Cause Advocacy for Social Workers

Social workers are on the front lines when it comes to facing the impact of social injustice, however we often leave our higher education without a firm grasp on how to advocate on a systemic level. This may cause us to take a back seat when it comes to speaking up against the constant deluge of harmful legislation, community crisis, and abusive acts which perpetuate social injustice. We also may feel unprepared to advocate for the values of our profession.

Cause advocacy requires social workers to collaborate and take action on a macro level.  Engaging with social work theoretical frameworks and advocacy models can help us to be confident and effective in our advocacy.

Join this 1.5 hour 1.5 CE hour asynchronous training to engage with the principles of cause advocacy, focusing on the perspective of social justice, and developing your own cause advocacy letter.

We use our education platform as a protest, and we hope you will join us.

​Attendees will be able to:

· Identify the ethical responsibility for social workers to advocacy against the systems of classism, white supremacy, sexism, and ableism 

· Discuss the importance of allyship within the social work profession

· Examine and apply the social work advocacy practice and policy model, which will be used to develop an advocacy letter. 

This training will be available for registration until December 31, 2022. 

Once you begin the training, you will have 30 days to access and complete it.

Presented by:

Ashley Heidebrecht, LMSW

CEU Clause- 

The Borderland Rainbow Center under sponsor number 7798 has been approved by the Texas State Board of Social Worker Examiners to offer continuing education contact hours to social workers. The approved status of The Borderland Rainbow Center, Continuing Education Service expires annually on July 31.  If you hold a license in another State or discipline, it is not guaranteed that our content will meet your requirements.  We recommend that you check with your licensing body for any requirements and allowances.

Facilitated by Ashley Heidebrecht, LMSW 

Ashley has worked in the field of social services for over a decade. Ashley worked at a Kansas non-profit for 8 years, providing individual and group community-based services to children, adults, and families diagnosed with a severe emotional disturbance, and creating and facilitating multiple workshops and parenting classes, and the last 6 years at that agency served as a supervisor of 80 staff with a client base of over 200 children and families. Since leaving that agency in 2015, Ashley has provided case management and trauma support for families recovering from homelessness, and has become active in community organizing and advocacy, particularly surrounding migrant child detention, LGBTQ rights, racial equity, and reproductive rights, and has completed her Master of Social Work degree.  Most recently, Ashley has served LGBTQ youth and adults in group and individual settings, engaged in casework with the Deaf community, and focused on immigrant rights and fighting against family separation and child detention. Ashley now serves as the Education and Content Manager for the Diversity and Resiliency Institute of El Paso, creating and facilitating training and continuing education rooted in social justice. Ashley focuses heavily on advocacy and education, providing educational opportunities to improve community awareness and allyship, and engaging in regional and national initiatives to fight discrimination. Ashley is also working to mobilize social workers across the Nation to become more engaged in social justice initiatives.