Levels of Intervention

Definition of Levels

A level of intervention means the size of the system (which is defined later) that is the focus of the practitioner's attention. These systems are typically referred to as micro level, meso level, or macro level. Micro level refers to practice with individuals, families, or groups; meso level refers to practice with communities; and macro level means practice with organizations (often the practitioner's employing agency) or political levels, namely a city, state, region, national government, or even worldwide entity. This latter is sometimes referred to as policy practice.

Practice Levels and Systems

In order to clarify these categories further, we find it helpful to use systems terminology to discuss the various systems that practitioner's take into consideration in planning their activities. systems are defined as follows: (1) something consisting of a set of entities, (2) among which a set of relations is specified (e.g., cell organization, human interaction, or grammar, or culture (3) so that deductions are possible from some relations to others.

The entities could be cells, people, words, or beliefs, and the relations could be an organization, human interaction, grammar, social structure, or culture. A system is a set of components Directly or inDirectly related in a causal network such that each component is related to at least some others in a more or less stable way within a particular period of time.

Systems can be thought about as entities, some of which deal with matter or energy, some of which deal with information, and some of which deal with all three. Seen in this light, systems could be families, individuals, organizations, communities, or the History of these. The units in the human services have a History, and what happens toDay or tomorrow depends in part on what has happened in the past. systems have complex interconnections of smaller systems with them and, at their own level, function as wholes.

A social system is an organized entity that possesses a distinctive total unit beyond its component parts that is distinguished from its environment by a boundary and whose subunits are at least partially interrelated within fairly stable patterns of interactions. Put even more simply, a social system is a set of interrelated activities that together constitute a single entity. This entity has defined boundaries. Thus, the boundary of a family may be those who live in the same household or are related to each other (e.g., mother, father, offspring, and grandparents). The boundaries of a city are often designated in state legislation.

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