Transforming social work’s potential in the field: a radical framework

ABSTRACT

If social work’s ethical commitment to social justice activism unearths and eradicates the root causes of inequity, then radical practice should describe the field of social work. Stemming from this commitment, social workers have an obligation to interrogate and deconstruct barriers to radical practice within themselves, their relationships, and societal structures. Two persistent tensions pose a challenge to social work’s professional identity and to reaching its radical potential: how social work vacillates between being a mechanism of social control and source of liberation; and, the false dichotomy between micro practice and macro-social justice efforts. The Transformative Potential Development Model presents a framework for resolving these tensions that are transferable across contexts and practice settings. This model grew out of critical consciousness scholarship which posits that awareness of and action against inequitable sociopolitical forces serve as an antidote to the toxicity and harm of oppression. It is comprised of four prongs, developing: critical consciousness, responsibility, efficacy, and action. This paper introduces the model as a framework through which social workers may engage in the liberatory practice. Concrete, US practice-based examples of each prong are offered, and strategies to leverage the model to engage social work students, educators, and practitioners are proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical consciousness
• radical social work
• anti-oppression
• social justice
• practice framework

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Ross Bussey

Sarah Ross Bussey, LCSW, works as Director of Care Management with Mount Sinai Health Partners in NYC, and is a doctoral candidate in the PhD in Social Welfare Program through the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focus is on eradicating institutional racism through the deconstruction of the White supremacist ideology. Sarah worked in various capacities of youth work—with a focus on complex trauma, gang-involvement, transgenerational poverty, justice-system entrenchment, housing insecurity, and skill development—before joining an innovative program addressing clinical case management needs in a medical setting.

Alexis Jemal

Alexis Jemal, LCSW, JD, PhD, Assistant Professor at Silberman School of Social Work, integrates participatory action research methods, critical theory and the creative arts to develop and test multi-level and multi-systemic socio-health interventions that incorporate restorative justice frameworks, radical healing and liberation health models to address structural, community and interpersonal violence.

Sherika Caliste

Sherika Caliste is an MSW candidate at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, an employee of the Research Foundation of CUNY, and a volunteer researcher at Hunter College’s Center for Cancer Health Disparities Reseach (CCHDR). Sherika is an advocate for social justice who has several years of non-profit work experience. Sherika’s interests include intergenerational trauma and utilizing participatory action research for community-based projects with anti-oppression and social action at its core.