Class Descriptions

Policies Affecting Children and Families

SW641

Credits:	1
Prerequisites:	None

Course Description

This course will cover the various social services and policies that provide developmental, preventive, treatment, and rehabilitative services aimed at children and youth and their families. Particular emphasis will be placed on services provided by community-based agencies, child welfare services, and the juvenile justice system. Students will develop critical frameworks for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the policies and organization and delivery of child-oriented social services based on behavioral and social science research and through the lens of multiculturalism and social justice values.

Objectives

Upon completion of the course:

1. Students should be able to demonstrate knowledge of the policies that govern services to children, youth and their families in society, in the following areas:
● Specify and critique the philosophies and ideologies that guide the development of policy instruments and service arrangements for children, youth and their families
● Specify and critique how the current policy frameworks (at the federal, state, and local levels) reflect society's social construction of the child, youth and family (e.g. do not take into account variant family/caretaking forms and structures)
● Specify and critique the laws, regulations and judicial interpretations that govern the delivery of social services to children, youth, and families
● Specify and critique the outcomes and implications of current policies for children, youth, and families
● Specify and critique the funding mechanisms that are available to provide services to children, youth, and families
● Demonstrate understanding of how the structure and historical development of policies maintain systems of power, privilege and oppression
● Develop the ability to identify how inequitable power is manifested on various dimensions of children, youth, and their families and how these dimensions interact with each other
● Show an understanding and the ability to critique how current policy frameworks work to promote social justice or oppression
● Demonstrate critical analysis using cross national comparisons (Practice Behaviors 5.IP,
● 5.SPE, 5.CO, 5.MHS, 8.IP, 8.SPE, 8.CO, 8.MHS)

2. Students should demonstrate knowledge of how the current service delivery system disrupts or
supports the oppression, discrimination, and injustice of children, youth, and their families. and
articulate alternative design possibilities in the field of children, youth and their families in society,
to address such problems as:
● Level and type of attention to the basic needs of families (promotion)
● Lack of prevention as a focus of the service system
● Lack of social services attached to concrete provision
● Unequal distribution of services based on the current policy framework
● Racial and ethnic disparities among those who enter the system and the differential ways in
● which they are served
● Structural discontinuities in the public vs. private provision of services (Practice Behaviors
● 4.IP, 4.SPE, 4.CO, 4.MHS)

3. Students should demonstrate in depth knowledge and the ability to apply evidence-based
programming and professional knowledge in the design and implementation of comprehensive,
culturally responsive services for children, youth, and families. Students should be able to critique
evidence-based programming in terms of its cultural framing and how power and inequities are
being initiated and reinforced. (Practice Behaviors 5.IP, 5.SPE, 5.CO, 5.MHS, 8.IP, 8.SPE, 8.CO,
8.MHS)
4. Students should demonstrate in depth policy analysis research in one or more of the specific
areas of services and policies for children, youth, and their families, be it family support services,
child protection, foster care, juvenile justice, or the like. (Practice Behaviors 8.IP, 8.SPE, 8.CO,
8.MHS)

Design

The course will utilize a combination of lecture, in class exercises, and discussion.

Intensive Focus on Privilege, Oppression, Diversity and Social Justice (PODS)

This course integrates PODS content and skills with a special emphasis on the identification of theories, practice and/or policies that promote social justice, illuminate injustices and are consistent with scientific and professional knowledge. Through the use of a variety of instructional methods, this course will support students developing a vision of social justice, learn to recognize and reduce mechanisms that support oppression and injustice, work toward social justice processes, apply intersectionality and intercultural frameworks and strengthen critical consciousness, self-knowledge and self-awareness to facilitate PODS learning.