1(a) Serving the Community

This week, your text discussed the community context of agencies and outlined the components to consider when assessing community needs. In this Discussion, you apply a similar perspective to your internship agency.

To Prepare

• Use the resources noted in your text (census data, electronic databases, community websites, city directories, newspaper files, local magazines, state yearbooks, town reports, or political directories) to determine which aspects of cultural issues or structural issues align with the needs your agency seeks to meet.

• Describe the needs related to cultural or structural issues found in your agency’s community.
  • Provide references to resources you used to identify the community needs.
• Explain how the services your agency provides meet either the cultural or structural issues you identified in the community.
• Explain how the agency’s intervention in this area relates to social work practice and ethics.

• Describe one additional way in which the agency’s intervention could relate to social work practice or ethics.

• 1(b) Policy

  You have had the opportunity to learn about policy in previous courses and to analyze how those policies are supposed to function—or don’t function as intended—in real-life scenarios. By now, you have likely seen firsthand in your field education how policies affect daily practice. In this Discussion, you analyze a policy that you have seen in action.

  To Prepare

  Consider the population your agency serves and the policies in place.
  

  • Identify a federal/state policy and an agency policy that impacts the way services are delivered to your clients.
  • Explain how the policy affects clients.
  • Describe the benefits and challenges of the policies you chose.