Policy & Practice | Summer 2024

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By Héctor Upegui

Social Work Today: How a Community-Led Approach to Social Care Can Change Lives

S ocial workers help to improve people’s lives by empowering them with the tools they need to function better in their environments, improve their relationships with others, and solve personal and family problems through individual, social, and psy chological support. 1 Social workers contribute such vital work in our com munities and have a critical role in ensuring everyone receives the support they need to live full and healthy lives. But in today’s world of increasing inequality, 2 aging populations, 3 and increasing needs of citizens, govern ment and organizations in the private sector are facing higher demand for services with scarcer resources. Now, more than ever, an innovative, commu nity-led approach to service delivery is needed, to better support social workers in doing their best work. Engaging the community can help reduce stigma attached to benefits application, by activating individuals and their families to meaningfully participate in their own care, and equipping them with strategies to impact their own outcomes. It can also help relieve the workload of social workers, allowing them to focus on their critical work. Community engagement is a crucial part of social work and vital to fostering an eco social world based on inclusion, respect, and mutual understanding. External Drivers of Change More than two-thirds of the world’s population lives in countries where inequality has grown, 2 posing

the pandemic, economists expected a shortage of 195,000 social workers in the United States by 2030. 4 With struggling resources and a higher demand for social protection services, it’s no longer sustainable to embed social workers within families to share critical life skills. By acti vating communities, social workers can support targeted groups in a more coordinated and efficient way, employing person-centered and dig ital-first services to drive engagement from those in need of support. A Community Approach Communities are diverse, and can encompass everything from geog raphy, to people who share the same

additional challenges to social welfare, including unemployment, financial hardship, homelessness, and other threats to well-being. Additionally, the number of people aged 65 and older is expected to double over the next three decades to reach 1.6 billion in 2050. 3 These trends create an increasing demand for services from these growing groups in the community. These external forces are exacer bated by challenges that social workers themselves are facing. Balancing an increased workload can lead to high stress levels for most professions, but for social workers, an extended global pandemic and its effects on mental health have had a knock-on effect on their burnout. Even prior to

Illustration by Chris Campbell

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Policy & Practice Summer 2024