Therapists as Agents of Social Change

1. Therapists as Agents of Social Change “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” - Maria Robinson

2. Questions of the Day • “Objective good health is related to happiness” • Do you agree that health, education, climate, race and gender do not matter much for happiness? • Are changing social conditions impractical? • Do citizens of the USA tend to say they are happy even when they aren’t? Why or why not?

3. Knee-Jerk of Community Psych • Reflexivity: • the subjectivity and social location of community psychologists in their roles as social interventionists, including the privileges that they enjoy • “One cannot be a community psychologist in one’s public life at work and then go home to one’s private life and ‘turn off’ the values that inform one’s work as a community psychologist” • (Nelson & Prelletensky (2005), p152)

4. Truth or Conscientization • Conscientization: • The process of gaining awareness of the conditons that oppress people • Praxis: • Critical “‘reflection and action upon the world to transform it’” (Freire, 1970)

5. What Does Praxis Look Like? Cultural Context Vision Actions Constituencies Needs

6. How Should Praxis Look? Cultural Context Vision Actions Needs Constituencies

7. Praxis makes perfect

8. The Making of a Community Psychologist • Experiences • Reflexes • Accountability • Outcomes • Social Norms and Abnorms • “Rocking the boat” Attitude • PRAXIS = FACILITATOR

9. Core Ingredients

10. Professional Ingredients

11. Focus • Ameliorate vs Transform • Band-aid vs. Major Surgery • First Order Change vs. Second Order Change • Ameliorative: • an approach to intervention that focuses on improvement rather than fundamental change of underlying assumptions, values and power structures, also known as first-order change • Transformative: • an approach to intervention that focuses on fundamental change of underlying assumptions, values and power structures; also known as second order change

12. The Characters of Change

13. Promoting Healthful Change • Whose interests will be served? • Is there value congruence between the change agent and those with whom he/she will be consulting? • What form will the intervention take (eg action research, consultation, skills training)? • What previous interventions have been tried and with what success?

14. What’s the Alternative? • Alternative Settings: • Voluntary associations created and controlled by the stakeholders who share a problem or oppressive condition • Eg – Self-help, mutual aid organizations • If a social condition is not deemed oppressive does it need changing?

15. Tips and Tricks for Facilitating Social Change • Who’s in the room? What kinds? Types? Shapes? Colors? Class? • How often do YOU speak? • Are you ACTIVELY listening? • Support others by soliciting their thoughts and ideas • Whose work and contribution gets recognized? • Work against creating a structure that alienates some of the stakeholders • Ask what needs to be done vs. asking others to do something • Social change is a process – a complex, laborious process

16. Social Interventions • Is social service the same as social change? • The belly of the beast: outsiders or insiders? • Challenging the status quo: linking the immediate concerns of citizens with larger structures of inequality • Promotion of personal, relational, and collective well-being • Balancing self-determination, caring, compassion and respect for diversity with principles of social justice and sense of community

17. Examples of Ameliorative vs Transformative Social Interventions

18. Import Trivia • 1% reduction in GDP eliminates gains in reducing urban poverty experienced during a 3.7% growth in GDP • Recession has a particularly strong effect on inequality • Growth by itself, without appropriate social policies to ensure fairness in the way its benefits are distributed, brings little benefit to health equity

19. Strengths and Limitations

20. Roots of Social Movements • Suffering / Deprivation • Consciousness Raising • Congealing Events • Political Opportunities

21. Community Psychologists Working in Government Organizations • Bureaucracy • Paperwork • Limited, Defined Scope • Measureable (Ameliorative) • Less an agent of change than an agent of policies

22. Community Psychologists in SMOs and NGOs • Limits on personal income • Inefficient ways of working • Diverse educational levels of coworkers and staff members • Diverse cultural experiences may create misunderstandings and tension • Compromising one’s own personal values? • Fractured goals

23. Role of Community Psychologist in Social Organizations • Facilitate: • Social change • People power / empowerment • Collective action

24. How to Prepare as a Facilitator for Social Change • Multiple sources of support • Congruence and confluence of interests • Communications network • Organizational effectiveness • Resource mobilization

25. Collective Action Strategies • Build Recruitment because Size Matters • Media and Marketing Campaigns • Create Coalitions of Intersecting Interests • Create Lobbying and Political Influence Efforts • Protest the Status Quo

27. Changing Vocabulary • Alternative Setting: settings that are designed to, and are often in opposition to, mainstream or traditional settings • Ameliorative: an approach to intervention that focuses on improvement rather than fundamental change of underlying assumptions, values and power structures, also known as first-order change • Framing: reframing how social issues are conceptualized or understood; transformative interventions involve reframing the way issues are typically understood • Praxis: the integration of theory and practice in social intervention; it includes attention to cultural context, vision, action and needs • Reflexivity: the subjectivity and social location of community psychologists in their roles as social interventionists, including the privileges that they enjoy • Social Intervention: one who engages in transformative social change, as contrasted with social technician and social reformer roles • Social Movement Organization: an organization that is specifically dedicated to transformative social change • Transformative: an approach to intervention that focuses on fundamental change of underlying assumptions, values and power structures; also known as second order change

28. Intervention Vocabulary • Ameliorative: interventions purposeful activities designed to alleviate the resutls of living in unjust and prejudicial societies • Coalition: a group of groups dedicated to achieving social, economic, or health goals for a particular sector of the population • Health Promoter: person assigned the role of improving an aspect of the population’s health • Human Development: refers to comprehensive improvement in the education, health, housing, social and economic conditions of a population • Internecine: struggles within social movements or political parties • NGOs: non-government organizations dedicated to a particular cause • Program Developer: person collaborating with others in developing a governmental or non-governmental project • Resource Mobilization: infusion of material intellectual and human resources into social change efforts • Social Interventions: are intentional processes designed to affect the well-being of the population through changes in values, policies, programs, distribution of resources, power differentials and cultural norms • SMOs: social movement organizations dedicated to a particular cause • Transformative Interventions: intentional processes designed to alter the conditions that lead to suffering