Making Policies for Children A Study of the Federal Process (1982) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 3-14
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From page 3... ...
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1979; Family Impact Seminar, 1978; Rose, 1976) These programs include a broad range of activities: tax benefits and income supplements for families with dependent children; health, education, and specialized services for needy children; regulations governing the delivery of aid and services; personnel training, technical assistance, and institutional support for agencies serving children; and a wide variety of research on the problems facing children and families.
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Despite the best efforts of concerned individuals and groups both within and outside government, a more effective public policy toward children will be difficult to produce if we lack understanding of how and why decisions concerning programs and budgets are made and how these decisions can be directed to meet the needs of children. Existing studies of policies affecting children and families provide little insight.
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To obtain this type of knowledge, policy makers and advocates alike require an understanding of the process of policy ~ ~ ~ ~ _ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ % ~ A; 1 = ~1 ~ formation that goes Beyond wean 1~ ~U~=l`~^y In__ in the literature on policy for children. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The Panel for Study of the Policy Formation Process undertook its work in an effort to create a better understanding of federal decision making affecting children and their families as a basis for more effective action by key participants in that process.
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In addition, we hope to provide useful guidance to policy makers both inside and outside government who participate in federal decision making affecting children. APPROACH OF THE STUDY At the outset of the study we reviewed much of the literature on policy determination in order to examine existing theories of policy formation and assess their potential as analytic frameworks.
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A third relevant characteristic of policy making is the complexity of each of the events that contribute to policy formation. Just as the larger policy process is complex, occurring over time, involving a number of decision points and many different actors, each individual policy event -- for example, a legislative vote, a court decision, or the appointment of a subcommittee chair-shares these characteristics on a smaller scale.
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As a detailed, systematic presentation of how particular policies evolved, a case study can provide a context for testing and modifying existing models and developing new hypotheses concerning the policy process. Moreover, as Alex George suggests, the case study is a valuable means of "discerning new general problems, identifying possible theoretical solutions, and formulat ing potentially generalizable relations that were not
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From page 9... ...
. The panel believed that this method offered the most promising means of learning more about the complexity of federal policy making affecting children, assessing existing theories, and, above all, developing an analytic framework for understanding the policy formation process in a way that will provide lessons concerning future participation "in a systematic and differentiated way" (George, 1979:2)
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We selected three activities that appeared to offer interesting and varied examples of the federal policy formation process: the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children in the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the Federal Interagency Day Care Requirements in the U.S.
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From page 11... ...
The cases focused on certain observable actions of the federal government: the enactment of statutes, the adoption of agency budgets, the promulgation of regulations and guidelines, the establishment of administrative units, the interpretation of the law by the courts, and the results of evaluation research. These actions constitute federal policy toward children in the sense that they are the observable and identifiable phenomena providing form to policy initiatives and influencing the behavior of the policy makers who support or oppose them.
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In addition, cross-checking of methods (documents versus statements, formal versus informal documents and statements) and perspectives (using experts and policy participants outside the panel)
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Policy making at the middle level involves decision making affecting the allocation of authority and resources -- for example, the establishment of a new compensatory education program or the authorization of funds for a new program of research. Decisions made at this level represent the means to achieve the ends established at the high level.
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From page 14... ...
Chapter 4 integrates our findings concerning the characteristics of policy formation at each level of the process and presents our general conclusions concerning the available levers to participants both inside and outside the federal government. Chapter 5 relates the framework and conclusions of Chapter 4 to federal policy making toward children and their families.
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