Touching every aspect of life and community, social policy is broad, deep, and constantly changing. For instructors, building a cohesive and engaging policy curriculum can be daunting. For students, navigating policy history, understanding policy implications, and conducting complex analysis can be overwhelming. Gerald O’Brien provides a resource to overcome these challenges, because policy familiarity contributes to social workers’ fundamental understanding of the individuals, communities, institutions, and governments they serve.

43 Essential Policies for Human Services Professionals boils down key policies to their most essential elements: historical overview and nature of the social problem, policy overview, and effectiveness. Analysis elements address issues related to the policy, such as trigger events, problem framing, social engineering, covert rationales, unintended consequences, target efficiency, and governmental responsibility.

This thought-provoking and reader-friendly text prepares students for class engagement, lobbying activities, meeting with legislators, and serving their local communities. It fulfills the basic need of all social workers to understand the historical roots of oppression, to advocate for their clients’ access to services, and to advance social and economic justice.

A 45-page Instructor Appendix is available as a separate PDF. This teaching resource includes two components for each chapter: (1) questions for further discussion and (2) research and questions related to analysis elements. The Instructor Appendix can be used for assigning student research, paper topics, and class discussions, and includes cross-policy and cross-concept analysis, occasionally referencing concepts and policies not covered in this text. To place the Instructor Appendix in your shopping cart, select "Instructor Manual" from "Book Type" above.