Social work advocacy in mental health clinical practice: a mixed methods study of professional practices and competencies

Abstract

Considered essential in social work practice, there is a lack of research on advocacy strategies employed by social workers to address systemic inequity and support client recovery. We present a sequential mixed methods study focused on identifying and understanding advocacy efforts and practices for enhancing client, family, and community wellbeing. Integrating descriptive and reflexive thematic analyses of a survey of frontline social workers (n = 43) and in-depth interviews (n = 12), we found 93% of social workers engaged in advocacy (91% individual/family-level, 51% cause-level), and codified experiential and tacit practice, along with identifying competencies required to engage in advocacy supporting client recovery.

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