SOWK 733 - Advanced Social Work Practice with Organizations and Communities I: Social Planning

Course Syllabus

I. Purpose/Rationale of the Course

This course expands on the foundation course content with a focus on the planning process including development, implementation, and evaluation of plans in both communities and organizations.  Students are exposed to a variety of theories, planning models, and methods for the implementation and evaluation of plans as well as value dilemmas encountered in the planning process.  An emphasis is placed on the need to include social work values and diversity in the planning process through course assignments and field applications. 

II. Course Content

This course provides a basic orientation to social and strategic planning. Seen within the context of socio-economic development, social and strategic planning is seen as the bridge between macro-level policy making and social administration. The course will comprise of two units. Unit I will begin with a discussion of the role of social planning within the context of planned social change. It will discuss various theories of social planning and the consequences of various planning theories for vulnerable groups will be discussed. Unit II will focus on strategic planning and marketing. Examination of the planning process will extend to such topics as organizational mission, environmental context, other planning models, tasks commonly undertaken by social workers to guide their work, and contemporary planning issues.  The use of marketing as a tool in planning will be included.  This course will include written skill development exercises, and social simulations designed to acquaint the student with a variety of specialty planning and marketing tasks often encountered by social workers.

III. Course Objectives

The student who successfully completes this course will be able to:

1. Gain understanding of the theories and values of planned social change in the context of social work practice.
2. To understand theoretical perspectives of models of planned change and their applicability to short-range task oriented problem solving and long-range strategic planning.
3. Assess an organization in its community context and identify strategic issues and needs, including the unique needs of organizations in rural communities. 
4. Systematically apply a formal planning model to prepare for organizational change.
5. Critically evaluate a strategic plan and develop a detailed work-plan for its implementation.
6. Identify and discuss the effects of diverse values and concerns related to planning, and address the perspectives of those affected by social and economic injustice within the planning process.
7. Identify value conflicts and ethical dilemmas that may arise during organizational planning, and suggest responses that are consistent with the NASW Code of Ethics.
8. Identify the influence of environmental changes (i.e. managed care, case management, etc.) on organizational planning and critically evaluate its effects on social work service delivery, giving particular attention to the needs of populations at-risk.
9. Understand marketing strategies and their use in planning.

IV. Linkages to Other Courses

This advanced practice course, which focuses intensively on the process of organizational strategic planning, builds on the knowledge of organizations and communities developed during the foundation year HBSE course (712), and on the knowledge of task group functioning developed during the foundation year course on group work (710). It builds on the knowledge of planning, development of human and financial resources, marketing and public relations, building organizational capacity, and evaluating change efforts developed in the foundation year course on practice in communities and organizations (732).  Further, the course builds on knowledge developed during the foundation year course on social welfare policy and services (741), and on the skills in evaluating knowledge which are developed in the foundation year research course (791). This course puts to use research and program evaluation concepts learned in the advanced research course (793) taken concurrently. Additionally, the course requires students to examine many aspects of planning as it is practiced in their field settings (785), and allows opportunities for them to learn from the experiences of peers in a variety of practice settings.

V.   Methods of Instruction

A variety of instructional methods are used in this course and include lecture, discussion, collaborative learning, problem-based learning, field-based case studies, role-play, videotapes, videotaping, and class presentations.  Emphasis will be placed on the integration of field placement experiences and course content through such tools as case consultation, learning journals and logs, case studies, role plays and written assignments requiring the critical application of theory to practice with large systems in the students’ field placement settings.