SOCW 6361 Week 5: Building an Agenda

Experienced policy advocates realize that their first challenge is to get a specific policy issue on decision makers’ agendas in agency, community, or legislative settings.
—Bruce S. Jansson, Becoming an Effective Policy Advocate: From Policy Practice to Social Justice (8th ed.)

When you have committed yourself to an issue and become involved in convincing others that the issue is important enough to merit serious attention by decision makers, you are taking the first step to building an agenda.

In Week 5, you explore the importance of agenda-building processes to policy practice. You examine procedures for getting items on policy agendas, explore ways for building skills that help get proposals onto agendas, and develop strategies for getting agenda items in front of decision makers.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

Analyze strategies for putting items on policy agendas
Evaluate accuracy of the Kingdon model of policy making

Learning Resources

Required Readings

SOCW 6361 Webliography
These websites will be required throughout the semester. Become familiar with these websites, especially when doing research for your assignments.

Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social justice. (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Series.
Chapter 6, “Committing to an Issue: Building Agendas” (pp. 176-203)

Edwards, H. R., & Hoefer, R. (2010). Are social work advocacy groups using Web 2.0 effectively? Journal of Policy Practice, 9(3/4), 220–239.

Optional Resources

MSW home page
Use this link to access the MSW home page, which provides resources for your social work program.

Small Group Discussion: Policy Agendas

There are challenges to agenda building that if not dealt with carefully and skillfully can adversely affect an issue or a proposal that you are trying to place in front of a decision maker. On the other hand, no matter how expertly you build an agenda for your issue or proposal, some issues are going to simply be avoided or not selected for consideration. Why is this so?

In this Small Group Discussion, you explore challenges surrounding policy agendas and the reasons why some proposals never make it to the decision maker.

By Day 3

Post your responses to the following questions presented for Small Group Discussion:

Many social issues do not receive the necessary attention from decision makers. Why might these issues be cast aside?
Some issues lack sufficient support to ensure that they are added to decision-makers’ agendas. Why might this be?
Some issues receive significant attention from decision makers. Why might these issues easily find their way onto decision makers’ agendas?

Be sure to support your post with specific references to this week’s resources. If you are using additional articles, be sure to provide full APA-formatted citations for your references.

By Day 5

Respond to your colleagues’ responses to the group discussion.

Responses

Brittany Everett RE: Small Group Discussion Group A – Week 5

Many social issues do not receive the necessary attention from decision-makers. Why might these issues be cast aside?

According to Jansson (2018, p.180), social issues that do not reflect a specific vulnerable population and do not represent the betterment of society have a hard time convincing agency executives to prioritize their concerns. Therefore, a policy practitioner must understand the three challenges in agenda building; must identify the perspective as they listen to others, soften the context, and activate change (p.180). Through this discovery, a policy practitioner can have their social issues heard and placed on the decision-makers’ agenda.

Some issues lack sufficient support to ensure that they are added to decision-makers’ agendas. Why might this be?

Some issues lack funding strategies, relatively poor people (Jansson, 2018). Therefore, policy advocates have to identify resources that might fund programs as apart their proposal to decision-makers’. Also, another lack of support is new social issues never heard of before, and the subject of initial discussion seven years ago (p.185).

Some issues receive significant attention from decision-makers. Why might these issues easily find their way onto decision-makers’ agendas?

Social problems that focus on environmental issues, human rights issues, and participation in advocacy were more likely to have decision-makers’ attention (Edwards & Hoefer, 2010, p.3). When a policy advocator communicates through the internet, it is easy to access for a decision-maker. Evidence suggests websites provide elected representatives sharing contact information for elected officials, presenting guidance for how to contact elected officials, and supplying templates to help format effective communications. The direction will likely increase the probability that advocate correspondence will reach decision-makers and that the information will be formatted to garner attention (Edwards & Hoefer, 2010, p.3).”

References

Edwards, H., & Hoefer, R. (2010). Are Social Work Advocacy Groups Using Web 2.0 Effectively? Journal of Policy Practice, 9(3/4), 220–239. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1080/15588742.2010.489037

Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social justice. (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Series.Chapter 6, “Committing to an Issue: Building Agendas” (pp. 176-203)

Response 2

Darnell FAWCETT RE: Small Group Discussion Group A – Week 5

Social issues that do not receive the necessary attention from decision-makers because they may be under-developed issues or issues with under-developed concern within the community to inspire the interest of the decision-makers. Jansson (2018) specifies that there is disregard for some issues in comparison to the multitudes of other issues that are already being discussed at any given time.

Support for certain issues may be lacking due to a host of issues. A particular issue may be an antagonist to another issue on an agenda that is already approved, adding something that may create additional conflict to something already approved is typically avoided at least at a private agency level. I would presume that this is not just true but magnified at the city, state, and federal levels. In addition to this, Jansson (2018) tells us that political leaders themselves will be most interested in items, and be willing to invest time into topics that will assist in the political career in some way, or will be of value in keeping political leaders elected.

Some issues may be much easier to gain attention from decision-makers because of the topics or items presented are already of direct interest to them (Jansson, 2018). If an item presented focuses on a specific population, issue, concern that pertains to the platform of which the decision-maker holds themselves, the issue will be more likely to gain the needed attention (2018). With this in mind, social workers can look into areas in which decision-makers hold their interest and gear their attention towards, and present even new issues in ways that affect or directly relate to things that would help or assist a decision-maker to gain momentum in their career or standing within the community. The more an issue can be softened and made malleable from the beginning of agenda presentation, the higher the likelihood the issue will move on to other parts of the policy process such as even making it to policy deliberation (2018).

Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social justice. (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Series.

SOCW 6361 Week 5: Building an Agenda