If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

Issue Brief Guide for Social Work Course

Page history last edited by Robert Hackett 6 years, 6 months ago

About Us | Guides | Information Sources | How to Use This Wiki

The use of student policy briefs has the potential to achieve social work competencies and to influence local, state and federal social policy. Michael Dover, a lecturer at the Cleveland State University School of Social Work adapted the PolicyOptions issue brief template in teaching students in writing policy briefs in social works. Policy briefs have occasionally but not frequently been used in social work education (Butterfield, Rocha and Butterfield, 2010). This guide shows how the policy brief assignment is developed and provides supporting resources, including sample BSW and MSW student briefs (used with permission).

The policy brief is relevant to two goals: (1) a school’s mission and goals related to civic engagement and working for social and economic justice, (2) a school’s efforts to enable students to learn practice behaviors expressing key policy practice competencies (Council on Social Work Education, 2008, 2015). Although no formal evaluation of the policy brief has been done, with respect to the first goal, evidence is provided of the role of student policy briefs presented at an annual conference sponsored by three social work programs, NASW, and local agencies and research centers, and examples of current legislation and meetings with local policy makers resulting from student policy briefs. For the second goal, the policy brief has been used for program assessment; brief summary data are provided.

The policy brief’s first section is the goal of the brief.

Next, the problem section discusses the history of the problem of concern and how it came to be defined as a social problem; the present status of the problem as evidences by reference to published literature; the nature of the populations affected or disproportionately affected by the problem; and the work of organizations currently researching or advocating related to the problem.

In the past policy section, there are subsections on the origins of social policies addressing the problem and on the evolution of these policies over time.

In the current policy section, the first sub-section discusses current law, regulations, rules, funding sources or organizational policies related to the problem. Next the extant social services and social welfare benefits are each given attention. Finally in this section, there is a subsection discussing the pros and cons of current policies, including how well they involve prevention of the problem (Gough, 2013).

In the final major section, the proposed policy section, students outline a pending policy proposal (legislation; best practices; regulations) which the brief supports or oppose (this has already been made clear in the goal section). Specifically, this section includes sub-sections specifying the proposed policy; explaining who is proposing it and why; outlining who supports and opposes it and why, and ending with discussion of the pros and cons of the proposed policy, including how well it involves prevention. The conclusion of this section compares the pros and cons of current and proposed policy and makes an explicit recommendation. We are considering the value of incorporating additional analytic attention to how current and proposed policies involve upstream, midstream and downstream approaches to prevention (Gough, 2013).