Assignment:
A social worker wants to establish outpatient services for older citizens in a major hospital but wants to obtain their perspectives. She segments this population into ambulatory but relatively healthy older people and those with more acute rather than chronic conditions. Realizing that older people in her hospital's service area are Caucasian and Asian, she draws well older people from these two groups to form two focus groups.
The social worker develops the following broad questions:
1. What kinds of medical problems or issues do you (well older people) have?
2. Where do you currently receive outpatient medical services?
3. What problems do you experience with the services that you currently receive?
4. If you could establish the ideal outpatient agency for well older people, what would it be like?
5. What dangers or pitfalls would you advise the staff of this outpatient agency to avoid?
The policy advocate gains important insights from the older people she has consulted. For example, she finds that they value continuity of care (i.e., having a regular doctor) more than promptness of service. Armed with insights from her use of focus groups, she develops a proposal for outpatient services that she hopes will be accepted by the hospital's board of directors.
EXERCISE1
Now imagine that you are conducting a focus group with evacuees from the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and you want to know what they would want in terms of amenities and quality of life to induce them to return to New Orleans from another city.
Develop a set of questions that you might ask.
EXERCISE 2
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) has been using Convio's© Advocacy toolsince May 2003 to maintain a strong advocacy program that relies on our volunteers atboth the state and national level. One focus has been to get different states to enact SAFEAT SCHOOL (SAS) legislation to fund staff and programs needed to keep diabetic children safe while they are at school. For example, each school should have programs inplace to maintain diabetic children through programs that test blood sugar, allow children to keep and eat snacks if they have low blood sugar, and allow children to carry and administer insulin (if blood sugar is high). The school should have a nurse or otherstaff person who has the requisite knowledge to help children maintaintheir blood sugarat healthy levels. Given the current epidemic of diabetes among American youth, SAS legislation is vitally needed.
The Internet enables us to collect and use information that is key to our advocacy efforts. It allows us to have lists of ADA volunteers in each state with their emailaddresses. It allows us to conduct needed surveys in different states. For example, whenwe learn that advocates have been unable to educate and negotiate with some local schooldistricts in a specific state so that they implement needed safety programs, we can survey ADA volunteers in that state to see if they agree to support the introduction of SAS legislation in their state. We can then share information regarding volunteers ' interest inparticipating with their local ADA office - so that it can then call on their assistance ina campaign that they develop to get SAS legislation enacted in a specific state. For mostorganizations, but particularly for those in the not-for-profit arena, the importance of this "forcemultiplier" capability cannot be overstated.
When we develop a campaign for SAS legislation in a specific state, we can use theInternet to enlist volunteers and give them background information on legislation. Weidentify which legislators we are targeting and give the volunteers specific messagesabout our position on the legislation that we wish them to send to legislators - and themechanism to send that message. We can do all of this centrally, removing the need forany extra work by volunteers to orchestrate this. (We have learned that we increase thelikelihood of volunteers' participation if we remove the need for them to do extra work.)By having information at both state and federal levels and by sharing it back and forth, the ADA has had remarkable success in getting SAS legislation enacted-at last count in 24 states.
Please answer the questions below: Please provide detail and explanation in your answers.
1. In the case of the ADA, how might it recruit volunteers from the huge number of families that have diabetic children?
2. How might the ADA assign volunteers to specific task in a campaign to get SAS legislation in a specific legislature?
3. How might information about ADA volunteers in many different states help the ADA get needed legislation in Washington D.C.?