Imagine you are school social worker. A new case comes to your attention, in which a child is experiencing bullying and abuse or another key problem at school and at home with his/her/their biological parents. The child has an opportunity to go live with his/her/their grandparents who are older but offer a more stable environment. Your task is to choose one aspect of the childàlife to try to improve and create a plan on how you propose to do that based on published research. Then present this plan to your (imagined) direct supervisor. For example, should the child stay where he/she/they is/are or go live with the grandparents? What type of support programs should be offered to the child and/or parents? What should be done about the bullying at school? (Feel free to be creative with this, within the scope of school social work and professional social work values).

In your presentation, you must include two articles (from at least one peer-reviewed journal) to support your ideas. One article should use quantitative research methods and one article should use qualitative research methods. Be sure to briefly describe each articleàresearch, what makes it either quantitative or qualitative research, and how the findings support your idea.

Be creative with this assignment. Feel free to create a backstory for the situation to expand upon your arguments. This is an opportunity for you to select a choice based on your interests (i.e., bullying, abuse and neglect, domestic violence, kinship care, LGBTQ+ issues, school social work, immigrants/refugees, juvenile justice, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, etc.). This should be a professional presentation.

Beyond its relevance to school social work, this assignment will help you become familiar with how to use the library databases to locate research articles for exploring topics that are relevant to social work (https://infoguides.gmu.edu/socialwork/articles), how to analyze and summarize research articles, and how to write academic papers, using APA formatting.

Before submission, please remember to check that your presentation includes all components outlined above (and here, as well as in the rubric on the next page):

Child’s background (please include backstory);

Aspect of child’s life you are focusing on for this assignment;  

Proposed plan (remember to cite peer-reviewed sources; one should use quantitative research methods and one should use qualitative research methods)