Advanced Topics in Community Change

SW759, Section 002

This course will be a rotation elective course focused on special and contemporary topics in community change. It will be faculty-driven and focus on specific and important issues in community change, including specific issues impacting community change, contemporary organizing efforts, specific skills in community change, and/or specific issues, policy, population, or contexts for community change.

Topic Description / Additional Information

Social Work Practice in Public Safety -
This course focuses on the role of social workers in public safety. The focus of this course is to provide historical and modern context to social work practice in areas of public safety to include first response and law enforcement.

People of color are disproportionately adversely impacted by law enforcement policies and actions. In the pursuit of social justice, collaborative change of policies and behaviors can be enhanced through education and collaboration. Social concerns about the safety of communities have led to a reimagining of the ways professionals work together to advance social justice.

This course attempts to have initial exposure and preparation for collaboration between public safety and social work professionals. The history of law enforcement, current models of interventions in public safety at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of social work practice, and strategies for becoming engaged in the public safety area of practice as a social worker will be explored.