If you’re a busy social worker, like we all are, you may not have the time or attention span to make it through the 2021 Blueprint of Federal Social Policy Priorities, an incredible 47 page document published by the National Association of Social Workers. Consider this post the TL;DR version (Too Long; Didn’t Read), with a one sentence summary of each of the priority issues. If you’re not a fan of run-on sentences and censored curse words, this might not be the post (or the blog) for you… I’ll share more information from each of the sections in a series of blogs in the coming weeks if you want to take a deeper dive into any or all of the priority issues.
1. Supporting Our Essential Social Work Workforce
Social Workers rule, please pay us, forgive our debt, and protect us if you want there to be enough of us to fix this f*cking mess that we did not make.
2. Continue COVID-19 Recovery
Please don’t make us clean up the pandemic by ourselves – protect those most vulnerable to the virus, acknowledge the collective trauma we have all endured, make Americans wear their d*mn masks, implement actual contact tracing, provide the benefits that people f*cking need and for the love of god PLEASE plan ahead for the next national health crisis.
3. Improve Access to Mental Health and Behavioral Health and Provide High Quality Healthcare to All
Fund mental health and substance abuse treatments, modernize them and maybe consider the impact that funding PREVENTATIVE SERVICES might have on some of our other HUGE F*CKING PROBLEMS WE FACE!?
3a. Improve Access to Mental Health and Behavioral Health and Provide High Quality Healthcare to All: Close the Health Gap
Protect the Affordable Care Act with your LIFE unless you are ready to replace it with a single-payer system and do the work to make healthcare less f*cking RACIST.
3b. Improve Access to Mental Health and Behavioral Health and Provide High Quality Healthcare to All: Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth
Kids are people too, and they are particularly vulnerable so maybe fund programs that support them, educate them, feed them and give them more access to Community-Based programs and more school social workers (because did I mention we RULE?)!
4. Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence
Stop using violence to justify state sanctioned violence, provide support to those experiencing violence, and DO SOMETHING to f*cking address gun violence.
5. Advance Long and Productive Lives
Older adults are people too and should be able to live DECENT LIVES without suffering through extreme poverty and with access to long term care no matter their race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation or (dis)ability!
6. Eradicate Social Isolation
People need people, so just like… create infrastructure to help connect the most isolated and let those lonely folks talk to each other.
7. End Homelessness
Half of renters and 21% of homeowners can barely afford their homes and half a million people in the US experience homelessness so let’s f*cking fund Housing First policies that we ALREADY KNOW WORK!
7a. COVID-19 Housing Crisis
30-40 million people may be facing eviction this year thanks to COVID-19 so for f*cks sake pass emergency rental assistance and keep these people off the streets.
7b. COVID Racial Disparities and Impacts
Shocker- something bad for Americans is even worse for Black and Latinx households, who make up 80% of people facing eviction so all you self-professed “not a racist” legislators need to spring into action on this one.
8. Create Social Response to a Changing Environment
Climate change is real, and it is REALLY about to f*ck us all – especially already marginalized communities – so let’s acknowledge it as the CRISIS it is, start doing something to address the problems it has already caused and prevent the problems that are preventable.
9. Harness Technology for Social Good
The pandemic gave us a gift – TELEHEALTH – and we need to give the gift of the internet to everyone so that it is actually accessible to EVERYONE.
10. Eliminate Racism
IDK if you’ve thought of this, but did you know that racism is bad and that we should maybe treat it as a PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS, study it and f*cking PREVENT IT FROM GETTING WORSE?
11. Build Financial Capability and Assets for All
The “richest country in the world” is full of poor people – half of us are financially insecure – so let’s make it easier for people to access benefits, provide for our families, and maybe actually build some wealth to break this cycle of income inequality.
12. Reduce Extreme Economic Inequality
The rich in America are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, and it is long past time to strengthen benefit programs, provide more opportunities for better jobs, strengthen social security, acknowledge discrimination in the workforce as part of the problem, provide actual protections for families in crisis, and EAT THE RICH – I mean.. make them pay their fair share.
13. Achieve Equal Opportunity and Justice: Continue to Reform the Criminal Legal System and Promote Smart Decarceration
Black Lives Matter and “Blue Lives” don’t exist, so let’s hold police accountable for killing and profiling Black and brown people, stop arresting people with mental health and substance use disorders and reform the whole d*mn prison industry.
14. Achieve Equal Opportunity and Justice: Reform Immigration Policy
Our immigration policies to date are racist AF, so let’s reverse those gross policies, reunify the families we’ve separated, support refugees, and treat immigrants as HUMAN BEINGS with DIGNITY AND WORTH… oh and abolish ICE.
15. Achieve Equal Opportunity and Justice: Advance Political Justice
Add more judges, DIVERSE judges, and make voting a right for all citizens – even formerly incarcerated citizens – with a national holiday and some actual f*cking protections for voting rights.
16. Protect and Provide for Maltreated Children
Fund child abuse prevention, fund the foster care system, protect LGBTQ+ kids, and do better by those kids who age out of foster care who are mostly Black and brown.
17. Serve America’s Veterans and Their Families
Stop neglecting veterans – they need more than a free dinner on Veteran’s Day and applause when you see them in uniform… please actually fund programs to support them, protect them, and allow them to access physical and mental health services.
18. Advance LGBTQ Rights and Equality
Discrimination is BAD, and we have to do better for LGBTQ kids (and grown-ups too) by banning conversion therapy, banning ALL discrimination, and collecting actual data on sexual orientation and gender identity.
19. Promote the Rights of People with Disabilities
Remember when I said that discrimination is bad… well 4.1 million parents have disabilities and 7.1 million kids have disabilities and yet we STILL over-institutionalize people with disabilities and don’t protect their rights so let’s STOP DOING THAT and fund supports for the disabled.
If you want to tackle the full document, you can find it here.
Let me know what you think of the TL;DR version and feel free to call out anything important that you think I missed!
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