Social Work Policy in Action & The Affordable Care Act

Policy often has a personal effect. You may have encountered policies that have empowered you, or you may have encountered policies that have made you feel powerless. The client populations that you will work with are no different. Policymaking involves social workers acting to identify, formulate, legitimize, implement, and evaluate social policies.

In this Discussion, you identify one policy that has affected you, a family member, a colleague, a friend, or a client. How did the policy empower you or a family member, colleague, friend, or client? How has it made you or another person feel powerless? How does this policy affect social work practice?

RESOURCES
DiNitto, D. M., & Johnson, D. H. (2016). Social welfare: Politics and public policy (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Introduction, “Politics, Rationalism, and Social Welfare Policy” (pp. 1–14)
Chapter 1, “Politics and the Policymaking Process” (pp. 15–38)
Reisch, M. (2002). Defining social justice in a socially unjust world.Links to an external site. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 83(4), 343–354.
Reisch, M. (2013). Why macro practice matters.Links to an external site.
Social Work Policy Institute. (2012). Influencing social policy: Positioning social work graduates for policy careers.Links to an external site.

Post
Identify one policy that has affected you, a family member(s), colleagues, or a client (e.g., Medicaid, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, etc.).
Describe how the policy empowered you, your family member(s), or your client to take action.
Or describe how you understood the policy to be deliberately intended to create a specific result.
Explain how your understanding of this connection between the policy and its result relates to social work practice.