Select and research a policy or law that is related to the well-being of families. It can be any law or policy from any state, city, township, or country. There is a lot of flexibility in this assignment in terms of topic, and sometimes policies may not explicitly say they are family focused. Choose any you are interested in as long as you can argue that is affects families. (For example, ACCESS, the federal health insurance, has policies stating that you must have legal citizenship to be eligible for its benefits. When a child is a legal citizen but a parent is not, the quality of healthcare for the whole family may be impacted. The child may not receive the insurance he/she is eligible for because the family may fear state repercussions. Some more obvious examples are policies regarding marriage equality, foster care and adoption policies, policies on divorce and children, etc.)

In your 3, to no more than 4 page paper (double-spaced, times new roman 12 font or similar, APA style preferred), describe the policy or law you’ve chosen in detail. Explain how you think it can affect families (you can use theoretical approaches like Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model or Vygotsky’s socio – historical perspective to argue why a policy is influencing families). If it only affects one type of family explain how this policy/law only has an effect on that type of family. How is the policy/law accounting for diversity? What kind of assumption about “good” or “normal” families is this policy implicitly or explicitly stating? How is it rewarding and penalizing other types of families? Are the policy makers making any implicit or explicit statements on multiculturalism? That is, is the policy makers’ definition of a “good” or “normal” family related to the one culture’s values, or do they provide some flexibility in their definitions? What is the social impact?

Then conclude with a statement regarding whether you think policy can be altered to be made more culturally competent? If so, give your suggestions.