Community Education and Advocacy

Community education and advocacy are both important components of the work that human service professionals do with children and their families. Both types of interventions play important roles in working with this population. For this assignment, you have the opportunity to choose a social issue that impacts children and their families and discuss the influence of both advocacy and community education on the issue that you identify.

Assignment Directions

Please be sure to address all of the following in your assignment:

• Identify a social issue that impacts children and their families, and provide some background about the issue (who is impacted, how many people, and so forth).
  • Some examples of social issues that you could choose include, but are not limited to, child abuse and neglect, teenage pregnancy, and homelessness.
• Analyze two different ways that a human service professional could advocate for the social issue you discussed.
• Define community education and examine how a human service professional would utilize community education as a strategy for the social issue chosen. Specifically, examine what methods you might utilize to provide community education about the topic selected.
  • Some examples include workshops, newspaper, media, etc.
• Analyze the effectiveness of advocacy and community education for the social issue that you discussed. In your answer, be certain to indicate if you think advocacy or community education is more effective for the social issue. If you think they are both effective, be sure to indicate how and why.
• Identify an organization that provides advocacy for the social issue you have discussed and an organization that provides community education related to the issue. In your answer, be certain to examine whether or not you think the organizations are effective and if you would change or add anything related to their advocacy or education services.