Chapter 1

Each student will select one question to answer. You must include the page number in the book which assisted you with your answer. Each student will comment on two of their peers responses. No two students may answer the same question.


1. Take any major social problem in contemporary society. Identify an array of policy enactments that have addressed or redressed this problem in recent American history.

2. Analyze historical cleavages within social work with respect to policy advocacy such as the schism between Jane Addams and Mary Richmond. Do such schisms exist in contemporary social work?

3. Has ‘policy devolution” made policy advocacy more or less important?

4. How does policy advocacy allow social workers to address the needs of diverse outgroups? (See Policy Advocacy Challenge 1.1)

5. Discuss the following statement: “It is not feasible or practical for most social workers, whose primary responsibilities lie elsewhere, to engage in the practice of policy. Therefore, this kind of practice should be reserved for persons who specialize in it.”

6. Are direct-service social workers ill-equipped to engage in the practice of policy? What sensitivities and skills facilitate their participation in policy practice?

7. By using the mental health system as an example, discuss how social services have become politicized in the past three decades by identifying controversies that have arisen (e.g., around commitments, use of medications, definitions of mental illness, and discrimination against racial minorities and women).

8. Discuss the four kinds of policy-practice skills that policy practitioners need. Why will not a single skill suffice?

9. Identify the six policy tasks that policy practitioners frequently undertake.

10. Define social policy – and discuss different kinds of social policies.

11. Are personal preferences the same as social policies?

12. Discuss some attributes of effective policy advocates.

13. What are key challenges that policy advocates encounter that distinguish their work from direct service practitioners?