Please see attachment for assignment instructions.  

In this assignment, you will be laying the foundation for your final paper. Before you begin on a solution, you need to identify a clear, narrow problem. You cannot address complex social issues in a single effort at a single time. When addressing any complex problem, you need to operationalize it. That is, you need to make it clear, focused, and realistic. You will be identifying and clarifying the problem in this assignment, setting the foundation for future work. To make it more realistic, you will be doing this within the context of a specific agency. You will explore the broader issue, but you will be looking at how a specific agency should approach its “piece of the puzzle.” To do this, you will need to consider the mission of the organization.

Many organizations have a mission statement. There is no specific format for a mission statement, and you may see them as either brief statements or lengthy papers. You may also see other organizational statements, such as vision statements, values statements, goals statements, or any combination of these. Most public agencies have such materials available online, and you will need to locate and reflect upon those materials to frame this foundational discussion of the problem you will use for your course project. If you cannot tie the problem to the mission of the organization, it might suggest mission creep, meaning the organization is beginning to delve into areas beyond its scope, which might suggest an imprudent use of resources.

The materials you generate for this assignment will be integrated into your final paper, so you will be refining them as you move forward. In this assignment, address the following:

1. Identify the public agency you wish to study.

2. Identify the problem on which you wish to conduct the policy analysis, with an evaluation of how that problem fits within the organizational mission.

3. Evaluate the potential costs and benefits of engaging in a policy analysis process to assess organizational problems and priorities.

4. Analyze factors you may use to frame the problem into a manageable scope.

5. Analyze contributing factors one must consider to determine if the problem has too broad or too narrow a focus, using examples to illustrate how the problem concerns the broader community.

6. Provide specific examples to explain how the problem affects the needs of all groups within the community.

7. Evaluate the organizational problem in terms of the organizational mission using a SWOT analysis.

8. Provide examples of how dealing with the issue reflects ethical practices by the public agency.

Assignment Requirements

· Resources: Your ideas must be supported with recent, scholarly sources that are properly cited and referenced in APA style.

· Number of pages: Your assignment should be at least 4–6 pages, double-spaced, excluding the cover page, abstract (if included), and references.

· APA style and format: All materials must be submitted in APA style and format (see Faculty Expectations for further information about APA).

o Remember, adherence to APA requires that all statements of objective fact that are not considered common knowledge must be supported by a credible source (using both a citation and a reference).

· Font: Times New Roman, 12-point.

· Introduction and Conclusion: Remember to include both an introductory paragraph and a paragraph of conclusions. This is a fundamental requirement of proper, standard American English.

Assignment w3: Identifying the Policy Problem

The organization I chose is the Indiana Department of Child Services. Their website is:

https://www.in.gov/dcs/2370.htm

. In this attachment, towards the bottom, under Information from Discussion 1 and Information from Discussion 2, are some of the things I want to analyze and problems I want to fix. This will guide you in doing this assignment.

In this assignment, you will be laying the foundation for your final paper. Before you begin on a solution, you need to identify a clear, narrow problem. You cannot address complex social issues in a single effort at a single time. When addressing any complex problem, you need to operationalize it. That is, you need to make it clear, focused, and realistic. You will be identifying and clarifying the problem in this assignment, setting the foundation for future work. To make it more realistic, you will be doing this within the context of a specific agency. You will explore the broader issue, but you will be looking at how a specific agency should approach its “piece of the puzzle.” To do this, you will need to consider the mission of the organization.

Many organizations have a mission statement. There is no specific format for a mission statement, and you may see them as either brief statements or lengthy papers. You may also see other organizational statements, such as vision statements, values statements, goals statements, or any combination of these. Most public agencies have such materials available online, and you will need to locate and reflect upon those materials to frame this foundational discussion of the problem you will use for your course project. If you cannot tie the problem to the mission of the organization, it might suggest mission creep, meaning the organization is beginning to delve into areas beyond its scope, which might suggest an imprudent use of resources.

The materials you generate for this assignment will be integrated into your final paper, so you will be refining them as you move forward. In this assignment, address the following:

1. Identify the public agency you wish to study.

2. Identify the problem on which you wish to conduct the policy analysis, with an evaluation of how that problem fits within the organizational mission.

3. Evaluate the potential costs and benefits of engaging in a policy analysis process to assess organizational problems and priorities.

4. Analyze factors you may use to frame the problem into a manageable scope.

5. Analyze contributing factors one must consider to determine if the problem has too broad or too narrow a focus, using examples to illustrate how the problem concerns the broader community.

6. Provide specific examples to explain how the problem affects the needs of all groups within the community.

7. Evaluate the organizational problem in terms of the organizational mission using a SWOT analysis.

8. Provide examples of how dealing with the issue reflects ethical practices by the public agency.

Assignment Requirements

· Resources:

Your ideas must be supported with recent, scholarly sources that are properly cited and referenced in APA style.

· Number of pages: Your assignment should be at least 4–6 pages, double-spaced, excluding the cover page, abstract (if included), and references.

· APA style and format: All materials must be submitted in APA style and format (see Faculty Expectations for further information about APA).

. Remember, adherence to APA requires that all statements of objective fact that are not considered common knowledge must be supported by a credible source (using both a citation and a reference).

· Font: Times New Roman, 12-point.

· Introduction and Conclusion: Remember to include both an introductory paragraph and a paragraph of conclusions. This is a fundamental requirement of proper, standard American English.

Information from Discussion 1

The agency I intend to focus my efforts on is the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS). Their mission is to engage with families and collaborate with state, local and community partners to protect children from abuse and neglect and to provide child support services (DCS Mission, Vision, and Values). I want to address the overspending that Indiana’s DCS does every year. They are 100’s of millions of dollars over budget every year. I know this is not just a problem for Indiana, but every state.

One thing that I learned working with this agency is that they want to keep referring services to clients and keep them in the system. If they keep their numbers high on active clients in their system every year and overspend the budgeted money, they will and expect to receive more funds the following fiscal year. DCS is by far the largest department with the greatest budget and amount of employees than any other department in the state of Indiana. As of 2017, Indiana’s rate of children in out-of-home care was about 13 children for every 1,000 in the state and is over twice the national average. In addition to Indiana having a higher number of children in out-of-home care, Indiana also has a higher-than-average number of children being referred to child protection. In 2016, Indiana’s rate of referral to child protection, calculated as the number of referrals for every 1,000 children in the state’s population, was 108.2 compared to a national average of 55.6 (Evaluation of the Indiana Department of Child Services).

References

DCS Mission, Vision, and Values. (n.d.). Retrieved January 22, 2020, from https://www.in.gov/dcs/2370.htm

Evaluation of the Indiana Department of Child Services. (2018, June 18). Retrieved January 22, 2020, from https://www.in.gov/dcs/files/IndianaEvaluationReportCWGFinal

Information from Discussion 2

· What is the specific problem that your organization will be trying to address? Try to be as specific as possible.

My organization will be trying to reduce the spending by the Indiana Department of Child Services to combat child abuse and neglect. There are a number of issues that create this situation that need addressed. One major that needs to be considered is what is causing the high caseloads in the first place and can these things be spearheaded from the front end to help reduce the number of children entering into the system in the first place. Here are a number of things that need evaluated and are cause for concern (Evaluation of the Indiana Department of Child Services.):

• Only three states have a higher rate of abuse and neglect referrals than Indiana.

• Indiana accepts more abuse and neglect reports than the national average.

• Only two states had a higher rate of completed child protection assessments than Indiana.

• Despite completing more assessments than almost any state, Indiana substantiated only 15 percent of those assessments.

• The rate of abuse and neglect reports grew by almost 63 percent from SFY 13 to SFY 17.

• 55 percent of removals in 2017 were related to parental substance abuse.

• DCS barely misses the federal standard for repeat maltreatment

• Indiana’s rate of children in care is 13.0 (per 1,000 children) compared with the national average of 5.6.

• Indiana’s rate of children entering care is 8 (per 1,000 children) compared with the national rate of 3.6. • Nearly 45 percent of family case managers have caseloads above the state standard.

• DCS’ supervision standard is 1 to 7+ compared to the national standard of 1 to 5.

• There are 530 children in care on the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) wait list for childcare vouchers.

• In SFY 2017, DCS spent $24,933,487 on drug testing/supplies and $4,538,182 on drug treatment.

• The number of court-involved cases in DCS is more than double the national average.

· How is the specific problem you mentioned tied to the organizational mission?

The problem is tied to DCS’ mission statement, because they job is to provide services to and protect children from abuse and neglect. If we can reduce the amount of reports by ensuring parents have resources and tools to properly parent their children and deal with everyday life. This can potentially reduce the number of reports and cases DCS receives in the first place and eventually reduce the amount of spending and employees needed to make DCS function as it has. Cases that do need DCS’ attention after this would be handled in a manner to help put them in a place where they will be no more recurring incidences and remove the cases from the DCS system. It is a complicated and very involve process, but it can be done with the proper training, tools, resources, and policies in place.

· How might you frame the problem for the policy analysis to make the scope of it more realistic in a real-world setting?

Problems such as the opioid epidemic have contributed to the increased number of families and children in the DCS case management system. If we were to focus and attack the opioid problem from the doctor prescribing the opioid, to the manufacturers, and finally to the patient taking the opioids we can come up with a solution to combat this and thus reduce the numbers that increased the caseloads of DCS due to this problem. Over reliance on a reactive system that uses child removal as the primary approach to address parental addiction will not serve Indiana or its citizens well over time (Evaluation of the Indiana Department of Child Services.). The idea is to take a proactive approach instead of a reactive approach to these problems.

 
References
Evaluation of the Indiana Department of Child Services. (2018, June 18). Retrieved January 22, 2020, from https://www.in.gov/dcs/files/IndianaEvaluationReportCWGFinal