation Phase 163
Judgment Phase 171
Difficulties in Evaluation 175
Conclusion 176
10. Ongoing Monitoring 178
Differences in Advocacy Between Legislative and Executive Branches 182
Influencing the Regulation-Writing Process 184
Influencing the Budgetary Process 187
Influencing the Implementation Process 189
Conclusion 191
11. Integrating Advocacy Practice into Your Social Work Practice 193
The Progressive Era 193
The Great Depression and the New Deal 195
The 1960s: War on Poverty and the Great Society 196
Contents } ix
Between the 1960s and the End of the 20th Century: Keeping Hope
Alive 197
Advocacy Practice in the 21st Century 198
Integrating Advocacy Practice into Your Social Work Practice 199
References 211
Index 223
PREFACE
I have a confession. While I was writing the revisions to this book, I had a very
tough time dealing with the current political situation and increased polari-
zation that we see now. I was disheartened at the lack of respect for truth by
elected officials. I was enraged at how men in positions of power have harassed
and sexually attacked women and then called them liars. At times, I despaired
for the ability to succeed with advocacy for social justice. Mass shootings
continued to happen at schools, churches, concerts, and elsewhere. I had to
postpone writing because I had lost hope that we could make a difference.
I knew that social workers needed to continue the struggle, but I was not sure
I wanted to be leading the charge.
So, what did I do? (After all, I must have done something, since you are
holding this text now.) I read again the history of social workers and others
who have made a difference. I pored over information about the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s. I watched videos about Cesar Chavez and
the farm workers movement. I listened to an opera about Susan B. Anthony’s
efforts to gain the vote for women. Over time, I internalized (yet again) the
knowledge that achieving social justice is a long, difficult, and unceasing
struggle. I understood that we live in a time that is no more difficult than what
others have lived through and triumphed over. I abandoned my privilege of
expecting things to be easy “just because” I wanted them to be.
I also paid close attention to the news that was positive. In the run-up to
the elections of 2018, I learned that more women were running for office than
ever before, many specifically stating they wanted to get involved because of
recent political trends (Kurtzleben, 2018). In the aftermath of publicity of the
#MeToo movement, I saw powerful men held to account. After yet another
horrific school shooting with 17 student victims, I saw the Parkland School
survivors take on the National Rifle Association and all the members of
Congress and state legislatures who have done nothing to control gun sales.
Who was I to despair, even in the midst of all the problems, when so many
others are willing to take the next steps, no matter how difficult they are? It
was time for me to take up writing again, with a renewed sense of purpose and
hope that this book would be a tool to inspire, motivate, and educate the next
generation of social justice advocates. I wanted to write a book to assist others,
who, like myself, needed to believe it was still possible to make a difference. To
use an old analogy, instead of praying for good weather, we all need to learn
to sail, regardless of the wind’s direction. This book is a manual for sailing the xi
xii { Preface
stormy seas we find ourselves in, with many social work values under direct
assault every day.
Like many people, I’ve pondered the question of what I would have done
if I had been alive during the 1930s when the Great Depression raged and fas-
cist dictators took control. Or what I would have done during the years of the
Red Scare when Senator Joseph McCarthy was destroying trust in government
by accusing so many people of being communists? Or if I had been older
during the civil rights and anti-war movements. History provides far too many
examples of times when courage is required, and perhaps you have wondered
how you would have reacted. Fortunately for all of us, we are living in a time
of considerable danger to the health and welfare of social work values in the
United States. We no longer have to wonder what we would be doing—we
would have done exactly what we are doing now. So, what are we doing?
Advocacy is conceived of in this book as a process designed for problem-
solving, and, thus, it easily fits into a generalist model of social work. By
showing how similar advocacy is to other types of social work practice, I hope
to remove the seemingly foreign nature of advocacy and help make social
workers more comfortable in taking on this vital work. I believe that this ap-
proach also clearly shows the interconnections between the different theaters
of advocacy, such as within the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of
government and at all levels of operation.
This book also delves into the large amount of empirical research that
applies to advocacy. I have had to learn a great deal about topics that are not
necessarily first thought of as being related to social work advocacy in order to
write this book. The political science literature was an especially useful source,
but so too were other fields, such as psychology, sociology, marketing, and
business. Thus, you can now read a book with the latest research included to
present this evidence-based advocacy practice model. This book has the most
recent information available from a variety of academic disciplines, mixed
with up-to-date information from research centers, newspapers, and high-
quality magazines.
Another important feature of the fourth edition is the cross-walking of
the book’s content with the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE,
2015) 2015 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, including the nine
competencies. Although this material may not be of much interest to the typ-
ical student, it will be helpful to instructors and programs seeking new accred-
itation or reaffirmation of accreditation.
Who Is This Book For?
Advocacy Practice for Social Justice is designed primarily for students at both
bachelor of social work (BSW) and master of social work (MSW) levels and
Preface } xiii
for practicing social workers who need a focused yet comprehensive refer-
ence on advocacy. This book is primarily intended for two types of courses.
First, it is intended for introductory or specialized social welfare policy courses in
which only part of the course is devoted to understanding and conducting ad-
vocacy; the rest of the course is an overview of social welfare policy or a deeper
look within a particular policy arena, such as mental health or child welfare.
Second, it is intended for macropractice courses that teach more information
on advocacy than is found in the generalist texts currently available.
As the research tells us, administrators and executives of human service
agencies tend to be tasked the most often with conducting advocacy. Although
I believe this is not the best way to promote advocacy for social justice—all
social workers should be trained and encouraged to advocate—it does indi-
cate an additional audience. Administrators and students in administration
courses who desire to learn the steps of advocacy can read this book and
achieve excellent results.
Other potential audiences include students in elective courses focusing
on advocacy (particularly those on a quarter or shortened term calendar),
or courses with a service-learning component, in which an assigned project
requires the student to attempt to influence policy.
The Plan of the Book
As noted previously, Advocacy Practice for Social Justice is based on the gen-
eralist approach to social work practice. As such, I present a step-by-step
idealized approach to advocacy, even while admitting that advocacy in
real life frequently returns to earlier steps and sometimes skims over other
steps rather quickly. Still, I designed the bulk of the book to be used in a
front-to-back way.
Chapter 1, “The Unified Model of Advocacy Practice,” introduces advo-
cacy practice as a specialized practice modality within the larger generalist
framework. This chapter also introduces two major contextual trends affecting
social work practice and shows how the material in the book helps advocates
handle those trends. Students who are thoroughly familiar with the generalist
approach to social work practice may find some of this material familiar, but
the chapter provides an overview of most of the book and so is important.
Chapter 2, “Social Work Ethics, Values, and Advocacy Practice for Social
Justice,” discusses the reason social workers conduct advocacy: to promote
social justice. The ethical imperatives for advocacy, as set forth in the National
Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics, are explored, as are
the terms “social justice” and “distributive justice.” With the foundation of the
reasons to engage in advocacy laid, the next several chapters explain the steps
of the advocacy process. I provide several examples of situations in which
xiv { Preface
ethical conflicts may be present as a critical thinking activity and application

of chapter material.
Chapter 3, “Getting Involved,” discusses the first step. Going beyond mere
exhortation to be involved, this chapter provides a clear, research-based un-
derstanding of why people are involved. It describes a model of involvement
and the variables that front-line practitioners and administrators can influ-
ence to increase the level of involvement in advocacy. In that sense, then, it is
a blueprint for advocacy capacity building. Readers can examine their lives to
determine which factors are promoting their interest and abilities in advocacy
and how they might affect these variables in their own situation.
Chapter 4, “Understanding the Issue,” begins with a vignette about one of
my real-life situations. I present a five-step process for gaining understanding
of an issue. Of special note in this chapter are several techniques that I present
to aid decision-making, particularly when developing solutions to addressing
the issue and in understanding the impact of various solutions on social justice.
These techniques are very appropriate for immediate use in a group role-play
situation or for individual reflection.
Chapter 5, “Planning in Advocacy Practice,” provides information on what
planning is, how to conduct it, and how to know when it is time to move from
planning to action. A tool called an advocacy map is introduced as an aid to
the planning process. An offshoot of the logic model concept often used in
program planning, the advocacy map assists advocates in keeping the big pic-
ture goals in mind even while planning the details of who will do what and why,
when taking action. I provide two examples of advocacy maps, and readers can
use the blank template in thinking about their own advocacy projects.
Chapter 6, “Advocating Through Education, Persuasion, and Negotiation,”
presents information on education, persuasion, and negotiation. Using the
latest research on these topics, I present readers with a comprehensive way to
plan their pitch, from how to frame an issue to understanding the mindset of
the target of advocacy and what works to change it. Readers can quickly use
this material in everyday situations at home and at work, as well as within an
advocacy context.
In Chapter 7, “Presenting Your Information Effectively,” I rely on recent
scholarship to assist readers in showcasing what they have to say in the most
effective way. The information in this chapter links with the previous chapter
to allow readers to see the full range of options available to get the word out to
indirect targets as well as to the direct targets of an advocacy effort.
Chapter 8, “Electronic Advocacy,” is a difficult chapter to feel satisfied with
because the tools are constantly changing. We therefore focus on principles
of advocacy, while nodding towards the social media platforms that are most
popular now. New tools for advocacy do not necessarily change underlying
strategies, nor do they eliminate the need to understand education, persua-
sion, and negotiation.
Preface } xv
Chapter 9, “Evaluating Advocacy,” returns to the advocacy maps introduced

in Chapter 5 to show how this planning tool can be extremely useful in evalu-
ation. In addition to the usual aspects of evaluation, such as process and out-
come evaluation, I also introduce the idea of context monitoring, which is
used to keep abreast of how an organization is perceived by others in the policy
arena. Context monitoring is an essential, although frequently overlooked, ele-
ment of an advocacy group’s effectiveness.
After an advocacy project is completed and evaluated, the tendency is to
pack up one’s bags and move on to the next campaign or issue. The purpose of
Chapter 10, “Ongoing Monitoring,” is to squash this tendency. Monitoring the
regulation-writing process and implementing a policy are important to creating
and maintaining social justice. I include specific recommendations for how to
be an effective advocate in each part of this phase of the advocacy process.
Chapter 11, “Integrating Advocacy Practice into Your Social Work Practice,”
presents a brief history of advocacy in social work and the lessons learned
throughout the book. I could have presented this material earlier in the book
to provide the historical context of advocacy in social work for readers, and, in
fact, some may want to read this chapter before the chapters on the advocacy
process. I have put it at the end, however, because many students have told me
that they have a much greater positive regard for the history of social work ad-
vocacy after they have tried to do it. Too often, historical overviews are viewed
as nonessential fluff by readers who want to get to the meat of the topic. It is
often only when students have tried to emulate the pioneers of advocacy, and
seen the difficulties and barriers that can block the way, that they can truly ap-
preciate what others have done. By leaving this material until the end, I hope
the inspiration of others’ actions is blended with the lessons learned in today’s
environment. An important new section of this chapter lays out the possible
discomforts and dangers of advocacy—a topic not openly discussed in any text
I’m familiar with. Ideas are given for how you can protect yourself and your
organization while being social justice advocates.
Connections to the Council on Social Work Education’s

Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards
The CSWE, the accrediting body for social work education programs at the
bachelor’s and master’s levels, uses its Educational Policy and Accreditation
Standards (EPAS) to help educational programs understand the outcomes it
expects for students (CSWE, 2015). The latest version of EPAS was approved
by the CSWE Board of Directors and the Council on Accreditation in 2015.
CSWE uses a model of education that is competency based rather than input
based, examining what graduates can do rather than what was in their educa-
tional program:
xvi { Preface
A competency-based approach refers to identifying and assessing what

students demonstrate in practice. In social work this approach involves
assessing students’ ability to demonstrate the competencies identified in
the educational policy. (p. 5)
CSWE (2015) has created nine core educational policies that reflect the
desired competencies. This book can be used to address all of these core
competencies. Each educational policy is listed here, and the sections or
elements of this book that apply are described afterward.
Competency 1: Demonstrate ethical and professional behavior.
Social workers:
• make ethical decisions by applying the standards of the NASW Code
of Ethics, relevant laws and regulations, models for ethical decision-
making, ethical conduct of research, and additional codes of ethics as
appropriate to context;
• use reflection and self-regulation to manage personal values and
maintain professionalism in practice situations;
• demonstrate professional demeanor in behavior; appearance; and oral,
written, and electronic communication;
• use technology ethically and appropriately to facilitate practice
outcomes; and
• use supervision and consultation to guide professional judgment and
behavior. (CSWE, 2015)
Ethics and ethical behavior are interwoven throughout the book but are
the particular focus of Chapter 2. Chapter 2 presents a detailed explanation of
the ethical basis for advocacy in the social work profession, drawing heavily
on the NASW Code of Ethics, theories of distributive justice, and the anti-
oppression framework. In doing so, it shows readers how, despite what may
seem to be clear guidelines, ambiguity is rampant. The book provides methods
for arriving at principled decisions to help resolve ethical dilemmas. Readers
are challenged with questions after every chapter to apply the material to real-
istic scenarios, thus helping them reflect on their own values and professional
norms. Chapter 8 provides information for using technology in evidence-
based and professional ways.
Competency 2: Engage diversity and difference in practice.
Social workers:
• apply and communicate understanding of the importance of diversity
and difference in shaping life experiences in practice at the micro,
mezzo, and macro levels;
• present themselves as learners and engage clients and constituencies as
experts of their own experiences; and
Preface } xvii
• apply self-awareness and self-regulation to manage the influence

of personal biases and values in working with diverse clients and
constituencies. (CSWE, 2015)
The philosophical underpinnings of the book are rooted in an under-

standing of the value of diversity and difference. Social work advocates are
shown, repeatedly, how to work with others by teaching them the skills of ad-
vocacy so that they can—whatever their age, class, color, culture, disability
status, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, immigration status,
political ideology, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation—work on their own
behalf, for their own causes, in their own ways. The planning and advocacy
processes employed throughout the book provide ways to ensure that op-
pressed, marginalized, alienated, and relatively powerless people can increase
the odds that their needs will be met and their lives will be made easier.
Competency 3: Advance human rights and social, economic, and en-
vironmental justice.
Social workers:
• apply their understanding of social, economic, and environmental
justice to advocate for human rights at the individual and system
levels; and
• engage in practices that advance social, economic, and environmental
justice. (CSWE, 2015)
The entire book applies to competency 3. Chapter 2 covers in detail different

conceptions of social, economic, and economic justice and the difference your
views make in how you work as an advocate, at all levels of practice. Readers
not only learn about these matters but also learn how to engage in evidence-
based and practical advocacy efforts to achieve social, economic, and environ-
mental justice.
Competency 4: Engage in practice-informed research and research-
informed practice.
Social workers:
• use practice experience and theory to inform scientific inquiry and
research;
• apply critical thinking to engage in analysis of quantitative and
qualitative research methods and research findings; and
• use and translate research evidence to inform and improve practice,
policy, and service delivery. (CSWE, 2015)
Chapter 4 addresses this educational standard in particular. Titled

“Understanding the Issue,” the material underscores how vital it is for social
workers to conduct policy-related research in a credible, scientific manner.
xviii { Preface
The chapter highlights, as does Chapter 9, that the best social workers mix
quantitative and qualitative approaches as they use practice experience to in-
form their research activities and also apply the lessons from research to their
practice activities.
In addition, Chapters 3–10 present research-based information relating to
advocacy practice, showing strong support for competency 4’s admonition to
engage in research-informed practice. Besides Chapter 4, which is devoted
to showing how to research an issue before moving to advocate a position,
Chapter 5 emphasizes the importance of planning one’s efforts and using the
theory inherent in one’s advocacy maps to understand the issues involved and
the best methods to use when engaging in advocacy. Critical thinking skills are
enhanced throughout the text.
Competency 5: Engage in policy practice.
Social workers:
• identify social policy at the local, state, and federal level that impacts
well-being, service delivery, and access to social services;
• assess how social welfare and economic policies impact the delivery of
and access to social services;
• apply critical thinking to analyze, formulate, and advocate for policies
that advance human rights and social, economic, and environmental
justice. (CSWE, 2015)
The purpose of this book is to provide social work students with the in-
formation and skills needed to achieve this competency. Chapter 3 examines
why advocates get involved, and Chapter 4 relates how to understand and thus
identify social policies at every level that you might want to advocate for or
against. This chapter also details how to understand the impact of policies
in every way. Understanding the issue uses critical thinking skills and helps
readers analyze, formulate, and advocate for policies in pursuit of social,
economic, and environmental justice, all of which advance human rights.
Competency 6: Engage with individuals, families, groups,
organizations, and communities.
Social workers:
• apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment,
person-in-environment, and other multidisciplinary theoretical
frameworks to engage with clients and constituencies; and
• use empathy, reflection, and interpersonal skills to effectively engage
diverse clients and constituencies. (CSWE, 2015)
The importance of working with diverse clients in ways they find useful
is stressed in the application chapters, as well as in Chapter 11. The problem-
solving methodology of the unified model of advocacy practice allows social
Preface } xix
workers to remember to use all the “direct practice” skills of empathy, reflec-
tion, and interpersonal skills to engage clients.
Competency 7: Assess individuals, families, groups, organizations,

and communities.
Social workers:
• collect and organize data, and apply critical thinking to interpret
information from clients and constituencies;
frameworks in the analysis of assessment data from clients and
constituencies;
• develop mutually agreed-on intervention goals and objectives based on
the critical assessment of strengths, needs, and challenges within clients
and constituencies; and
• select appropriate intervention strategies based on the assessment,
research knowledge, and values and preferences of clients and
constituencies. (CSWE, 2015)
The unified model of advocacy practice you learn in this book is operable
at all levels because it is an extension of the generalist problem-solving model
of social work. As noted in an extended vignette in Chapter 1, which contrasts
Ms. Generalist social worker with Ms. Advocate social worker, both do many
of the same things, such as assess, plan, negotiate, mediate, and advocate. Ms.
Advocate, in contrast to Ms. Generalist, also adds advocacy and larger systems
thinking and actions to her intervention. Chapter 3 is devoted to assessment,
at whatever level of intervention is needed, especially in multiple levels from
individual to international.
Competency 8: Intervene with individuals, families, groups,

Social workers:
• critically choose and implement interventions to achieve practice goals
and enhance capacities of clients and constituencies;
frameworks in interventions with clients and constituencies;
• use interprofessional collaboration as appropriate to achieve beneficial
practice outcomes;
• negotiate, mediate, and advocate with and on behalf of diverse clients
and constituencies; and
• facilitate effective transitions and endings that advance mutually agreed-
on goals. (CSWE, 2015)
xx { Preface
Chapters 5–8, on education, persuasion, negotiation, and electronic ad-

vocacy, provide detailed information for readers to apply related to human
behavior and the social environment, person-in-environment, and other theo-
retical frameworks that apply to the topics. As a group, they allow practitioners
to intervene, by choosing appropriate practice goals and then implementing
carefully crafted plans, always with the goal of enhancing clients’ and
constituencies’ skills and capacities.
Competency 9: Evaluate practice with individuals, families, groups,
Social workers:
• select and use appropriate methods for evaluation of outcomes;
frameworks in the evaluation of outcomes;
• critically analyze, monitor, and evaluate intervention and program
processes and outcomes; and
• apply evaluation findings to improve practice effectiveness at the micro,
mezzo, and macro levels. (CSWE, 2015)
Evaluation of advocacy is the sole focus of Chapter 9. Readers learn how to

use the advocacy map planning tool described in Chapter 5 to assess the inter-
vention and to analyze and learn from the successes and failures of the advo-
cacy effort. Considerable information in this chapter describes measurement
concepts and methods.
The model of advocacy practice described in this book follows this edu-
cational standard exactly, providing students and other readers the material
to engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate in the context of advocacy prac-
tice. The student who completes this book will have an excellent grounding
in the nine competencies required by the CSWE. An instructor who adopts
this book will have a clearly enunciated connection with all nine core
competencies of generalist social work practice. The program or school of
social work that endorses this book will most likely find the reaffirmation
process a bit easier.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing of a book requires a substantial investment of time and energy,

thought and learning, writing and revision. Without an array of understanding
people around me to lighten some of the load of daily living, this revision
would never have been completed. My family, both near and far, is my greatest
support system, and they deserve every word of appreciation possible. I thank
David Follmer, who allowed me to write the first edition and supported me
with this book and others for many years. Dana Bliss and the team at Oxford
University Press deserve thanks for continuing the Advocacy Practice for
Social Justice legacy with this edition. I have tested these ideas on hundreds
of students at the University of Texas at Arlington, and those students deserve
extra credit for helping me understand better ways to present specific material.
Their questions have helped me form the answers I present in this book. As we
move forward through uncertain political waters, it is clear that social workers
need to be social justice advocates even more than ever.
—Richard Hoefer
xxi
1}
The Unified Model of Advocacy Practice
Ms. Jones enters your standard-issue government agency office, head

hanging down, two shy young children at her side. After she sits, she sighs,
nearly silently. You, a recently graduated MSW on your first job, ask how
you can help her today. “Seems like nobody can do anything for me today!”
she whispers. “The air conditioning is out in my apartment building, and
the weather forecast is for highs over 100 degrees for the rest of the week.”
Fanning herself with a faded agency brochure, Ms. Jones grows more
agitated. “This is the third time this summer that the air has broken down,
for the entire building! That landlord is a crook! He just wants the rent paid
on time.” Crescendoing, Ms. Jones is almost yelling now. “It’s bad for my
kids’ health—Michael here’s got asthma. My neighbors and I are sure fed up
with this nonsense!” Stopping, catching herself, amazed at her volume, she
concludes with a shrug and a sigh. “But there’s nothing we can do. Can you
help us?”
Social workers are called on to assist people in need. Needs can be physical,
mental, social, or societal, and social workers must be able to provide help
for all types of needs. People come with problems, hoping that social workers
will be able to assist them in resolving their issues. Social work education
prepares students with a set of knowledge and skills to enable them to help
clients. Situations that social workers face in their professional lives certainly
include problems that bedevil individuals and families. But one of the de-
fining elements of social work practice is that social workers are trained to
see the connections between problems happening to individuals and problems
occurring to larger numbers of people. These problems can be due to organ-
izational or governmental policies that impose costs on or deny services to
people in need.
Examples of these costs include spending time waiting in a “first-come,
first-served” line to apply for financial assistance, paying higher prices at local
markets in low-income areas because public transportation is not available
to other shops, paying outrageous fees to cash checks because banks are not
located nearby, and having higher levels of cancer and other diseases because 1
2 { Advocacy Practice for Social Justice
low-income housing is located near industrial dumping zones or other sources

of significant pollution.
Changes in legislation and shifts in administrative rules affect what benefits
are available and for whom. Organizations and governments sometimes
change the definition of eligibility for a service to deny services to people in
need. Another way to deny services is to restrict program funding so fewer
people can be served.
Advocacy is a core concern of social workers. Social workers are not con-
tent with only understanding current policies, the forces that shaped them,
and their effects. Such analysis and understanding is but a first step in assisting
clients with their situation. In fact, because policy shapes what social workers
can do to assist their clients and how they can practice social work, the impor-
tance of understanding and being able to conduct effective advocacy is vital to
all social workers. Advocacy is not the only method social workers use, but it
is one of the techniques that make social work unique among professions. All
social workers should know and be able to use the principles and processes of
advocacy.
The purpose of this book is to provide readers a concise but thorough un-
derstanding of advocacy practice: what it is, why to use it, and how to apply it
in real life. I present advocacy in the context of generalist social work practice,
thus developing a unified model of advocacy practice. The main purpose of
advocacy practice is the pursuit of social justice. This chapter begins by de-
fining advocacy and advocacy practice, and it compares the stages of gener-
alist social work practice and advocacy practice. It concludes with information
regarding current trends in the field of social work and social welfare policy.
Defining Advocacy and Advocacy Practice
Advocacy is a term with many definitions. Barker (2014), in The Social

Work Dictionary, defines advocacy as “1. The act of directly representing or
defending others. 2. In social work, championing the rights of individuals or
communities through direct intervention or empowerment” (p. 10). Jansson
(2016) links the term “advocacy” to efforts to change policies to help rela-
tively powerless groups. Schneider and Lester (2001) analyzed more than 90
different definitions, finally developing their own: “Social work advocacy is
the exclusive and mutual representation of a client(s) or a cause in a forum,
attempting to systematically influence decision-making in an unjust or unre-
sponsive system(s)” (p. 65).
Social workers are not the only ones discussing advocacy. Daly (2012)
argues that good ideas need skillful advocacy if they are to be adopted in the
face of resistance. He sees advocacy as bringing persuasive arguments to bear
effectively. In his view, marketing an idea is advocating for it and vice versa.
The Unified Model of Advocacy Practice } 3
He does not have a values orientation regarding the purpose of advocacy—

the term “advocacy” simply refers to a set of actions an effective proponent
uses to persuade. Lawyers also are trained in advocacy, viewing it as a set of
techniques they use to build the best possible case for their clients (Messing,
2013). This view is similar to that of rhetoricians who study persuasion as a
goal in itself, regardless of the goals of the advocate (Rybacki & Rybacki, 2011).
People who study rhetoric differ from social work advocates not in what they
do but, rather, in that they discuss advocacy outside of any values orientation.
To them, advocacy (i.e., marketing and persuasion) is a tool to serve whatever
purpose the advocate desires. For social workers, however, advocacy is a tool
used to promote social justice.
Advocacy practice is, then, that part of social work practice in which the
social worker takes action in a systematic and purposeful way to defend,
represent, or otherwise advance the cause of one or more clients at the indi-
vidual, group, organizational, or community level in order to promote social
justice. The usual targets of advocacy practice are decision-makers in elected
or appointed positions who create and legitimize laws, regulations, rules, and
other types of policies, or decision-makers who apply the policies others have
created. These targets can be in government or in other organizations, such as
nonprofits or businesses that make decisions that affect people’s lives. Advocacy
can occur at the organizational, local, state, national, or international levels,
yet the conceptual process to conduct advocacy, at all those levels and for all
these types of clients, is the same.
This book proposes a unified model of advocacy that aligns with the gen-
eralist, problem-solving approach to social work. The importance of viewing
advocacy as an aspect of a unified social work approach to problem-solving is
evident when one examines the nonunified approaches to advocacy that are
sometimes found in the literature and in the field.
The first nonunified description of advocacy describes two types of advo-
cacy: case and cause. The difference between them is the level of interven-
tion. Case advocacy is related to individuals or families, such as in assisting
them to receive benefits or services for which they are entitled. Cause ad-
vocacy is related to larger groups or social movements, such as an effort to
expand the range of benefits and services available to a segment of the popula-
tion. Although dividing advocacy into these two categories is useful for some
purposes, it also runs the risk of ignoring the commonalities of advocacy, no
matter what level of client system is addressed, and of making important in-
formation less accessible to advocates who need it. Lens (2005), for example,
writes an excellent article describing details of argumentation and rhetoric for
persuasive communication but limits the application of these tools to cause
advocacy: “Social workers engaged in cause advocacy need rhetorical skills”
(p. 231). The information in the article is as useful for convincing a target of
advocacy at the micro level as it is at the macro level. Unfortunately, someone
who searches using the key words “cause advocacy” will find the article;
someone who uses the key words “case advocacy” may not. A unified approach
to advocacy avoids such problems entirely and clearly demonstrates how edu-
cation, persuasion, negotiation, and other aspects of advocacy practice can be
used whenever and wherever one conducts advocacy.
Another problem related to subdividing the topic of advocacy emerges
routinely. Authors focus on the venue of advocacy as another way to dis-
cern differences in advocacy practice. Ezell (2001), in his book on advocacy,
discusses four advocacy strategies: agency, legislative, legal, and community
(p. xx). Although there are certainly differences in the tactics associated with
advocating in these different arenas, the focus on the differences tends to mask
the underlying similarities. This chapter presents a unified model of advocacy
based on the generalist approach to social work.
THE GENERALIST MODEL OF SOCIAL WORK AND THE UNIFIED

MODEL OF ADVOCACY PRACTICE
You may recall from introductory classes in social work something called the
generalist model of social work. This model links all of social work practice,
from the micro scale of individuals, couples, and families to the macro scale of
organizations, communities, and larger entities. Although there are many dif-
ferent approaches to generalist social work practice, all are in agreement that
generalist social work practice is a problem-solving method (Perlman, 1957).
Kirst-Ashman and Hull (2018) define the term as “the application of an eclectic
knowledge base, professional values and ethics, and a wide range of skills to
target systems of any size for change” (p. 9). This method consists of a number
of generally agreed-on stages. According to its proponents, this method can
be used to address virtually any problem. Kirst-Ashman and Hull describe
the stages of the process as engagement, planning, implementation, evalua-
tion, termination, and follow-up. As I describe the unified model of advo-
cacy practice, you will be able to note the similar names of stages and identify
where differences exist. Table 1.1 shows the two models side by side. I present
an overview of the stages of the advocacy model next. After that, a case study
is presented in which a generalist practice social worker and an advocacy prac-
tice social worker address the case of Ms. Jones that started the chapter. This
allows you to understand better how the different, although similar, practices
look in the hands of social workers.
It is useful to remember that advocacy practice in real life may take stages
out of order, return to stages we thought were completed, and not always end
up where we thought we were going when we first began. In these ways, and
many others, advocacy practice is like all social work practice: Helping human
beings change themselves and the world around them is not an exact science,
so we must always be ready to develop and implement Plan B, Plan C, and
TABLE 1.1 } Comparing Generalist Social Work and the Unified

Model of Advocacy
Generalist Social Work Unified Model of Advocacy
(Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2018) (Advocacy Practice)
Engagement Getting involved

Assessment Understanding the issue
Planning Planning
Implementation Advocating
Evaluation Evaluating
Termination
Follow-up Ongoing monitoring
even Plan D in order to achieve something close to the social justice outcomes
we are striving for.
Stage 1: Getting Involved

The task of promoting social justice can sometimes seem daunting because there
are so many unjust situations in the world. For people who are interested in ad-
vocacy, both in and out of their job settings, it can seem that any effort they might
make is merely a token one. Yet, as social workers, we are committed through our
National Association of Social Workers (NASW) code of ethics (NASW, 2017) to
engage in advocacy. The odds of achieving a marked improvement through col-
lective effort are enhanced because advocacy is a task for all of us.
The getting involved stage is analogous to the engagement stage of the gen-
eralist model of social work. The notion of getting involved implies a psycho-
logical readiness to expend energy, time, and possibly other resources in the
pursuit of social justice, if only in the sense of helping one person to be treated
more fairly. Getting involved often stems from a sense of outrage about how
someone or some group is being treated. Parents might become outraged by
seeing their child being unfairly affected by school policy (e.g., when a head
cheerleader was prevented from participating in her extracurricular activity
all semester for drinking off campus, but a football player was removed for
only two games for the same offense; KWCH12 News, 2014). Social workers
might become outraged that gays and lesbians are declared ineligible in some
states for providing foster care or adopting because of their sexual orientation.
Other motivations are possible, too. Just as one of the most powerful
predictors of volunteering is previous volunteer experience, present or future
advocacy is often related to prior advocacy. Thus, even if the motivation for a
person’s first efforts at advocacy is to obtain a good grade in a class, impress
a potential partner, or feel that he or she is a part of the action, there is likely
no wrong motivation for advocacy in the name of social justice. In the end,
continued advocacy is most likely linked to a person’s ethical standards and
sense of efficacy when employing advocacy practice skills. Therefore, it is im-

portant to understand the ethics of social justice (discussed in Chapter 2), as
well as to learn the most effective ways of acting as an advocate (examined in
Chapters 3–9).
Stage 2: Understanding the Issue

Issues are situations and conditions that affect people. Usually, however,
situations and conditions affect some people positively and other people neg-
atively. Although there are several steps to understanding an issue, the first
is to identify the issue. This is often both overlooked and more difficult to do
than expected. It is an overlooked step because the answer seems obvious—
everybody knows that poverty, domestic violence, unemployment, and so on
are issues with societal causes, except, of course, that some people believe that
these same problems are, at least in part, caused by the affected individuals.
Thus, particularly when people come at social justice issues from different
value positions, the first step is to agree on a mutually acceptable definition of
the problem to be addressed.
This step is more difficult to do than expected because of the difficulty in
overcoming other people’s—and our own—belief systems. Again, we may be-
lieve that the answer is obvious and be very surprised that there is another
stance. Bridging the various viewpoints can be a challenge for advocates, but
it is a challenge that must be overcome before moving to the next step in un-
derstanding the issue.
The second step is to determine who is being positively affected and who
is being negatively affected by the identified issue. Poverty, for example, is an
issue that has both positive and negative effects. It is, of course, a negative con-
dition if you are a member of a family of four with a combined income of less
than $16,000 a year. You are probably not eating nutritiously, and you prob-
ably either do not have a home or have a poor-quality home that needs repairs.
You may live in an area of town that has inferior schools, poor access to public
transit, and few job opportunities.
For those of us who are not poor, however, the condition has some pos-
itive elements. The existence of poverty means that wages in the United
States can be held down to the minimum wage or lower. This helps us
stretch our earnings further by making everyday items and the cost of
eating at restaurants lower. Worldwide disparity in income is particularly
helpful to us because so many things we like to own are made outside our
borders, where wages and working conditions are much worse than in the
United States. Poverty, it may be argued, continues to exist in our country
and throughout the world largely because it is such a positive condition for
so many people.
Once it is clear who benefits and who loses from a particular condition or
situation, the third step is to understand the causes of the issue. The issue of
the existence of poverty, for example, has had many explanations. Some of the
explanations have more evidence to support them than others.
The fourth step is to view the various solutions that are proposed and de-
termine how likely they are to lead to social justice. The basic approach to
creating and examining possible solutions is to ask the following questions re-
peatedly: What would be the results of adopting this solution? Who would be
assisted? Who would be harmed? How would this solution act on people cur-
rently affected negatively by this issue? How would this solution act on people
currently affected positively by this issue?
Proposed solutions that lead to greater social justice should be ranked
higher in preference than solutions that do not improve social justice as much.
(Chapter 2 defines social justice in greater detail.) This stage, understanding
the issue, in advocacy practice parallels the generalist model’s assessment
stage. In both cases, it is the prerequisite for the planning stage.
Stage 3: Planning
Planning is vital for effective advocacy practice. Based on their understanding
of the issue, social workers and clients will have developed possible solutions
and chosen one to be the primary approach. This solution, if successfully
adopted and implemented, will lead to greater social justice. Planning, then, is
detailing the actions needed to make the preferred solution the solution that is
eventually chosen by targets of advocacy.
Step 1 of the planning stage is to identify what is wanted. This may seem
easy, as the primary solution has been determined in stage 2, understanding
the issue, but that is only the first part of the planning process. The overall
solution, which might also be known as the advocacy goal or outcome, needs
to be broken into smaller and more manageable outcomes, which in turn are
connected to advocacy activities and participants. A tool called an advocacy
map (see Chapter 5) can be used to assist moving from the “here” of a prob-
lematic situation to the “there” of a better future.
Step 2 in the planning process is to determine who are the targets of advo-
cacy. Trying to influence people who have little or no say on the issue you wish
to affect is a waste of time for everyone concerned. A state senator, for example,
is not likely to assist in an effort to reallocate community development block
grant funds. City council members in most cities, however, will be very active
in making these decisions. Thus, it is vital to identify the decision-maker(s)
who can help you reach your goal.
Once you identify the targets, step 3 is to assess when you can or should act.
Immediate action is not always possible, so it is important to lay the ground-
work for later success, including finishing planning, gathering information,
and developing relationships.
Step 4 is to understand the way(s) that you can act so that you get what
you want. This requires an understanding of the principles of education,
persuasion, and negotiation. Because decision-makers tend to have strong in-

dividual preferences on how they receive information, it may seem impos-
sible to have general rules of how to educate, negotiate, and be convincing, but
practice wisdom and research have made strides in these areas.
Step 5 is to gather the appropriate information and incentives for bringing
the decision-maker over to your side of the issue. The most important task of
someone who wants to use advocacy to make a difference is to have informa-
tion that is accurate and convincing. Most decision-makers like to have not
only tables of numbers and other facts but also case stories of how the issue is
harming someone or examples of the kinds of people who would benefit from
a change in policy. Proponents of abolishing the estate tax, for example, argued
that heirs of family farmers and small businesspeople were being harmed by
having to sell their parents’ farm or business in order to pay taxes on their
inheritance. Opponents of removing the tax countered that people such as
Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s wealthiest people) do
not need to receive any tax relief. Both sides on this argument had data about
the number of people affected by the decision and how their lives would be
affected.
Once you know what you want to accomplish, have identified the targets,
have decided when to act, understand the best ways to persuade, and possess
the information to be optimally convincing, the next stage is to put plans into
action and actually advocate.
Stage 4: Advocating
This stage is where the planning pays off. In the advocating stage, social
workers may speak to a supervisor or board of directors, talk to legislators, call
allies for action, write memos detailing grievances, or walk a picket line. You
now put into effect the tactic(s) you chose during the planning stage. Change
may occur quickly in some cases, although it often takes years, if not decades,
to make visible progress toward greater social justice.
Most social policy advocates understand the slow nature of true change.
They keep one eye on the future and outcomes to be achieved and another eye
on the present to ensure that plans are followed and conditions are assessed.
Only by doing both can advocates truly make progress.
Stage 5: Evaluating
Advocacy practice performed without evaluation efforts is inadequate. People
involved in change efforts must keep track of their level of success, whether the
effort is aimed at changing the life of one person or a million people. Without
the stimulus of an evaluation, even a fairly informal evaluation, advocates will
be less likely to examine why their efforts achieved what they did. Lessons
for more skillful advocacy in the future can be derived from both success
and failure. Learning, not assessing blame, is the goal of a healthy evaluation
process. In general, evaluations use the planning documents created early in
the advocacy effort (e.g., the advocacy map) to compare what was sought with
what was achieved.
Stage 6: Ongoing Monitoring

Once evaluation determines that sufficient progress is being made, most
social work texts indicate that termination of the helping relationship should
occur. You should follow up later to ensure that client progress is maintained.
However, high caseloads often prevent follow-up. In the advocacy practice
model, termination rarely happens. In some ways, social workers who are
advocates for social justice have taken on their issue(s) “until death do us part”
because social justice is such a worthy, yet far-off, goal. Ongoing monitoring of
specific conditions is required to provide information for new planning, new
advocacy, and new evaluating.
Naturally, specific interventions with particular clients do terminate,
even in advocacy practice. Advocates who do the job of training and
empowering their clients can often step away, knowing that the former
clients are now capable of advocating for themselves. Even so, social
workers may wish to continue their quest for social justice with regard
to one particular issue with other clients, in other communities, or at dif-
ferent levels of intervention. Ongoing monitoring is thus necessary to en-
sure effective advocacy.
This brief overview of advocacy practice shows that it is similar to other
types of practice with which you may be familiar and that it uses the same
generalist problem-solving approach pioneered in social work many years
ago. Although the techniques are different from those in direct or other types
of macro practice, many of the skills you learn elsewhere will be important
in advocacy. Social work advocates must be good listeners, be able to reflect
back to others what is said, build on others’ strengths, gather information from
many sources, move discussions to solutions, and act in ethical ways to achieve
client goals.
COMPARING GENERALIST AND ADVOCACY PRACTICE: THE CASE

OF MS. JONES
Ms. Jones is the client who appears in the short vignette at the start of this
chapter. This section compares what a generalist practice social worker (we
will call her Ms. Generalist) who does not employ an advocacy practice ap-
proach might do with that situation with what a social worker (we will name
her Ms. Advocate) using the advocacy practice approach might do. (Please
review the vignette before continuing this section.)
Stage 1: Engagement/Getting Involved
• Both Ms. Generalist and Ms. Advocate listen carefully to the concerns
of Ms. Jones and work diligently to address the immediate needs of
the family members for a safe and cool place to live in the short term.
Ms. Generalist takes Ms. Jones at her word when she says, “Nothing
can be done.” Ms. Generalist has many more clients to listen to today
and does not think she has time to delve into greater detail about
conditions and actions relating to the apartment building and the
property owner.
• Ms. Advocate, also knowing that she has many more clients to talk
to, asks Ms. Jones what she and her neighbors have done in order to
bring about a permanent solution to the ongoing problems with the
air-conditioning of the apartments. She is willing to get involved with
the larger issue of property owner irresponsibility, knowing that solving
this one problem may prevent many other problems for this family and
others.
Stage 2: Assessment/Understanding the Issues
• Ms. Generalist has assessed the situation as one that needs immediate
attention to keep Ms. Jones and her family members safe from heat
stroke or other reactions to the extreme heat in their apartment.
Although it is problematic that the property owner is not following the
law to keep the units habitable, Ms. Generalist does not know of any way
to force the property owner to comply with city codes.
• Ms. Advocate asks questions to understand the issues that Ms. Jones
is facing. The information that Ms. Jones shares leads Ms. Advocate to
understand the situation as one requiring both immediate attention
to solve the family’s housing crisis and a longer term solution to the
property owner’s multiple violations of the housing code.
Stage 3: Planning
• Ms. Generalist, working with Ms. Jones, sketches out a plan to solve the
immediate problem of safe housing. She checks out various possibilities,
always checking with Ms. Jones to ensure that she is acknowledging and
following the client’s wishes as much as possible.
• Ms. Advocate also works with Ms. Jones to understand what she might
like to choose from the range of possibilities available. Ms. Advocate also
gives Ms. Jones information relating to property owner responsibilities
to provide habitable housing. She brainstorms with Ms. Jones about
what can be done to ensure the problems do not happen again to herself
or her neighbors.
Stage 4: Implementation/Advocating
• Ms. Generalist does what she has agreed to do for Ms. Jones and her
children. She first secures a spot for them all in a Red Cross-sponsored
emergency shelter set up in the nearby elementary school that the
children attend. She promises to check on the availability of a donated
window air-conditioning unit and an emergency discount in rates for
electricity so that the family can afford to use any air-conditioning unit
that they receive.
• Ms. Advocate uses her resources to secure the family a cool place for
the next few nights at the nearby elementary school that has been set up
as an emergency shelter. Ms. Advocate also adds Ms. Jones’s name to a
list for donated air-conditioning units. A third task is to download and
print instructions from the city’s website on how to file a housing code
violation complaint. She realizes that Ms. Jones and her neighbors may
want this information and suggests that while the neighbors are at the
elementary school together, they talk about ways to use the city’s power
to force the property owner to act responsibly. Ms. Advocate also looks
up and gives Ms. Jones information relating to making an appointment
with a legal aid clinic lawyer.
Stage 5: Evaluation/Evaluating
• As far as Ms. Generalist is concerned, the key aspect of this case is that
the family has a safe and cool place to live until the heat spell breaks.
It is also important to her that the family receive an air-conditioning
unit at least until the one at the apartment building can be fixed. She
is concerned about Ms. Jones’s son, who has asthma, and realizes that
this malady may cause future problems unless it can be controlled. That
problem, however, must wait for a while, until all of these other, more
urgent, cases can be dealt with. Just knowing that the family will be
taken care of by the Red Cross shelter means that the problem is being
handled appropriately and satisfactorily.
• Ms. Advocate is pleased that a cool spot is available for Ms. Jones and
her family, keeping them all together and out of danger. She is glad that
the Red Cross is working to solve the immediate health issues that Ms.
Jones faces. Ms. Advocate checks over the planning documents she
developed and sees that although the immediate problem is covered,
additional work will be required to determine what, if anything, the
neighbors in the apartment building will want to do to make a longer
term solution possible. She notes that just giving information about
filing a code violation complaint and giving a referral to a legal aid clinic
does not make the property owner behave responsibly. She knows there
is more to do.
Stage 6: Termination
• Ms. Generalist feels good about the way she handled Ms. Jones’s
case. She listened well, was empathic, took into account Ms. Jones’s
preferences in developing a plan, and then was able to get the entire
family into the same nearby shelter. She knows the Red Cross does an
excellent job, given its resources. Ms. Generalist was unable to secure an
air conditioner due to the agency allocation policy; she felt bad about
that, but the few available units had been promised to elderly clients
who were less mobile than the members of this family. Although Ms.
Generalist believes that she will need to help this family again in the
future, she puts the file back in the file cabinet.
• Ms. Advocate looks in her planner and notes that she needs to follow up
with Ms. Jones because of the larger issues at stake.
Stage 7: Follow-up/Ongoing Monitoring
• Five weeks later, Ms. Generalist looks up to see Ms. Jones and her family
coming in the door. “How can I help you today?” she asks. Ms. Jones
begins, “Well, it’s the same old thing. The landlord isn’t keeping up the
building right.”
• Two weeks later, Ms. Advocate contacts Ms. Jones while the heat wave
is still in full force. Ms. Advocate also contacts two other residents of
the building. She speaks with them and Ms. Jones and listens while they
express their ideas and fears relating to filing a complaint against the
property owner. She acknowledges what they are saying and provides
support for the idea of using the legal process. Ms. Advocate agrees to
facilitate a meeting of the neighbors with a legal aid clinic lawyer to
identify their options.
This illustration shows that an advocacy practice viewpoint leads to addi-

tional work for the practitioner in the short term, but it may lead to higher
levels of client empowerment and less overall work in the long term.
The use of advocacy, whether or not it is conceived of as part of the gen-
eralist practice perspective, is also part of a broader context. The next section
provides a broader context for advocacy practice, discussing two trends that
affect the profession of social work and its use of advocacy.
The Broader Context for Advocacy Practice
This section describes two trends affecting advocacy practice in the social
work profession. They color the environment for all types of advocacy and
are beyond the ability of social workers to control. Nonetheless, they must
be acknowledged and, whenever possible, worked around. These trends are

the rise in partisan ideological differences and the increasing role of wealth in
American politics.
THE RISE IN PARTISAN IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
Until recently, the two major political parties in the United States had fairly
stable policy positions to which most members held fast. Although it is in-
correct to paint all the members of a political party with the same brush, in
American politics members of the Republican party are considered more
conservative than members of the Democratic party, who tend to be more
liberal. In addition, although the terms “conservative” and “liberal” have had
somewhat shifting meanings over time, both parties have maintained fairly
consistent positions since the 1960s.
In the past, Republicans focused on the economic sphere and were the
party of fiscal restraint (against deficit spending when not in wartime), low
taxes, and in favor of large banks and corporations having few restrictions in
their pursuit of profit. Social issues were not a major part of their public image.
As the civil rights and women’s liberation movements gained momentum in
the 1960s, however, Republicans seized the opportunity to appeal to social
conservatives. Many of these people lived in the Southern states and were
lifelong Democrats as a result of antipathy to the party of Abraham Lincoln.
Richard Nixon’s so-called “Southern strategy” in 1968 turned conservative
Democrats into conservative Republicans who supported anti-welfare, anti-
civil rights, and anti-feminism positions. This prepared the ground for social
conservativism to join with economic conservativism. In 1979, the injection of
conservative evangelical support for the Republicans occurred when Reverand
Jerry Fallwell founded the Moral Majority. This organization sought to pro-
vide political power to rural, White, evangelical Christians who were “socially
conservative, anticommunist, populist, and nationalist” and was a reaction
against “the perceived excesses of the 1960s often embodied in the Democratic
party” (encyclopedia.com, 2003). This movement aided Republican candidate
Ronald Reagan when he won the presidency in 1980. Since that time, rural,
evangelical, White Christians have solidly supported the Republican party,
at least in part due to Republicans’ adoption of anti-abortion, pro-gun, and
anti-government rhetoric and positions. For example, this group was solidly
in favor of Donald Trump over Hilary Clinton (81% to 19%, respectively) in the
2016 presidential election (Strang, 2017).
The Democratic party began to support civil rights for African Americans
in the 1960s, although many Democrats in the South were nonetheless against
equal rights. (These social conservatives shifted to supporting Republicans,
as discussed previously.) The support for equal rights extended to women,
Hispanics, people who are sexual minorities, and other groups not receiving
equal justice under the law. These groups have become strong elements of
the Democratic party coalition due to progress being made to make them fi-
nancially and legally equal to straight, White, males. Democratic distaste for
the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s led to calls for less military spending and
proceeded to the nomination of anti-war advocate Senator George McGovern
for president in 1972. The election contest between McGovern and then-
current President Richard Nixon led to the worst loss of any Democratic can-
didate ever at the presidential level.
Until the Great Recession of 2008, one of the key differences between the
parties was the amount of action they believe the government should take in
support of economic equality. Republicans favored less government effort in
the economic sphere than did Democrats. This means the Republican party
is on record against environmental regulations, intervention in the market
(e.g., minimum wage increases), and mandating equal pay for women and
men doing the same job. In general, Republicans believe government is part
of America’s problems and not an engine for good. Republicans are viewed as
protecting the right for individuals to own firearms with minimal regulation
or governmental control. Many Republicans also desire to reduce or eliminate
the ability of women to obtain abortion services and to legislate that marriage
can only be between one man and one woman.
Despite many areas of disagreement, Republicans and Democrats had nu-
merous areas of policy overlap and were able to work across the party divide.
This allowed government to function because members of the other party
were not viewed as enemies or anti-American. Compromise is much more
likely if the other party is viewed as supporting questionable policy choices
but not as evil people.
During the past two dozen years, however, there has been increasing confu-
sion regarding what it means to be “conservative” and “liberal.” Shafer (2016)
calls our current time period “the era of partisan volatility.” Some grass-roots
Republican voters attack party leaders for being “RINOs,” or “Republicans in
name only,” for being willing to vote for compromises and bipartisan efforts.
Democrats, for their part, are at times split into mainstream and progressive
factions (think of Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton versus those who
were for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries). At times, grass-roots members
of both parties agree on the need for deep-rooted changes to their parties in
order to promote the needs of “ordinary citizens” over those of economic elites.
The Tea Party on the Republican side and the Occupy movement are examples
in which great hostility can mask similar views on the role of economic and
social elites in controlling far too much of daily life.
According to the British Broadcasting Company (2010), the Tea Party
began in 2009 after large banks, mortgage lenders, and Wall Street trading
companies were offered huge bailouts to protect the larger economy.
Furthermore, institutions such as government (with its career politicians) and
the mainstream media, in addition to trade agreements with other countries,

were viewed with great suspicion. Anyone, whether Republican or Democrat,
voting for such policies needed to be voted from office, according to the Tea
Party. As a result of Tea Party pressure, laws enforcing term limits for elected
officials were passed, requiring officials to retire from a particular position to
ensure that people did not become career elected officials.
The Occupy movement began with an effort to “occupy” Wall Street
on September 17, 2011, by protesters in Liberty Square in New York City
(OccupyWallStreet.org, n.d.). It is a “leaderless movement” that fiercely
criticized economic policies in the wake of the economic crash of 2008.
One affiliated group, Occupy Atlanta (2011), posted the following on its
Facebook page:
We are a nonviolent community of individuals concerned with the
widening gap between rich and poor in America, corporate involvement
in our political system, and unregulated corporate greed. Join us, the
99% in envisioning a society free from foreclosures, homelessness, bank
bailouts, golden parachutes, endless wars, corporate personhood, polit-
ical corruption, and rampant unemployment.
Both Democratic and Republican parties have elements of populism that
have been energized since the presidential election of 2016. This philosophy
generally rejects the elites who have been running government and seeks more
power for the grass-roots members of their parties. Senator Bernie Sanders
of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are progressives in
the liberal vein. They believe that economic elites control the Democratic
party as much as they do the Republican party. When high-level mainstream
Democrats argue for trade agreements such as the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), populists
counter that these take good-paying jobs from the United States and trans-
port them overseas while providing business owners opportunities to enrich
themselves.
Donald Trump ran for president as a populist with a mission to “drain the
swamp” of Washington, DC, to eliminate the entrenched elites of the economic
and political systems. Populists of the Tea Party variety complain that many
of the current Republicans in the House and Senate have abandoned their
support for lower government spending limits, which was long an important
element of the party, especially when President Obama, a Democrat, was in
office. This view was reinforced when most Republicans (who were in control
of Congress and the White House), along with some Democrats, voted for a
spending bill in early 2018 that was projected to increase budget deficits by
billions of dollars per year.
Democrats, on the other hand, generally promote government efforts to
reduce inequality and extend equal protection to all. They are often supporters
of the rights of racial, ethnic, and gender minorities. Democrats tend to favor
less military spending and more welfare benefits. They are also less opposed to
higher taxes because they support an activist government that spends money
stimulating the economy and supporting those who are not a good fit for the
labor market.
According to a recent Pew Research survey (Pew Research Center, 2017c),
the American electorate became more polarized during President Obama’s
years in office, and this has increased during the first year of President Trump’s
term. As the Pew Research Center states regarding 10 issues it has tracked
since 1994, “The average partisan gap has increased from 15 percentage points
to 36 points.” This means that Republicans are becoming more conservative
and Democrats are becoming more liberal. As a result, there is less common
ground to agree on in terms of policy, and compromising to enact policy is less
likely. The divide within the Republican party between those who are “tradi-
tional” Republicans and those who are associated with right-wing populism
(the Tea Party and Donald Trump) accentuates ordinary partisan differences.
The polarization is stronger among those highly engaged in politics than
among the general members of the party, whether Republican or Democrat.
Naturally, elected officials follow the trends within their parties, so the grid-
lock in politics that has existed in recent years is to be expected. In addition,
intense negative feelings about the “other” party (whether one is Republican
or Democrat) have increased dramatically (Pew Research Center, 2017c).
In 1994, only 20% of both Republican and Democratic party members had
“very unfavorable” feelings about the other party. The recent average across
several years is much higher, with 44% of Democrats and people leaning to-
ward the Democratic party having a very unfavorable view of the Republican
party. Republicans, for their part, feel the same way about the Democratic
party, with 45% feeling very unfavorably. Working across party lines is difficult
when voters and officials believe that the other party’s policies are dangerous
for the country. It is even more difficult to find a way to work together when
Republicans and Democrats cannot agree on what is the truth and what are
“alternative facts” with no substance.
This situation means that advocates working in the political arena to sup-
port social work’s generally liberal (but not necessarily populist) views will
be less likely to find anyone with whom to compromise. It will be more diffi-
cult to find officials of either party willing to work with members of the other
party or to find policies that are middle-of-the-road. This has three impacts.
First, advocates for social work ideas may feel a need to focus on getting
more Democrats elected because it will be difficult to find relatively moderate
Republicans with whom to work. Second, advocates should work on small
changes that do not invite partisan divides. It may, for example, be easier to
convince a conservative member of Congress to vote for more support for
programs protecting elderly people from financial scams than to persuade that
same member of Congress to increase funding for special housing programs

for the aged. Third, it may also suggest that advocacy efforts in the judicial
arena could be more successful than legislative advocacy.
THE INCREASING ROLE OF WEALTH IN AMERICAN POLITICS
Although wealth has always been an important correlate of political power

in the United States, it seems to have become even more influential in re-
cent years. The conservative Koch brothers have poured millions of dollars
from their private fortune into supporting conservative causes and creating
a network of office holders who believe in far-right-wing ideas. For the 2018
Congressional elections, these two men and their allies planned to spend
between $300 and $400 million dollars to elect candidates throughout the
country who shared their views (Beavers, 2017). Democrats also have some
large funders who donate to support their causes: In 2016, their most generous
donor, Tom Steyer, gave $87 million to Democrats and Democratic causes
(Horowitz, 2017). Because campaigning for office is so expensive, people run-
ning for office ask for donations early and often. There is a strong belief that
large donors receive extra attention and policy considerations in recognition
of their role in a campaign.
Recent decisions by the US Supreme Court have increased the role of
money in elections. In Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010),
the court held that the First Amendment right to free speech for individuals
extended to nonprofits, corporations, and labor unions. This means that
independent commentary or efforts to sway voters’ minds (e.g., through the
purchase of television broadcast time) cannot be regulated by government. In
response, super political action committees (known as super PACs) have been
created to accept donations to spend on influencing elections, with no require-
ment to disclose donor names.
Another noteworthy recent change (April 2014) in election financing was
caused by the ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission (2014).
This case eliminated aggregate contribution and spending limits in federal
elections. This means that a person may contribute to as many campaigns at
the national level as he or she desires.
This trend toward even more importance for large campaign donors,
facilitated by Supreme Court rulings, can lead social work advocates to de-
spair. Combined with the increasing partisan divide, social workers can be-
come fatalistic and wonder if there is any reason to bother with advocacy. My
answer, and that of countless other advocates, is a resounding call to action.
Social justice is under attack. It is under attack in families, groups,
organizations, cities, counties, states, the nation, and throughout the world. It
is under attack every day. Although social workers do not have a monopoly on
good ideas or the only “good” set of values, the profession of social work has
firm ideas about the values that should dominate the decision-making process
and the outcomes that should be achieved through individual and social ac-
tion. Victories occur, and we should celebrate them. Clients do receive more
equal treatment; agency budget cuts are reduced or reversed; and social policy
is made on the basis that people do matter, particularly those on the bottom
of the economic and social ladder. Yet, often, the advocates for increased con-
centration of power, wealth, and prestige win. One reason for this is that social
workers do not know how to advocate well for their clients and for themselves
and their agencies. The core premise of this book is that knowledge is power—
that knowledge of how to engage in a structured approach to advocacy will
lead to more successful advocacy. This, in turn, will lead to greater social
justice throughout the country and perhaps even the world. We must all do
our part, and the first step is to know what to do. After completing this book,
any reader can be a stronger and more committed advocate for social justice.
Conclusion
This chapter has examined briefly one model of generalist social work practice.
It introduced the unified model of advocacy practice, which is conceptualized
as a specialized form of social work practice with stages that parallel the gen-
eralist problem-solving approach. It also provided an overview of the six stages
of advocacy practice—getting involved, understanding the issues, planning,
advocating, evaluating, and ongoing monitoring. Finally, two broad societal
trends affecting advocacy for social justice work were described, and their
implications were explored. Laying the groundwork for the rest of the book,
this chapter allowed readers to understand the place of advocacy practice in
the big picture of social work practice and society. In the next chapter, social
justice, the goal of advocacy practice, is examined in detail.
Discussion Questions and Exercises
1. Why is advocacy an important function of social work?

2. How does this approach to advocacy practice fit in with what you
already know about social work?
3. Choose either of the trends discussed in this chapter. How have these
trends had an impact on any organization for which you work, your
field placement, where you do volunteer work, or other social work
setting? Has funding become more controversial and difficult to
obtain, for example? Describe the impact the trend is having there.
4. Consider the differences in approach between Ms. Generalist and Ms.
Advocate. On your own or in a group, discuss several case examples
with which you have been involved. For each, lay out the steps a Ms.
Generalist and a Ms. Advocate might take.
Suggested Further Reading
Perlman, H. (1957). Casework: A problem-solving process. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.
More than 200,000 copies of this classic book have been sold, and it has been
translated into at least 10 languages. Adhering to neither the Freudian nor the
Rankian approach to clinical practice prevalent at the time, Perlman relied on her
social work experience and keen mind to reject long-term psychotherapy as a model
for social work practice. Instead, she developed social casework, a short-term ap-
proach based on the idea that people come to social workers with problems that often
need to be broken into solvable pieces. Solving one piece of the client’s problems
often leads to gains in other areas as well. Perlman’s approach is still the backbone of
micro social work practice.
Shafer, B. (2016). The American political pattern: Stability and change, 1932–2016 (Studies in
government and public policy). Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.
This book is a fascinating study of the sources of political partisanship stability and
change. Social work advocates can learn a great deal about the history of partisanship
and where we are today. By understanding the factors affecting partisanship, we can
better understand how we got to the gridlocked positions of today. Importantly, we can
also begin to glimpse how to return to a more functional balance for creating sustain-
able policy.
2}
Social Work Ethics, Values, and Advocacy

Practice for Social Justice
[Social workers] understand that they are required by their code of ethics
to be advocates of policies that advance ethical principles such as self-
determination and social justice.
—B. Jansson (2016), p. 2
Social workers must be involved in advocacy practice if clients’ situations are to

improve. If social workers do not act as advocates, their policy ideas and, even
more important, their values will not be represented in policymaking circles.
When social workers engage in advocacy practice, they bring with them spe-
cialized knowledge about the human condition and a belief that service pro-
vision to clients must consider individuals within their environment. Social
workers also want to focus on client strengths rather than on pathology. When
social workers share their knowledge and beliefs, decision-makers are exposed
to a fresh and important point of view.
Decision-makers are encountered in many different places, not just in the
legislative branch of the government or in the top strata of other organizations.
Decision-makers can be found everywhere in organizations because even low-
level workers have to interpret ambiguous regulations, rules, and customs in
their place of employment (Lipsky, 1980). Organizational culture may make
some choices “obvious,” even if they run counter to client interests or harm
staff members. These decisions are just as appropriate for advocacy practice as
is passing a law.
Advocacy efforts for social justice are possible without involving
government bodies at all. The #MeToo movement is an example of a social
media-based advocacy effort to address widespread sexual assault and harass-
ment by individuals that is often part of systematic organizational and soci-
etal practices. This movement, popularized by Alyssa Milano in October 2017,
quickly spread across Twitter and highlighted tens of thousands of instances
of sexual assault and harassment, across many employment areas, resulting in
20 the resignation or firing of many men who found their behavior scrutinized
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
he intends to build, to go and see the quarries, and observe how the
beds that compose them stand when exposed to the air, a thing—I
may tell you—our brethren rarely do.”
Lesson the Second.
Paul was greatly pleased with the method adopted by his cousin
for giving him the first notions of building. In the evening he
presented as his day’s work a fair transcription of all that his teacher
had explained to him on the ground. He even illustrated his text by
some pretty good diagrams. The corrections were quickly made after
dinner. But next day the incessant rain prevented them from going
out, and Eugène decided that the second lecture should be given in
the house. “We shall have illustrations enough before us; the
château itself will supply them. We will go through it from cellar to
attic, and study its materials and methods of construction—to
criticize them if they are bad, or to take note of them if they are
good.” When teacher and pupil had gone down into the cellars,
Eugène began by saying, “Look how damp this cellar wall on the
side of the courtyard is; and see how the mortar in the joints of the
stones has fallen, owing to two causes:—first, in building these walls,
the precaution was not taken of cementing them on the outside, so
as to make the water in the ground run down to the bottom; second,
the mortar employed in the building was not made with hydraulic
lime. There are two principal kinds of lime: fat or rich lime and
hydraulic lime. The first is obtained by burning the compact
limestones usually found at the top of the beds; it is called fat
because when slaked it is glutinous and sticks to the tool with which
it is mixed; this lime, on being immersed in water, swells and sends
forth a dense vapour, as you may have observed, and mixed with
sand is slow in setting. Employed above ground, mortars made with
this lime become at length very hard, but retain more or less for a
time a certain plasticity. These mortars, however, as they are slow in
setting, are readily softened by water, and cannot then ever harden.
Hydraulic limes, on the other hand (obtained by burning the lias
limestones), when mixed with sand, soon become very hard, and set
all the better for being in a damp place. Hence this lime is called
hydraulic, because it is employed for all masonry-work under water.
In default of lias limestones, artificial hydraulic limes are made, by
grinding a certain proportion of clay with a limestone suitable for
making ordinary lime. Hydraulic lime is tested by slacking—that is to
say, mixing it with water; when it slakes with the production of very
little vapour.
“It is with hydraulic lime that concretes, of which I spoke to you
yesterday, are made. The mortar being prepared, a certain
proportion of hard gravel, about the size of eggs, is mingled with it;
the whole is well mixed and thrown into the excavations, where it is
rammed with wooden rammers. If the lime is good and the concrete
well made, it forms a veritable rock, similar to the conglomerates or
pudding-stone of natural formation. As, when set, water penetrates
with difficulty through these concretes, they prevent that percolation
of subjacent water to which cellars made in wet grounds are liable.
“If the wall you see there had been built with mortar made with
hydraulic lime, it would have been sound, and the mortar joints
would have been as hard as the stone itself. You will easily
understand that when the water has gradually softened and liquefied
the mortar in the beds and joints at the base of a wall, the stones
which compose it settle, and all the rest of the building suffers. That
is why the front of the house, towards the court, presents a
considerable number of cracks, that are filled in from time to time,
but of course with no result in doing away with the cause of the
mischief.
Fig. 9
Fig. 10.
“You observe that the cellar wall which receives the arch of the
vault is very thick, much thicker than is the wall of the ground floor.
The latter is scarcely 2 feet thick, whereas this is full 3 feet. This
additional thickness is given to the inside principally to receive the
springing of the vault. A sketch will enable you to understand the
reason of this arrangement. Let a (Fig. 9) be the thickness of the wall
of a house on the ground floor—a thickness of 1 foot 8 inches if
cellars are wanted beneath the ground floor; the floor line being at b
and the outside ground line at c, it will be well first to indicate the
floor line by a projection,—a greater thickness given to this wall on
the outside, say of 2 inches. At a, then, the wall will have a thickness
of 1 foot 10 inches. Your cellar arch being drawn at d, we must
reserve a resting-place of at least 8 inches, to receive the first arch-
stones of the spring of the vault; then it is well to give on the side
next the ground a greater projection, to make a good footing for the
plinth; this projection being 2 inches, we shall have at f a thickness
of 2 feet and at g 2 feet 8 inches at least, as it will not do for the wall
which rises to bear on the oblique beds of the vault, otherwise it
would not have a solid footing, and would be weakened or reduced
in thickness by this arch, which would penetrate it, as we see in the
drawing i. But come here into this other cellar, which belongs to the
oldest part of the château, and is built with good stones. The builder
did not wish to lose space within, and as he built with worked stone
he sought to economise material. What, then, did he do? (Fig. 10.)
He gave his cellar wall only the thickness of that of the ground floor;
at regular distances he put massive corbels 2 feet above the floor;
upon these corbels he carried arches projecting 10 inches, and on
these arches, which replace the extra thickness or counter-wall of
which I spoke to you just now, he carried his vaulting arch. This
perspective sketch will enable us readily to understand this method
of construction. The upper wall thus leaves the vault perfectly free
and rises plumb over its lower face.
“Is it all clear to you? Well, let us go and look at that little flight of
steps which perhaps you have never attentively examined. It is 4 feet
3 inches wide, which was large enough to afford a passage to the
queues of wine. Observe (Fig. 11): the ramping vault is composed of
as many arches, one above another, as there are steps; that is
extremely well managed, solid and easily built. In fact, when the
stone steps are laid, over above them is successively fixed the same
wood centre which, of course, is raised at each step; and upon this
centre an arch is built, which is quickly done, as the stones are
worked ready. In this way the arches follow the section of the steps,
and the centre being shifted—after each arch is keyed—to the next
step commencing from the bottom, two men can turn five or six of
these arches in one day, so that if there are twelve steps, this
ramping vault may be built in two days. Look, I will show you how
this construction should be denoted in perspective and geometrical
section in your résumé to-day—a and b.
Fig. 11.
“Let us go up to the ground floor. Look at the efflorescence
resembling cotton wool on the interior of the walls: it is the saltpetre
which forms inside the stone, and, through the humidity of the
ground, crystallizes on the surface. This saltpetre affects the stone
injuriously, ultimately eats it away, and throws off any painting that
we might endeavour to use as a counteractive on the interior
surface. Mastic cements are made to stop the effects of the
saltpetre, but these means only delay its appearance for a short time
without curing the evil, and this cement soon falls off in a crust. It is
therefore necessary in building, especially in the country, to prevent
the damp of the ground from rising up in the walls, and to stop it at
the ground level. The interposition of a layer of pitch beneath the
plinth has sometimes been tried, in order to prevent the absorption of
damp by the stones—or what is called capillary attraction—but this
method is very inefficient. The pitch oozes out under the pressure, as
it does not harden sufficiently to bear that pressure, or it
decomposes and combines with the lime. The best plan is to lay a
course of slates in the mortar-bed between the first lower courses of
the plinth. The slate effectually hinders that effect of capillary
attraction, and the damp is unable to rise in the walls.
Fig. 12.
“Now observe this front wall in the court: it forms a protuberance at
the floor level of the first story. We call that a bulging of the wall.
Instead of preserving its vertical plane, as it should have done, it has
bulged out; and why? Because it has been thrust out by a force
acting from within outwards. What is that force? It might be an arch;
but there is no arching on the ground floor. It can therefore be only
the floor. It is not clear at first sight how a floor, which is a horizontal
plane, can thrust; for to thrust, we must suppose the floor to expand
in one direction, which cannot be. But see what happens. Give me
your best attention.... Formerly, to compose a floor, large beams
were laid from wall to wall, and upon these beams lighter pieces of
timber, called joists; then on these was laid a bed of earth, gravel, or
sand, and upon that a surface of mortar to receive the tiling. This
made a very heavy mass. Now, as a piece of timber, even of
considerable section, bends in time under its own weight—that is to
say, from being straight becomes curved—its tendency to bend will
be proportionally greater when it is weighted. The more it bends, the
more powerful its thrust upon the inner surface of the walls in which
it has its bearing. It is this pressure upon the interior surface that
tends to thrust the wall outwards. But if, as in this case, in order to
relieve the bearing of the beams, struts of wood have been put
underneath (Fig. 12), this effect of thrust is all the more sensible
because the arm of the lever is longer. You do not quite understand,
I see. A sketch will make it clear to you. Let a be the section of the
wall, or, if you will, its thickness. If the beam bends according to the
line c d, there occurs a pressure at d, which produces a thrust at f
and the rounding of the wall, as indicated by the dotted curves.
Supposing even that in lieu of the strut e we have a stone corbel, the
effect produced will be the same, though less forcible, unless the tail
of the corbel reaches through the wall, as you see marked at i, and
this tail k is weighted in such a manner that the weight neutralizes
the pressure which the beam exerts at the end l. This has not been
done here, where instead of the wood strut, a corbel was put. This
corbel has but a middling hold in the wall, and the latter, formed of
small stones not very well built, has not sufficient cohesion to resist
the thrust exerted by the deflection of the beams. But why, you will
ask me, has this effect been produced at the floor level of the first
story and not above? Because, by the effect of the bulging we find
here, the wall has inclined above towards the inside, and has
thereby squeezed the second floor—its surfaces being placed, by
their very inclination, perpendicularly to the curve line of the upper
beams, as I indicate to you at m, exaggerating the effect for the
purpose of making it clearer.
“You see that each detail merits attention, and that the builder
ought to have a good reason for everything he does.
“In work of every kind we learn to avoid faults only by analysing
and searching into their causes and ascertaining their effects. To
become a good builder, therefore, it is not enough to familiarize
one’s self with rules of construction, which cannot provide for all
contingencies; we must see and observe much, and ascertain
defective points in buildings that have been tested by time; just as
physicians become able to determine what a good constitution is
only by studying diseases and their causes. For the most part we
appreciate what is good only through observing what is bad; if, in the
absence of the bad, we are able to admit that there is such a thing
as the good. An old proficient in architecture, who, when I was about
your age, was so kind as to aid me with his advice, used often to say
to me: ‘I can tell you, my dear fellow, what you must avoid in the art
of building;—as to explaining to you in what the good and the
beautiful consist, you must find out that yourself. If you are a born
architect, you will know well enough how to discover it; if not, all that
I could show you, all the examples I could place before you, would
not give you talent.’ And he was right. The sight of the finest works in
architecture may pervert the minds of students, if it’s not been
explained to them how the authors of these works succeeded in
making them beautiful by having avoided such or such faults.
“But you have enough to write out for to-day. Make a fair copy of
these sketches opposite your text, and we will examine it this
evening.”
CHAPTER VI.
HOW PAUL IS LED TO RECOGNIZE CERTAIN
DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ETHICS AND ARCHITECTURE.
When, in the evening, Paul’s report of the lesson was read in the
family circle, M. de Gandelau interrupted the reading at this phrase
incorrectly given, “Good is only the absence of evil.”
“Oh, oh!” said his father; “Charity is something more than the
absence of evil. If you give nothing to the poor man who asks bread
of you; if, being able to swim, you do not try to save a drowning man,
you do not do evil, but certainly you do not do good.”
“That is not exactly what I said to Paul,” replied Eugène, smiling.
“Respecting defects discovered in building, I said, ‘I believe that the
good is the absence of the bad;’ that is to say, in building operations,
and perhaps in many other matters belonging to the purely material
order of things, to avoid what is bad is to do well, but not to do good.
I must, however, admit that I did not sufficiently develop my thought.
“Two things are needed to make a good builder: clear-sighted
intelligence—which depends on our individual psychical nature—and
the experience we acquire.
“Observation and experience thence resulting enable us to
recognize what is defective and to avoid it; but if, notwithstanding the
advantage thence derived, we are not endowed by nature with clear-
sighted intelligence, experience, though enabling us to avoid the
bad, does not of itself suffice for the discovery of the good.
“Moreover, though in morals the good is absolute and independent
of circumstances, it is not the same with building. What is good here
is bad elsewhere, on account of climate, habits, nature of materials,
and the way in which they are affected by local circumstances.
While, for instance, it is desirable to cover a roof with slates in a
temperate and humid climate, this kind of roofing is objectionable in
a warm, dry, and windy climate. Wooden buildings will be excellent in
one situation and unsuitable in others. While it is desirable to admit
the light by wide openings and to glaze large surfaces in northern
climates, because the sun’s glare is subdued, this would be
objectionable in southern countries, where the light is intense, and
where it is necessary to procure shelter from the heat. A code of
morals is possible, but we cannot establish absolute rules in building;
experience, reasoning, and reflection must therefore always be
summoned to our aid when we attempt to build. Very often young
architects have asked me what treatise on building I should
recommend as the best. There is none, I tell them; because a
treatise cannot anticipate all contingencies,—all the special
circumstances that present themselves in the experience of an
architect. A treatise lays down rules; but ninety-nine times out of a
hundred you have to encounter the exception and cannot rely upon
the rule. A treatise on building is useful in habituating the mind to
devise plans and have them put into execution according to certain
methods; it gives you the means of solving the problems proposed;
but it does not actually solve them, or at least only solves one in a
thousand. It is then for intelligence to supply in the thousand cases
presented what the rule cannot provide for.”
Lesson the Third.
“Yesterday,” said Eugène to Paul, when the latter came into his
room, “we visited the cellars and the ground floor; now we shall take
a walk among the garrets of the château. But first I must show you
what is meant by a roof truss. The simplest truss (Fig. 13) is
composed of four pieces of wood: two principal rafters, a tie-beam,
and a king-post. The two inclined pieces a are the blades; the
horizontal piece b is the tie-beam, and the vertical piece c the king-
post. The upper ends of the blades meet in the king-post, as I show
you in the detail d,—namely, by the means of two tenons e, which fit
into two mortises f, and a shoulder g, which make the whole
pressure of the timber bear into the notch i. The lower ends of the
blades are similarly connected at the two extremities of the tie-beam,
as this other detail h shows us. The king-post is also connected by a
tenon, in the centre of the tie-beam, but loosely, and without bearing
upon this tie-beam. When the tenons are let into the mortises, pegs
of wood are driven into the holes marked to fasten the whole well.
The more pressure there is on the top, m, the more the two blades
tend to spread at the foot; but these, being fixed at the two ends of
the tie-beam, tighten the latter like the string of a bow. The more this
tie-beam is strained, therefore, the less it is inclined to bend, and the
object of the king-post is only to suspend it by its centre, and to
connect the heads of the blades. But between m and n these rafters
may bend under the weight of the roof covering; two struts, o p,
therefore are added, which arrest this bending by bringing the
pressure to bear on the king-post, so that the latter is in its turn
strained between m and p. As wood will not stretch, the point p is
fixed, and the two points o likewise.
Fig. 13.
“Now that you know what is the simplest roof-truss, let us go up

into the roofs.”
These roofs were old, and had been repaired and strengthened
many times, and formed a complication of timbers difficult enough to
understand.
“Formerly,” said Eugène, “that is, more than a century ago, they
used to make roofs such as you see here: every rafter was framed,
that is, each of the rafters composed a truss, except the tie-beam,
which was introduced only at intervals. Then wood was in plenty, and
they scarcely thought of economising it. At present it is less
abundant, and there is a difficulty in procuring a considerable
number of pieces of large dimensions. The noble forests that
covered the soil of France have been foolishly wasted, and long
timbers of heart of oak are rare. It has therefore been necessary to
economise them. The expedient has been adopted of placing strong
trusses at a distance of about 12 feet from each other. On these
trusses have been placed purlins, which are the horizontal pieces
you see on this side; and on these purlins longer or shorter rafters
have been placed to receive the lathing for the tiles, or the battens
for the slates. But all timber roofing should be fixed upon sleepers,
which are those horizontal pieces resting on the top of the walls,
which bind and isolate the tie-beams from the masonry; for it is to be
observed that timber is preserved for an indefinite time in the free dry
air, but soon decays in contact with a moist body, such as stone is.
Look here at this piece of wood, almost buried in the masonry; it is
nearly reduced to touchwood, while the blade above, which is in the
free dry air, is as free from rot as if it were new.
“Formerly upper floors were made by putting joists resting on
beams and the walls. These joists and beams remained visible, as
you may see still in the kitchen and the large hall on the ground floor,
which serves as a store-room. The air therefore could circulate round
these timbers, and they might last for centuries. But it was
considered that thus exposed they were not pleasant to look at—that
they were not clean, and allowed spiders to spin their webs in the
interspaces. Laths were therefore nailed under these joists, and this
lathwork plastered so as to form what we call a ceiling. Timbers thus
inclosed and deprived of air, ‘heated’ (as carpenters call it), that is,
they fermented and soon began to decay. In fact, floorings with
exposed joists which had resisted the action of time for centuries
decayed and broke down in a short time after being inclosed. I may
add that formerly, before using timber in building, they took the
precaution of leaving it exposed for some years to the action of the
sun and rain. They even kept it for some time in water, to free it from
the sap (for sap is the ferment which makes wood rot). When the
timber, after having been barked and roughly squared, had remained
in the open air for five or six years, it was used. But now-a-days we
are in a hurry, and make use of timber that has not been cut more
than a year. It is not dry, it retains its sap, and if it is then enclosed it
ferments rapidly, so that in a few years the largest beams are
completely rotten. Prudent architects therefore hesitate to use wood
for floors. Yet its use—even if only partially dried—would not entail
serious inconvenience if it was not covered with plaster. The worst
that could happen would be the occurrence of cracks and shrinkings.
It would dry when in use, as it would have dried in the open air.
“There is no great disadvantage, then, in employing wood newly
cut for roof-timbers, which are generally left exposed. They dry
where they are. They warp, but do not perish of dry-rot.
“As we shall not be able to find wood absolutely dry for your
sister’s house, we shall leave the floor-joists visible, and endeavour
by simple and economical means to render them not unsightly.
“But you ought to be well acquainted with the qualities of timber. I
will not tell you that nature has caused these large vegetable
growths which we employ to grow for our pleasure or use. Nature is,
I think, very little concerned as to whether the oak or the fir would
serve any of our purposes; and if human intelligence has been able
to take advantage of these materials that spring up before us, it is
after having recognized and verified their properties by experience.
Unfortunately, it would seem as if the results of this experience did
not tend to increase; and judging from the way in which building-
timber is most frequently employed, we might be led to suppose that
we are less informed than were our predecessors, or that we have
lost that habit of observation with which they were familiar.
“Wood, being composed of fibres more or less lax or compact,
possesses a considerable power of resistance to a pressure exerted
along these fibres, but is easily bent or crushed under a pressure
exerted across these same fibres. Thus a log of wood 4 inches in
diameter and a yard or so long, placed on end, will support, without
being crushed or contorted, a pressure of 40,000 lbs.; whereas this
weight will break or crush it if placed horizontally, as you would crush
a reed under your foot. Take a thoroughly sound bit of straw, 4
inches long, and place your finger on one end of it, holding the straw
vertically on a table; you will have to press pretty strongly on it to
bend it, while the least pressure on the same straw placed
horizontally will flatten it. The straw is a tube. A tree consists of a
series of tubes, some enveloping others. The more numerous, close
and fine these tubes are, the more does the trunk resist pressure,
either in the direction of its length or its thickness. But this shows us
that to enable the wood to retain its power of resistance we must
employ it as nature gives it to us; and in fact this was done formerly.
Each piece of timber was cut from a tree of larger or smaller size, as
the case required, but they did not split the tree lengthwise to get
several pieces of timber; for the heart being harder and more
compact than the sap-wood (which is the spongy envelope beneath
the bark), and the concentric layers of wood being the closer and
tougher in proportion to their nearness to the bark, if you split a tree
in two lengthwise one of its faces is much more resisting than the
other, the equilibrium is disturbed, and flexure is easily produced
under a weight. The outer layers, being the more recent, are more
spongy and lax in texture than the older layers that are near the
heart; consequently the process of drying makes these outer layers
shrink more than the inner: hence curvature. Let a (Fig. 14) be a split
piece of wood; the layers b are harder and more compact than those
marked c, which contain more moisture and whose fibres are softer.
In drying, therefore, this piece of wood will present a hollow bend on
the outer side, as I show at d. If the wood is left entire, as at e, the
effects of drying will neutralize each other, and the piece will remain
straight.
Fig. 14.
“Look at this old roof, whose rafters are framed (Fig. 15): the wall
plates, a, are cut from small trunks, the heart being in the centre. It is
the same with the rafters b, the tie-beams c, the collars d, the king-
posts e, the foot-pieces f, and the foot-posts g; all these pieces,
therefore, have preserved their rigidity, and none of them has been
bent, because they were used dry and were unsplit trunks. Observe,
on the contrary, this purlin, h, placed on this truss, i, of recent date; it
is bent not so much on account of the weight of the rafters it
supports as because it is split and the carpenter has unadvisedly
turned the heart on the inside. If he had done the contrary,—if the
heart had been placed next to the rafters,—this purlin would
probably not have bent, perhaps have even become more rigid—that
is to say, it would be convex on the outer side. Carpenters, however,
are but men, and they do not care to give themselves trouble when
they think they can avoid it. The man that put this purlin here found it
more convenient to place it on its sawn side than to turn it the other
way with the flat under the rafters.
Fig. 15.
“Considering this quality of wood, and of oak especially (whose
internal fibres are harder and closer than the outer layers), when we
have to place a piece of wood horizontally on two points of support
or posts, and wish to give it all the strength possible to bear a weight
acting on its centre, we saw it in two lengthwise, and turning the flat
faces outside, bolt these two pieces together, as shown here (Fig.
16). Then as the heart-wood is outside, and the two pieces tend to
become bent, forming two convex surfaces, as you see at a (Fig.
17), if they are firmly held by bolts furnished with good heads and
nuts, they must remain straight; the tendency to curvature in the one
neutralizing that in the other, these two opposing forces tend to make
the piece more rigid, so that, if you take a piece of timber that is
slightly bent naturally and then place these two pieces with their
hollow downwards,—that is, after having placed one upon the other,
putting the tail of one against the head of the other,—you will have
given this piece of wood all the resisting power of which it is capable.
Fig. 16.
Fig. 17.
“It is in this way that clips and all coupled pieces should be placed.
Here, for example (Fig. 18), you see a pair of clips where the sawn
faces have been turned outside to replace a decayed tie-beam. We
call clips those pieces of wood which, in pairs, usually clench two or
more parts of a framing. These clips, a, hold fast by means of
notchings, the blades b, the king-post c, and the two struts d. Iron
bolts with screw-nuts tightly hold the notchings of the clips, like a pair
of jaws, against the timbers which have to be kept in their place. But
this is enough for to-day, and you will have plenty to do to make a
fair transcript of this lesson in carpentry between now and this
evening.”
Fig. 18.
CHAPTER VII.
SETTING OUT THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE HOUSE, AND
OPERATIONS ON THE GROUND.
Next day a letter dated Naples was received from Madame Marie N
——, expressing the liveliest and most patriotic apprehensions with
regard to recent events. Paul’s sister wished to induce the family to
join her at Naples; her husband could not return to France just at
present; the business which called him to Constantinople allowed of
no delay, and would oblige him to embark very shortly. The letter
terminated thus: “We have received Paul’s designs; we suppose his
cousin must have given him a little help. I should be delighted, and
my husband too, if there was any chance of such a plan being
realized; but who can think of building in the state in which our poor
country is now! Rather make up your mind to come and join us.”
“Well,” said M. de Gandelau after reading the letter, “you see your
plans are approved: let us set to work at once. If the Prussians
should come as far as this and set our old house on fire, as their
custom is, they will not burn the walls of a building only just begun,
and what we have spent in its erection will not get into their pockets.”
Eugène, helped by Paul, who calculated the items—he had never
undertaken such a task before—drew up the estimate, which
amounted in all to 7,000l. The earthworks and masonry were
expected to cost 3,400l.
Master Branchu was summoned: “A very good gentleman your
father is,” said he to Paul, when it was settled that they should begin
the following day; “he sets people to work when the best hands are
being turned off everywhere, and old fellows like me, who cannot go
soldiering, would have a hard time of it all the winter. I shall go and
drink his health with Jean Godard the carpenter, who will be
desperate glad like myself.”
The rest of the day was employed in marking the principal
dimensions on the plan, so as to be able to set out the excavations.
Master Branchu was already on the ground next day, equipped
with lines, stakes, nails, and broches, a large carpenter’s square,
and a water-level, when Paul and his cousin arrived at an early hour
in the morning.
“You see,” said Eugène to Paul, “that the figures indicate on this
plan the distances between the centre-lines of the walls. Consulting
these dimensions, we shall set out these centre-lines on the ground
with the help of lines attached to what we call broches (Fig. 19),
which consist of two stakes firmly fixed in the earth, and a
crosspiece. The direction of one of the centre-lines being determined
according to the orientation it suits us to choose, the places of the
other axes will follow according to the distance figured on the plan
and the square returns.”
Eugène had soon settled the line of centre, a, for the dining and
billiard-rooms, according to the desired orientation. Then on this first
centre-line was set out by means of a small theodolite another at
right angles, which was the centre-line of the entrance-hall. These
two lines once laid down, the others were determined by means of
the dimensions previously marked on the plan. The centres of the
principal walls were thus traced on the ground by lines attached to
the broches.

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Advocacy Practice for Social Justice

4th Edition Richard Hoefer

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

1. The Unified Model of Advocacy Practice 1

Who Is This Book For?

The Plan of the Book

ethical conflicts may be present as a critical thinking activity and application

Chapter 9, “Evaluating Advocacy,” returns to the advocacy maps introduced

Connections to the Council on Social Work Education’s

A competency-​based approach refers to identifying and assessing what

• apply self-​awareness and self-​regulation to manage the influence

The philosophical underpinnings of the book are rooted in an under-

The entire book applies to competency 3. Chapter 2 covers in detail different

Chapter 4 addresses this educational standard in particular. Titled

Competency 7: Assess individuals, families, groups, organizations,

Competency 8: Intervene with individuals, families, groups,

Chapters 5–​8, on education, persuasion, negotiation, and electronic ad-

Evaluation of advocacy is the sole focus of Chapter 9. Readers learn how to

The writing of a book requires a substantial investment of time and energy,

The Unified Model of Advocacy Practice

Ms. Jones enters your standard-​issue government agency office, head

low-​income housing is located near industrial dumping zones or other sources

Defining Advocacy and Advocacy Practice

Advocacy is a term with many definitions. Barker (2014), in The Social

He does not have a values orientation regarding the purpose of advocacy—​

THE GENERALIST MODEL OF SOCIAL WORK AND THE UNIFIED

TABLE 1.1 } Comparing Generalist Social Work and the Unified

Engagement Getting involved

Stage 1: Getting Involved

sense of efficacy when employing advocacy practice skills. Therefore, it is im-

Stage 2: Understanding the Issue

persuasion, and negotiation. Because decision-​makers tend to have strong in-

Stage 6: Ongoing Monitoring

COMPARING GENERALIST AND ADVOCACY PRACTICE: THE CASE

Stage 1: Engagement/​Getting Involved

Stage 2: Assessment/​Understanding the Issues

Stage 7: Follow-​up/​Ongoing Monitoring

This illustration shows that an advocacy practice viewpoint leads to addi-

The Broader Context for Advocacy Practice

be acknowledged and, whenever possible, worked around. These trends are

THE RISE IN PARTISAN IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES

the mainstream media, in addition to trade agreements with other countries,

same member of Congress to increase funding for special housing programs

THE INCREASING ROLE OF WEALTH IN AMERICAN POLITICS

Although wealth has always been an important correlate of political power

Discussion Questions and Exercises

1. Why is advocacy an important function of social work?

Suggested Further Reading

Perlman, H. (1957). Casework: A problem-​solving process. Chicago: University of Chicago

Social Work Ethics, Values, and Advocacy

Social workers must be involved in advocacy practice if clients’ situations are to

Lesson the Second.

Lesson the Third.

“Now that you know what is the simplest roof-truss, let us go up

You might also like

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A competency-based approach refers to identifying and assessing what

• apply self-awareness and self-regulation to manage the influence

Chapters 5–8, on education, persuasion, negotiation, and electronic ad-

Ms. Jones enters your standard-issue government agency office, head

low-income housing is located near industrial dumping zones or other sources

He does not have a values orientation regarding the purpose of advocacy—

persuasion, and negotiation. Because decision-makers tend to have strong in-

Stage 1: Engagement/Getting Involved

Stage 2: Assessment/Understanding the Issues

Stage 7: Follow-up/Ongoing Monitoring

Perlman, H. (1957). Casework: A problem-solving process. Chicago: University of Chicago