Assignment 1: Practicing Policy Review
For your Social Change Project, due as your Final Assignment in Week 10, you will propose policy alternatives that address the social problem you selected for study in Week 2. Before you search for, select, and review policies that already exist for your social problem—and before you propose alternatives based on your findings—it will help to practice the skills of policy review so you can navigate the scope of a policy, narrow your focus, and identify critical areas that relate to your selected social problem.
For this Assignment, you will review a policy that has been selected for you and consider how the policy addresses or does not address the social problem that inspired it.
To Prepare:
· Review Chapter 7 of the Jansson text as needed.
· Review the assigned Georgia voting policy, Election Integrity Act of 2021, from the Learning Resources this week.
· You will use this policy to familiarize yourself with the structure of policy documents and the process for policy analysis—an important foundation before you begin your own policy search. Next week, you will select a local or state policy related to the social problem you identified.
· Review the Policy Selection Process document in the Learning Resources this week. This document outlines the search for and selection of the Election Integrity Act of 2021—you will need to follow a similar process for your own region or state to complete your Assignment next week.
· Identify the social problem(s) addressed in the policy.
· Select an excerpt from the policy that you would change—this could be a small change, like an addition, or a large change, like a complete revision or removal—to better alleviate the social problem.
By Day 7
Submit a 2- to 3-page paper that addresses the following:
· Describe the social problem(s) addressed in the policy.
· Which areas in the policy indicated the social problem(s) to you?
· Why, as a social worker, should you be concerned with the problem(s)?
· Are there other problem(s) not directly identified that might be impacted, positively or adversely, by the policy?
· Which population(s) is/are impacted by the problem?
· What is the relationship between the social problem(s) and the population(s)? In other words, why are some people impacted by the problem(s) when others are not?
· How is/are the population(s) taken into consideration in the policy?
· Summarize the excerpt from the policy that you identified as needing change.
· What are the strengths of this excerpt in helping to alleviate the social problem? If you do not see any strengths, that is okay—explain why.
· What are the limitations of this excerpt in helping to alleviate the social problem(s) for the population(s)?
· What specific changes would you make to the excerpt to alleviate the social problem(s) for the population(s)? You can describe the changes or quote direct policy language you would change.
Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social justice (8th ed.). Cengage Learning
Georgia General Assembly – SB 202 (ga.gov)
https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/59827
Assignment 2: Search for Policies (Ungraded)
For your Assignment next week, you will search for, select, and review a policy related to the social problem you previously selected for investigation. Because there are multiple stages to the Assignment—searching for policies, selecting a policy appropriate to the problem, and carefully reviewing a policy (which you practiced this week)—it is recommended that you start your search this week.
Look ahead to your Week 4 Assignment and review the resources for searching for policies. With your selected social problem in mind, begin your search and start to create a list of websites, sources, and specific policies that you find most helpful in relationship to potential advocacy work regarding your selected social problem.
Attached is the Policy selection process
Policy Selection Process
SOCW 6361: Social Policy: Analysis and Advocacy
The Georgia State Government website was used to find this bill. Follow similar
instructions for your own state or local government, although the process may vary
slightly between government websites.
The following describes the process that was used to locate information regarding the
Election Integrity Act of 2021:
Step 1: Go to the state website (in this case, https://www.legis.ga.gov/).
Step 2: Scroll down to the section Find Legislation and type in key words or the
bill number.
Step 3: Type in SB 202 (SB: Senate Bill, HR: House of Representative Bill) to
acquire information on the Election Integrity Act of 2021.
Step 4: Click on the current version to view the SB 202 in .pdf form.
Step 5: Click on the past version to view previous versions of the SB 202.
Step 6: Read the bill and commentaries to analyze the strengths and
weaknesses of the bill and to consider an alternative.
Based on the search, the following provides general information about the bill, including
legislative committees that worked on the bill:
House Committee: Special Committee on Election Integrity
Senate Committee: Ethics
Sponsored in House by Fleming, Barry
Sponsored in the Senate by many senators and introduced by Senator Hopper
on February 17, 2021
Passed by the Senate on March 25, 2021
Governor Kemp of Georgia signed the Election Integrity Act of 2021 into law on
March 25, 2021.
Reference
Georgia General Assembly. (n.d.). SB 202. https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/5982
