kdrif

No advice but I'm a social worker with an interest in macro work with disability studies!!! I did my MSW at a school that worked for my family, but it was not research focused and i regret it because now I want to do a PhD but am coming from behind. Good luck!

It depends on why you want a social work phd and how strong you are otherwise. For both a practical and philosophical reason. Practical: If you want to be able to teach/get hired full time with a teaching load, it will be easier to do with a MSW and two years post Master's experience, because CSWE *requires* the people teaching practice classes to have 2 years post master's experience. So post PhD any program hiring you without that will know you cannot teach practice classes. And any PhD programs with a strong teaching practicum aspect may have trouble placing you, since you can't do the practice classes. It's not an automatic no, because you could still research and teach ethics, electives or research classes. But it just makes you a bit less flexible on the market. Philosophically: social work as a field has strong feelings about it's ethics and being able to cross populations (micro to micro) and being a generalist, it's "signature pedagogy" of learning through practice under a social worker etc. So you'll have to make up for not having practice experience by being stronger in some other ways and proving you're a good fit for the field without practice experience.