Assignment: Program vs. Policy

Understanding the Policy Landscape

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Understanding the Policy Landscape Program Transcript JOE N. SAVAGE, JR.: The reason why it's important to understand the policy landscape

in your day-to-day practice as a social work practitioner is because it's the policy that

determines what you can do as a social work practitioner.

As a social worker, you're providing services to clients. The policies are what determine

the services that you can provide. And guess what? Policies change. Congress can

make a change. The state legislature can make a change. Or even your agency can

make a change in its policy. And whenever there's a change in the policy, that impacts

what you do at the front line as a social work practitioner, so you should always want to

stay abreast of current policy as you're serving your clients.

RENATA A. HEDRINGTON JONES: It is good practice, or best practice, to understand

the policy landscape in day-to-day practice because it's your guide. It's your roadmap. It

tells you-- for instance, in substance abuse programs, in the beginning, and as most

social workers know, the GIM model-- which are your steps, your seven steps-- the

General Intervention Model, you are engaging the client, but from day one you are

focused on a termination.

Well, that part of that landscape is telling you that. And when you engage the client, you

notify the client that this program is 28 days long. And during this process, we're going

to conduct assessments. And they can show you, with insurance and the overall policy

of the agency, what services you are going to receive, how, and when, and why they

don't have a voice or say when that 28th day comes and what you need to do.

So the whole idea-- let's look at it as a graph. It goes step by step what it is you're

supposed to have and how you're supposed to receive those services. And the ultimate

goal of those services, so goals and objectives, are based on the policies.

KEN LARIMORE: One of the policies that we dealt with in our independent living

program was a policy that was set up by our County Children's Service Agency. And

what they stated was, is that each adolescent, as they were in our independent living

programs, only one adolescent could live in an apartment. They did not want two, or

three, or four adolescents to share the same apartment.

Understanding the Policy Landscape

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Well, what we discovered was most of the apartments that these kids needed to rent

were anywhere from $500 to $750 a month. And we saw that as a bad policy because if

we could put just two kids into an apartment, that reduces their payment for the rent in

half.

And that allows that adolescent-- if they're having to work at the same time they're going

to school-- to be able to do both.

JOE N. SAVAGE, JR.: When I was working as an advocate and doing coalition building,

the current policy landscape, as it related to homelessness, focused on families,

families and children. And the advocacy work that I was doing was seeking to help

homeless individuals that were living on the street. The current policy, as it related to

families, really pushed all of the funding towards family.

Then all of a sudden, there was some data out of the University of Pennsylvania that

really showed that the individuals who were living on the street, even though they only

made up 11% of the homeless population, they were using over 50% of the resources.

Out of that data, came policy.

And when the policy changed, all of a sudden, the funding shifted towards chronically

homeless individuals, those living on the street. And we got more funding that enabled

us to do more advocacy and more coalition building to get more homeless individuals

off the street and into housing.

KEN LARIMORE: Day in and day out, you know, we need to look at policy. How is this

policy affecting my client? Is it helping him or her to be successful? Is it causing barriers

to where they just get frustrated and want to drop out of the program? It's the backbone

of all that we do.