Social Welfare Policy and Social Work Practice

This week’s assignment involves completing an internet “scavenger hunt.” Please find an example of a social welfare policy (that is, a public policy) that was created in each of the following three ways (so three different policies).

Legislation passed by the U.S. Congress
Supreme Court decision
Executive Order of the President
Try to find legislation and a Supreme Court decision that address the same general population or problem area. Because executive orders can be quite narrow in scope, you may choose an executive order that is on a different topic than the legislation and court decision you find.

You may use mainstream news sources (such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Sun Times, etc.) or alternative news sources (Daily Show, Daily Beast, Salon.com, etc.), but try to find fairly current examples (from within the past 3 years). You may need to read more than one source to get a full understanding of the policy.

By the end of the day on Thursday:

List and briefly describe the three policies you found.
Describe one of the policies at length (approximately 150 words), including the following:
What the policy does
What the policy hopes to achieve
Which groups the policy targets
What need the policy was created to address
Identify at least one other primary institution (for example, family, workplace, religion, community, and/or marketplace) that gets involved in meeting this same need and describe how this institution tries to address this area of need. Examples are available in your reading and in the video content for the week.