Library Student Employees: Discipline 911: Social Work

Several social work course assignments require looking for legislation. Most students do not know how to do this. Here is an example from Social Work 240:

1.     HISTORICAL SUMMARY/OUTLINE [25 points] including:

a.      RELEVANT LEGISLATION; timeframe: last 100 years

b.     Relevant CURRENT legislation

c.      How issue affects oppressed or at-risk oppresses/marginalized populations.

d.     Espec. Focus on role of prejudice/discrimination

You can find other 'find legislation' links scattered around the LibGuides. Here is info Marsha Miller specifically pulled together for Social Work:

Remember, you will have to think broader rather than narrower, fitting your more specific topic into more general legislation and regulation. You can contact me as needed, too. I'll add info on this to the Social Work LibGuide soon.

You need to look for legislation and regulations at the state and national level.

Find the agencies and government departments who work with children; usually they will have information on legislation that helps govern their activities. There are also several governmental portals that may get you to the information you need. Your social work associations usually have an area where they keep track of current and sometimes past legislation, especially if there is something; sub-groups of main associations may also have legislative info

• Indiana Department of Child Services http://www.in.gov/dcs/  
• Commission on Improving the Status of Children in Indiana http://www.in.gov/children/  
• Alternative Learning Programs http://www.doe.in.gov/cte/alternative-education  
• Indiana Dept of Education http://www.doe.in.gov  

 NASW has an Advocacy link http://www.socialworkers.org/advocacy/default.asp  ; under that you can find

1.         Legislative alerts and updates http://cqrcengage.com/socialworkers/  

2.         Legislative Issues   http://cqrcengage.com/socialworkers/action

And another association: http://www.clinicalsocialworkassociation.org/legislation-and-advocacy/alerts  

Huge government portal: http://www.usa.gov / Mouse over Government Agencies > Contact Info by Topic > Children and Education

ON the homepage there is also a link: to Email a Question. If you do that, be as specific as possible.

Another major portal is http://www.childstats.gov/  - A working group of 22 Federal agencies, the Forum fosters coordination, collaboration, and integration of Federal efforts to collect, analyze and report data on conditions and trends related to child and family well-being. The Forum also has partners in private research organizations. While concentrating on statistics, it can lead you to legislation.

•          US Department of Health and Human Services http://www.hhs.gov  has Regulations link and an A-Z link. Scroll down to the Priority Websites section and see MentalHealth.gov

•          Department of Education http://www.ed.gov/  > Laws and Guidance http://www2.ed.gov/policy/landing.jhtml?src=go

•          Regulations portal: http://www.regulations.gov/#!home

Social Work students need journal articles. Some have to be from Social Work's approved list; an annotated list of journal titles is available on the Social Work LibGuide. They will probably have to use Interlibrary Loan. They need to use primarily Social Work Abstracts but can also use Academic Search Complete and some of the subject databases, depending on their topic. Social Work Abstracts is a Ebscohost interface.