Policy Brief

docx

School

Merrimack College *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

5001

Subject

Sociology

Date

Jan 9, 2024

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by ChiefCrabPerson948

1 Policy Brief: Children’s Mental Health Thalia Estevez Merrimack College Intro to Social Work & Social Welfare Shannon Butler Mokoro MSW, EdD. May 13, 2022

2 Intro to Social Welfare Policy Across the nation, it is commonplace in K-12 schools to conduct regular universal screenings on children. Be it academic to ensure that they’re meeting grade-level standards. Their vision and hearing are checked to see if they could be impeding their academics. These universal screenings and the data collected are typically utilized to consider a variety of potential factors that might hinder the children’s academic success. In schools across the country, there is a persistent need for more inclusive health education. The current sex education in schools across Massachusetts is not nearly as comprehensive as it should be. According to The Healthy Youth Act Coalition, 6.9 percent of high school students experienced physical dating violence in the past year and that number increases to 17.7 percent for lesbian, gay, and bisexual identifying youth (The Healthy Youth Act Coalition, 2021). The Healthy Youth Act is sponsored by Representatives Jim O’Day, Paul Brodeur, and Senator Sal DiDomenico. This bill focuses on public schools providing sexuality education that should be done comprehensively, medically accurate, and age appropriate. The Healthy Youth Act would require Massachusetts schools offering sex education classes to deliver a scientifically sound curriculum that includes age-appropriate information about gender identity and sexual orientation. These opt-out sexual education classes must offer affirmative recognition of people's various sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions, as well as LGBTQ resources for students (Healthy youth act. BARCC, 2021).

3 Teachers of health classes must also educate their students on interpersonal and communication skills that will enable them to make healthy decisions and build respectful relationships devoid of violence, compulsion, and intimidation. This bill was initially suggested about a decade ago; now is the time for legislators to act and ensure that all kids have fair access to critical instructional information (Healthy youth act. massequality, 2021). In their sexual education classes, the vast majority of LGBTQ+ adolescents in Massachusetts learn little about how to stay as healthy and safe as LGBTQ+ youth. It's no surprise that they have considerably more challenges with their sexual health than their classmates. To make matters worse, neither they nor their peers can be certain that they will learn substantially accurate facts or content about consent. We will continue to fail our LGBTQ youth and their peers if we refuse to acknowledge that they require better sex education. That's why the Massachusetts state legislature should enact H.673/S.318, An Act Relative to Healthy Youth, which would mandate schools that offer sex education classes to have a medically correct, LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum. Parents, educators, students, and campaigners are all in agreement that now is the moment for gender-inclusive education. A student from the Greater Boston Area states “The education for LGBTQ issues is lacking at best. The information we receive in health classes is either overgeneralized or inaccurate. I remember in 10th grade I was essentially teaching my health class for my teacher because he just was not well educated on what he was talking about” (Healthy youth act. massequality, 2021). According to data from the Department of Education's report on Massachusetts Youth's Health and Risk Behaviors, 41.3 percent of transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) students who learned anything about trans/GNC sexual health in

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

4 school were taught negative, stigmatizing information about trans/GNC people (Healthy Youth Act. massequality, 2021). Adolescents in Massachusetts are currently facing a serious health crisis. In the previous decade, chlamydia rates in Massachusetts have nearly doubled, while gonorrhea and syphilis rates have tripled (Healthy youth act. massequality, 2021). Young adults aged 15 to 24 reported over two-thirds of chlamydia cases and nearly half of gonorrhea cases in Massachusetts in 2015, although accounting for only a quarter of people having sex. Providing young people with comprehensive sex education is the best method to prevent STIs well as unplanned pregnancies and other sexual health risks. Comprehensive sexual health education is the only proven approach to lower adolescent risks, according to a major meta-analysis of over 6,500 reports on the effectiveness of school health courses compiled over two decades. It resulted in significant improvements in every outcome studied, including pregnancy, STI rates, sexual activity frequency, and age (Parenthood, 2021). According to research, the Healthy Youth Act could be a starting step toward eliminating the culture of homophobia and transphobia that makes many LGBTQ students feel unsafe in our schools. Even in Massachusetts, one out of every five LGBTQ youth has experienced bullying at school that has escalated to physical harassment, and one out of every six LGBTQ students has skipped school in the last month due to fear of being harassed. When LGBTQ students are scared to enter the classroom - or when their schools' toxic climates contribute to mental health issues that have led to almost a quarter of them attempting suicide in the last year - they cannot receive a safe, equal education (Healthy youth act massequality, 2021).

5 Since 2011, when the Healthy Youth Act was initially introduced in Massachusetts, advocates have worked relentlessly to progress it (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). The Healthy Youth Act has passed the Senate twice in the last four legislative sessions, but it has been repeatedly stopped from being submitted in the House. Representative Paul and Representative James O'Day introduced House Bill 410 in an attempt to pass the Healthy Youth Act again in 2019. Additional initiatives to promote sex education have been made in a variety of ways. In collaboration with organizations such as ANSWER, the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and Advocates for Youth, funding from the Departments of Education and Secondary Education (DESE) and Public Health assists districts in selecting and obtaining training on high equality sex education (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). Because Massachusetts schools are not mandated to teach sex education to kids, school districts are free to decide what kind of sex education they provide to students, if any at all. Mandating local autonomy over sex education poses particular issues, resulting in a significant gap in the quality of sex education received by adolescents. The Rights, Respect, and Responsibility (3R's) curriculum are used by many districts, including Boston Public Schools, while over 70% of districts employ "abstinence-plus" instructional materials (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). Advocates are attempting to establish a non- gender-segregated sex education curriculum because the current curriculum can be alienating to transgender, nonbinary, and/or gender nonconforming young people. The DESE is also working to amend the Health Curriculum Framework to ensure that consent discussions are gender-inclusive and trauma-informed. By removing these obstacles from the sex education

6 curriculum, all youth will receive affirming information (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). In 1992, Governor William Weld established the very first Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, which is now recognized as the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth, in response to high rates of suicide attempts among gay and lesbian youth and reports of widespread anti-gay bullying in schools (Scaramella, 2019). The commission held hearings across the state, during which LGBTQ youth testified about how they had been mistreated by their parents, teachers, classmates, and even law enforcement. Following those hearings, Massachusetts legislators quickly passed the Safe Schools Act, which specifically protected lesbian and gay students from discrimination by teachers and other school administrators. The Safe Schools Program for LGBTQ Students and Gay/Straight Alliances, which encourage a more safe and supportive school climate for LGBTQ students, arose because of that statute (Scaramella, 2019). This unprecedented response by Massachusetts political leaders to the epidemic of gay and lesbian adolescent suicide was remarkable, especially given the societal climate at the time. Massachusetts' strategy to prevent discrimination and violence against gay and lesbian students became a national model (Scaramella, 2019). This prompt response begs the question of why lawmakers failed to act on the Healthy Youth Act when it was initially introduced in 2011. The mandate to teach about consent and to be inclusive of LGBTQ students, according to news coverage of the stalled effort to approve the Healthy Youth Act, is obstructing its passage. Conservative campaigners, it appears, are concerned that open

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

7 discussion of these topics may encourage sexual experimentation among vulnerable youth (Scaramella, 2019). In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it will no longer finance evidence- based programs to prevent teen pregnancy, instead of diverting funds to ineffectual abstinence-only and method-based sex education programs (Parenthood, 2021). The abstinence-only programs came out from Valerie Huber the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, which oversees the office that administers the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. Huber has spent two decades promoting abstinence-only and anti-contraception programs (McDonald-Mosley et al., 2018). The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reinstated the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program after several grantees filed a series of successful lawsuits to stop the cuts from being implemented (Parenthood, 2021). This section highlights sex education measures introduced during the 2020 state legislative session, as well as bills introduced in 2021 thus far. These proposed bills give a rundown of recent and ongoing legislative efforts to promote or prohibit sex education. In 2020 Senate Bill 2475 sought to require school districts that offer sex education to provide comprehensive sex education, and it failed. This bill was revised and notification of curriculum and right to removal from the program by parents was added, still, it failed (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). House Bill 503 and 484 sought to require DESE and the Department of Public Health to assist in the development of these evidence- based and age-appropriate programs, yet it still failed. In 2021, five pieces of legislation are pending and the most important one that is inclusive of all five pending bills is House Docket 2240 that aims to require districts to obtain parental consent before providing students

8 referral to, the contact information of, or other informational materials of an individual or organization if the materials involve information or counseling about health, psychological problems, reproduction, abortion, sexual education, sexual orientation, gender identity, bullying, or similar issues. No student, without the prior written consent of a parent or guardian, shall participate in a survey or evaluation concerning personal issues included sexual behavior or attitudes, birth control or abortion, or additional health behaviors ( Bill H.410 - Malegislature.gov., 2021). Most recently, as of September 2021, the state Senate approved the legislation requiring school districts to offer sex education that is medically accurate and age appropriate. Seventy representatives and 24 senators co-sponsored the bill before its passage in the Senate (Linsinki, 2021). The legislation does not force all schools to give comprehensive sex education, but it does require any school that does to adopt a curriculum that includes medically accurate, evidence-based research, consent discussions, and LGTQ-inclusive sexual health resources. Parents have the option of opting their children out of the classes as well. There is still so much work to do for more comprehensive and inclusive sex education in schools not just in Massachusetts but across the country. Let the Healthy Youth Act serve as a model. There are so many important organizations that support this cause, and their support is needed now more than ever. Some of these organizations and non-profits include the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, Fenway Health, Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts, Jane Doe Inc., National Association of Social Workers- MA, Partners in Sex Education.

9 Social Problem + Needs Scope of Issue History Important Causes of Childrens Mental Health Policy Response Recommendations References Kirst-Ashman, K. K. (2017). Introduction to social work & social welfare: Critical thinking perspectives . Cengage Learning.

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

10 Narrative Interview & Critical Analysis: Thalia Estevez Merrimack College Antioppressive SWK Practice Shannon Butler Mokoro MSW, EdD. December 2021

11 Introduction Interview Summary Interview Analysis Discussion Reflection Implications for Social Work Practice Conclusion

12 Appendix Interview Questions 1) Please state your age, race, and the year you migrated./ Indique suedad, raza y año en que emigró . 2) Why did you leave Puerto Rico? /¿Por qué te fuiste de Puerto Rico? 3) What were the circumstances around your departure off the island?/ ¿Cuáles fueron las circunstancias que rodearon su salida de la isla? 4) What has it been like to go back to Puerto Rico?/ ¿Cómo ha sido volver a Puerto Rico? 5) How does living in the United States compare to living on the island?/ ¿Cómo se compara vivir en Estados Unidos con viviren la isla? 6) What was it like moving and living in the US for that first year?/ ¿Cómo fue mudarse y vivir en los Estados Unidos duranteese primer año? 7) What was most challenging about coming and living here? 8) Who or what was most helpful as you settled into the new environment? 9) How does our current political status affect your perception of the UnitedStates? /¿Cómo afecta nuestra situación política actual supercepcióndelos Estados Unidos?

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

13 10) Since moving to the States, how do you stay connected to what happens in PuertoRico?/ Desde que se mudó a los EstadosUnidos,¿cómo se mantiene conectado con lo que sucede en Puerto Rico? 11) 9.What makes you feel in community with other Puerto Ricans whether in the diaspora or on the island?/ ¿Qué te hace sentir en comunidad conotros puertorriqueños ya sea en la diáspora o en laisla? 12) Is there anything you would like to add that that has not been asked?/ ¿Hay algo que le gustaría agregar que no se haya preguntado?

14 References

Policy Brief

Related Documents