Social Welfare Policy and Services Sequence
Social welfare policy is the context through which the public sanctions the delivery of clinical social work services and legitimizes the role of the social work profession.
Policy courses are designed to enhance the training of clinical social work students by contributing to their knowledge of the major historical developments in the American social welfare system, and their knowledge of policy developments within specific areas of practice including health, mental health, child welfare, family, aging and/or disability.
Contemporary policy issues are examined in relation to economic developments, demographic changes in the population, the evolution of knowledge about public issues, technology and advances within the profession.
Core Courses
SOCW 530 Introduction to Social Welfare Policy (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: SSW Core Course
The course is designed as an introduction to the profession of social welfare in the United States and the development of the social work profession. The course provides a framework for the analysis of social welfare policy and then uses that framework to explore selected social policy areas. Part of the framework involves an examination of the history both of social welfare in the United States and of the social work profession. Finally, the course offers an opportunity to view social work in an international context. Attention will also be paid to ways in which social workers can advocate for needed policy changes.
Summer 1 - SSW
SOCW 627 Community Organizing and Movement Building (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: SSW Core Course
This course examines methods of organizing people for social and political action in service of racial equity. Students will analyze different approaches to bringing people together for healing, collective action, building socio-political awareness, collective care, generating power, and radical imagining. The course includes the study of skills required for movement building including but not limited to learning counterhistories, moving from theory to practice, exploring social work ethics/values, intentional relationship-building techniques, interpersonal accountability, practicing cultural humility, and recognizing multiple forms of cultural wealth. This course will support students in developing a vision of social justice, through their learning to recognize and reduce mechanisms that support oppression and injustice, by working toward social justice processes, applying intersectionality and intercultural frameworks, and strengthening critical consciousness in their (pro)respective approaches to community practice.
Summer 2 - SSW
SOCW 631 Social Welfare Policy II (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: SSW Core Course
Drawing on frameworks introduced in Introduction to U.S. Social Welfare Policy, this course presents an analytical framework through which to critically examine specific social welfare policies and applies this framework to key social problems and their policy solutions. The impact of policies on clinical social work practice is a key aspect of policy analysis and is considered throughout.
Summer 2 - SSW
SOCW 682 Community Based Anti-Racism Experience (6 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: SSW Core Course
The Community Based Anti-Racism Experience (CBARE) is a required six (6) credit course designed as a guided mezzo-level practice experience with a focus on racial justice in communities, organizations & coalitions. CBARE is designed to extend the learning from the Community Organizing and Movement Building (627) course students will have completed during their second Summer. The 627 course facilitates students’ evolving understanding of the implications of structural racism and opportunities to promote or diminish racial justice on the organizational and community levels. During the CBARE, students will reflect on the dynamics and ethics of engagement while applying practical skills to contribute to an organization or coalition’s ongoing racial justice efforts. Students will spend a minimum of 55 hours engaging with the work of the organization or coalition, 2 hours a month reflecting on their engagement in a virtual community with a small cohort of colleagues, engaging in popular education facilitation, praxis, and portfolio of campaign materials for their community partner.
Winter
Elective Courses
SOCW 651 Gentrification, Urban Renewal, and Social Policy (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
The histories of Urban Planning and Social Work are deeply intertwined and interrelated in current urban challenges and opportunities. There is a long history of distinct social power and inequality dynamics that have played out in both professions. This course will focus on unpacking the relationships between social work, the urban environment and housing policy, especially urban renewal and gentrification. The goal of this course is to understand social inequality in the urban environment and how social workers can have agency within that. In this course students will strengthen their ability to identify and analyze power dynamics within urban environments and examine the social worker’s social responsibility within this context. This course will use perspectives informed by power analysis, intersectionality, planning theory and history.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 652 Social Welfare and Federal Policy on Indigenous Americans (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Historical survey of Federal Indian policies and their effect and impact on Native Americans and American Indian tribes. Multiple methods used to analyze and confront themes in the policies, including factors and conflicts (e.g., assimilation, treaties, land rights, education, child welfare, adoption/tribal child welfare) that influenced and shaped policy development. How implementation aided and/or obstructed the overall well-being of the First People and tribes.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 653 Mental Health Policy and Services (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Explores the social context in which emotional problems are defined and treated. Contrasting paradigms will be examined including the contribution made by each in understanding the etiology of mental health problems and the functions of treatment. Attention will be given to the special situation of women and people of color and current dilemmas in mental health policy. Current national and state laws, funding arrangements, and judicial decisions that impact on mental health programs as they affect the role of social workers in the delivery of services will be explored as well.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 654 Health Policy and Services (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Examines the U.S. health care system, its sociopolitical origins and evolution, and its complex service delivery system and financing. The topics we discuss include: (1) factors in disease causation; (2) the structure and processes of health care organizations; (3) approaches to financing medical care; (4) healhcare outcomes, including disparities.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 655 Child Welfare Policy and Services (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Focuses on major social and demographic changes in the family and the economy that affect the development of and impact on the construction of national and state policies designed to protect and provide for the care of children. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the current trends and policy issues emerging in foster care, adoption, and child abuse and neglect services.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 656 LGBTQ Identity and Social Policy (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Examines the intersection of social policy and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ("LGBT") identities in a variety of contexts of importance to clinical social workers. We will study policies of general applicability that have a particular impact on LGBT individuals and families as well as those that are LGBT-specific in design. The course will focus on a range of laws, policies, and practices including those that impact family formation, child custody, youth (including in and out-of-home care), health care, incarceration, immigration, military, hate speech and bias laws, and nondiscrimination in the context of employment and public education. Students will consider the role of such policies in their own clinical experiences.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 657 Criminal Justice Policy: Implications for Social Work Practice (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Social workers work toward social justice by impacting social systems at multiple levels – frequently by working with disenfranchised populations. The U.S. criminal justice system has a tremendous impact on disadvantaged populations and, as such, has much overlap with social work in terms of persons involved in both entities; moreover, there is a historic link between the profession of social work and the shaping of U.S. criminal justice policies and practices. However, the training of social workers in this area may be inadequate to allow them to recognize the interface between criminal justice and social work policies to impact positive outcomes for the individuals and client systems they serve. This course will extend our understanding of the U.S. criminal justice policies and how they interconnect with the social work profession and client systems. This course is applicable to social work students who wish to increase their understanding of how the criminal justice system and its policies interact with the people and communities with whom social workers engage.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 658 Good Trouble: Organizing for Change (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
The maintenance of representative democracy requires the active participation of an informed citizenry. The promises of equality before the law and the potential to redress grievances fall squarely on our collective shoulders. In order to fulfill our promise we must develop an organized citizenry capable of formulating, articulating, and asserting their common interests. In this course, each student will engage in learning to create social change through collective action. Emphasis will be placed on developing a leadership approach to organizing which includes; building power from the resources within a community, use of public narrative to focus values and intentions, and building public relationships that enhance collective capacity to attend to the demands of representative democracy. The goal of the course is to enhance the capacity of students to engage in taking a leadership role in organizing. Students begin by asking themselves three questions: who are my people, what challenges do they face, and how can they turn their resources into the power they need to meet these challenges?.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 659 Education Policy through a Social Work Lens in a New Administration (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Public education is a complex social institution with a rich and complicated social work history. This course will provide a brief history of education reform with a focus on key and pressing issues currently at stake in public education, with a particular focus on issues of equity. Students will strengthen analytic skills as they explore the design and initial implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA] – as well as implications for social work practice within schools and communities. The course will include investigation and analysis of the evolving policy agenda in the executive branch and Congress, and students will ultimately explore opportunities for intervention at the local, state and federal levels.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 660 Social Justice & the Law - The U.S. Supreme Court: What Is Its Role in Protecting Civil Rights? (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Explores how the U.S. Supreme Court decisions shape, expand or contract civil rights and civil liberties. We will focus on those rights that impact our client populations and/or social work practice. Significant historical and current cases, civil and criminal, will be selected for review and analysis. We will explore how these cases impact policies of institutions where we practice. One session will focus on the social worker as witness in a court proceeding. (Content overlaps with previous course 0375- Social Justice and the Law: Public Policy and the Laws of the United States content)
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 661 Managing Ethnicities: A Socio Legal History of Immigration (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Examines the socio-legal history of immigration. We will review major U.S. legislation concerning immigrants and immigration, refugees and asylum, and citizenship and naturalization. The legal codes will be analyzed through the lens of theory, specifically poststructuralist theories of identity, race, ethnicity, and culture that enabled the legal and social discourses of immigration and citizenship and current theories of identity and participation that challenge past assumptions and practices.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 662 The Impact of Substance Abuse Policy on Practice (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Substance use, dependence, abuse is a complex experience which has been pathologized and criminalized in a variety of ways. In this course students will review the history and current scope of substance use in the United States. We will examine current multidisciplinary evidence based prevention, assessment, care, and treatment modalities. Students will explore how policies that are intended to reduce substance abuse impact medical and behavioral health care, social services, and criminal justice systems. Students will examine how such policies impact communities and individuals in disparate ways.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 663 The Policy/Policing of Gender in Health and Behavioral Health Care (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
The history of interactions between individuals who identify as transgender or gender non binary the health and behavioral health system is one of oppression and resistance. Providers and leaders in both health and behavioral health care led and were complicit in proposing, codifying and normalizing treatment models that reinforced the social construction of binary gender and punished those who did not conform. This course will examine the history of health and behavioral health policy in this area and review the current state of such policy including new protections under the ACA, HIPAA, JCHOA and Medicare and Medicaid regulations. This course will also offer an explicit and clear overview of current policies with regard to medicalized interventions for gender confirmation and discuss informed consent models as an alternative. The role of social workers in the contemporary context will also be examined and critiqued.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 695 Policy Rotating Topic Elective (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the Policy sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable
SOCW 795 Policy Rotating Topic Elective (2 Quarter Hours)
Coordinating Sequence: Policy
Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective
Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the policy sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.
Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable