Advanced Topics in Micro and Macro Social Work

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Alcohol/Other Drug use (AOD) are costly social problems complexly intertwined. The presence of one interferes with addressing the other, both together increase other negative consequences. Participant outcomes are better and costs lower when addressed together, but this rarely occurs. Both are located within the “field of human services” but with different histories and often conflicting logics, and approaches. They are gendered differently (IPV initiated through feminist activism, and AOD developed primarily by men for problems more typical in men). Both interface with legal, health, child welfare and other systems and work to change/coordinate community resources, but with different goals, approaches, and understandings of causes, including about power and gender. Innovators endeavoring to bridge the fields describe many contestations and challenges within individual, interpersonal, social, cultural, structural, and economic arenas. Coordination among human services is a long-standing challenge within social work. Examining differences between these two fields, as well as efforts to bridge them, provide opportunities to learn about IPV and AOD, understand boundaries that sustain complex patterns of injustice, and examine what supports innovation. This mini-course applies frameworks from social justice within innovative approaches from case studies of 36 organizations (from 21 states and Canada) working to address both IPV and AOD. Students can focus on arenas most relevant for their concentrations [individual-level (e.g., screening and assessment, early phase crisis work, multiple types of groups), organization-level (e.g., staff hiring and training, mission and funding sources), community interactions and goals, and social policy questions and approaches].