This blog post examines why the blend of micro and macro social welfare methodologies is important in protecting human dignity and value.
Social welfare is premised on the idea that “everyone should be able to live like a human being without their dignity and value being undermined.” This idea is embodied in various attempts to protect individual rights and resolve social inequality in modern society. To this end, various methodologies for social welfare practice have been developed, and these methodologies exist to realize this idea.
Social work methodology consists of the expertise and skills needed to help people in distress live humanely, which can be divided into two broad categories. One is a micro-level methodology that focuses on the individual in need of help, individualizes the problem, and seeks solutions. For example, this includes individual counseling, therapeutic interventions, and psychological support. This approach focuses on deeply understanding individual problems and providing individualized solutions. The other is a macro approach that looks at problems collectively and seeks solutions at the level of the entire society. This approach considers the impact of social structures or policies on individual lives and seeks to resolve problems through social change or institutional improvement. This includes social movements, legislative activities, and improvements to public policies.
Social welfare experts use this methodology to identify problems and diagnose the causes of problems in people in need, helping them to solve their own problems. For example, when a family faces financial difficulties, a social welfare worker using a micro-level methodology analyzes the family’s financial status and provides customized financial planning or helps them access the necessary resources. On the other hand, social workers who use macro-level methodologies can analyze the structural causes of economic difficulties, such as minimum wage levels or rising housing costs, and pursue policy interventions to address these issues. Another approach is to influence government policies or systems to help solve problems. For example, improving welfare systems for the poor or introducing new support programs.
These two methodologies also differ in their relationship with the social system. Social welfare professionals who use the micro-level methodology do not pay much attention to the social system itself, and therefore are not very involved in the formulation and implementation of social policies. They are only concerned with strengthening their expertise in the clinical field they are in charge of, which is an effective way to help individuals within the social system. For example, if a professional who deals with mental health issues focuses on individual treatment methods, they may mainly aim for the psychological stability of the individual and may not consider the impact of social factors on the problem very much.
On the other hand, professionals who advocate macro-level methodologies place great importance on government policies or the social system itself that affect the lives of individuals. They believe that by changing government policies or influencing the social system, they can ultimately help individuals. They seek to promote social change through cooperation with policymakers, organizing social movements, and raising public awareness. Therefore, they are interested in the dynamic aspects of social forces that emerge in the process of social development. They seek to advance the knowledge and skills of social welfare methodology based on knowledge of the government’s policy process and the policy environment surrounding it.
Historically, social welfare methodology has developed around micro-level methodology. Much of what constitutes current social welfare methodology has borrowed knowledge from adjacent disciplines such as sociology, psychology, social psychology, psychiatry, and group dynamics. This is based on practical, action-oriented expertise and skills needed to help people. As a result, social welfare methodology has succeeded in dealing with problems at an individual level and in acquiring the professional knowledge and skills needed to deliver welfare services effectively. For example, psychological counseling techniques and individual support programs have developed as a result of such knowledge and skills.
However, there is a tendency to overlook issues such as the relationship between the recipient of help and the social system, the process of reflecting the needs of the socially vulnerable in policy, and the biases inherent in the social system. This one-sided development of social welfare methodology has focused solely on the delivery of social welfare services. This has made it difficult to achieve the original goal of social welfare, which is to maintain and preserve human dignity and value. This is because it is difficult to criticize government policies that affect the practice of social welfare and present creative alternatives with such a malformed development of social welfare methodology.
Recently, various attempts have been made to overcome these limitations. For example, an integrated methodology that combines a micro approach and a macro approach is being developed, and through this, welfare practice that considers the interaction between individuals and social structures is being emphasized. This approach focuses on providing more effective solutions by considering the social, economic, and political backgrounds of an individual’s problem when understanding the problem. In addition, efforts are being strengthened to ensure that social welfare experts actively participate in the policy-making process so that welfare policies reflect the voices of the field.
In this article, we examined the development of social welfare methodology. By examining the development of micro-level social welfare methodology, we learned that micro-level social welfare methodology alone is inevitably limited in achieving the ideals of social welfare. Therefore, we can learn the lesson that it is desirable to develop a balanced micro-macro methodology. This is because, in order to solve social welfare problems, not only clinical knowledge is required, but also activities to formulate or improve social policies. In the end, only the development of a social welfare methodology with micro-macro methodology as its two sides will enable us to effectively advance the ideals of social welfare.
