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Why Do We Need to Advocate for a Strong Social Service Workforce?

Amy Bess's picture

by the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance


Who is the Social Service Workforce?

The social service workforce is comprised of paid and unpaid, governmental and nongovernmental, professionals and para professionals, working to ensure the healthy development and well-being of children and families. The social service workforce focuses on preventative, responsive and promotive programs that support families and children in our communities by alleviating poverty, reducing discrimination, facilitating access to needed services, promoting social justice and preventing and responding to violence, abuse, exploitation, neglect and family separation. A well-planned, well-developed and well-supported workforce is better equipped to support families and children to reach their full potential and better recover from emergency situations and crises.

Why is the social service workforce so critically needed in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? How can you, as readers of this blog and supporters of the workforce, contribute to stronger advocacy for a well-trained, well-developed and well-supported workforce that is better positioned to address the most pressing issues facing our societies today? 

This week, during the 4th Annual Social Service Workforce Week, we aim to continue an ongoing dialogue with you around these questions. We will highlight examples of how the social service workforce helps to fulfill the SDGs related to ending violence against children, supporting children and families on the move and improving health and well-being. And we will share ideas gathered from many of you about ways to advocate for greater support for the workforce to help achieve these goals. We also invite you to share your stories about effective advocacy approaches you have implemented, including positive outcomes achieved. 

The Global Social Service Workforce Alliance recently worked with WithoutViolence to assemble a Global Advocacy Toolkit for the Social Service Workforce. The toolkit outlines concrete steps to develop context-specific advocacy plans aimed at bringing greater political and programmatic priority for strengthening the social service workforce. It is based on evidence that shows that a strong social service workforce increases the effectiveness of programs for vulnerable families and children.

It is important to note that for the social service sector, advocacy efforts are targeted at achieving both policy and programmatic change. Advocacy can be directed at protecting rights, educating the public, and encouraging civil or political participation. Advocacy can seek fundamental change for an organization or community and/or seek to address issues that need greater focus to create policy change.

The Sustainable Development Goals provide an unprecedented opportunity to influence national and international development policy and programs while highlighting the intersections between the work of the social service workforce and those working on health challenges, violence prevention and migration. This is a critical time to promote and build awareness of the valuable contributions made every day by the social service workforce toward achieving the SDGs. Infographic on achieving SDGs

To gain the attention and funding levels needed to ensure a well-trained, well-developed and well-supported workforce, greater advocacy efforts are needed. We can all take steps, big and small, toward increasing awareness and interest in the workforce. Doing so requires each one of us to be more vocal in advocating to policy makers and program implementers. Using the Alliance network as a platform for coming together across disciplines, organizations, countries and regions, we can all do more together than we can alone.

Get Involved- Social Service Workforce Week 2017
Today kicks off the week of advocating for social service workers. Each day will feature an e-mail to our members and mailing list and will include a blog, links to resources and sample tweets. The topics for the rest of the week include:

We encourage you to get involved through the following methods:

Comments

Joseph Dwyer's picture

Good work in aligning the importance of a skilled and supported social service workforce with attaining the SDGs. Thanks for your posts this week.