| Course | MSW 513 Policy II: Soc Pol & Soc Just |
|---|---|
| Week | 3 |
| Paper type | Policy brief memo |
| Length | About 470 words, 4 pages |
| Format | Memo with APA 7 citations |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | Master of Social Work (MSW) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MSW 513 Week 3
Memorandum
To: Director, Office of Licensing, state Department of Children and Family Services
From: MSW student intern, kinship navigator program, Brennan County
Date: October 26, 2026
Re: Adopting a separate licensing standard for relative and kin foster homes
The Ask
I ask your office to adopt a separate licensing standard for relative and kin foster homes, as federal rules have allowed since November 2023, beginning with two changes: replace the per-child bedroom measurement with a sleeping arrangement judged safe at the home visit, and replace the 30-hour pre-service course with a kin-specific course completed within 90 days of placement. Background checks, home safety inspection and fire safety would stay exactly as they are.
A Problem Sized to Your Office
Your office does not set payment rates or the cash assistance grant. It does set the licensing standard, and the standard is what decides whether a relative home can receive federal maintenance payments. Nationally, only 27.6 percent of children with relatives were in federally funded placements in 2019, compared with 47.7 percent in other foster homes, a gap the federal government traced almost entirely to applying one standard to both (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023).
The Rule Followed to the Point of Contact
A grandparent takes two children on a Friday night. The following week, a navigator brings a licensing packet. The home study visit measures bedrooms. The older child is 9 and will soon need a separate room from a younger sibling of a different sex. The grandparent's apartment has two bedrooms. The next step is a 30-hour course held on weeknights at a site 40 minutes away, while the grandparent works an evening shift. The grandparent stops. The children stay, safe, in the same apartment, and the household receives a child-only grant instead of a maintenance payment.
What I Have Observed
Over the fall term, of the kin households I worked with that began licensing, more than half stopped at the bedroom measurement or the training schedule. None stopped because of a background check or a safety finding. Details are withheld to protect the families.
Cost and Feasibility
Federal financial participation would cover a share of maintenance payments for newly licensed relative homes, as it does for any eligible child. A kin course can be adapted from existing material. Other states have adopted separate standards since the federal rule, and the federal notice describes the options in detail.
What Continues Otherwise
Children stay with relatives either way. Without a change, the state keeps paying less to care for children with grandparents than with strangers, and it keeps losing the federal share that would otherwise follow them. States have tried to close this gap with service contracts instead, and the gap returned when the contracts ended (Dorch et al., 2008).
References
Dorch, E., Mumpower, J., & Jochnowitz, L. (2008). The cost and benefits of cash and services to kinship caregivers. Social Work in Public Health, 23(6), 55-73. https://doi.org/10.1080/19371910802059601
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2023). Separate licensing or approval standards for relative or kinship foster family homes (Final rule, 88 FR 66700). Federal Register.
MSW 513 Week 3 instructions, in plain terms
For the policy brief, write to one named decision maker who can grant what you ask. Put the request in the opening paragraph, phrased so the reader could act on it, and keep it inside that person's authority. Size the problem to the reader's remit; a brief about everything their office does not control gives them nothing to sign. The center of a social work brief follows the rule step by step until it reaches a person, so the cost appears without adjectives. Add a few figures for scale with sources, and one paragraph of observation from practice, de-identified. Address cost and feasibility honestly. Close with what will continue if the reader does nothing. Most briefs run two pages, in memo form, and formatting requirements count.
How the MSW 513 Week 3 example is put together
The memo is addressed to the director of a state licensing office from a kinship navigator intern. Its opening paragraph asks for a separate kin standard with two specific changes, a sleeping arrangement judged at the visit in place of a per child measurement and a kin course finished within 90 days of placement, and states that background checks and inspections stay. The second section limits the problem to the licensing decision the office controls and cites the federal participation gap. The third section follows a grandparent from a Friday placement through the home study measurement to a weeknight course 40 minutes away. A short observation paragraph reports that most families stopped at those two points and none at a background check. Cost, feasibility and the return of the gap after service contracts ended (Dorch et al., 2008) close the brief.
Where the points sit in the MSW 513 Week 3 rubric
Faculty grade a brief first on whether the request is actionable and addressed to someone with power over it. Next comes the mechanism: the brief must show, in sequence, how the rule reaches people, since a brief arguing from values alone gives a reader nothing to do. Figures need sources and should size the problem rather than decorate it. The practice observation earns credit when it is short, specific and fully de-identified, and loses points when any detail could identify a family. Cost and feasibility must be answered, not skipped. Memo format, length limits and clean APA citations are part of the grade, though form alone cannot rescue a brief whose ask is vague. Instructors also check that the problem is drawn to fit the reader's remit.
Common MSW 513 Week 3 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Briefs most often fail when they skip the mechanism and simply assert that a policy hurts people. A close second is the request addressed to the wrong office, or written as a hope that someone will look into it. Identifying details in a practice example cause trouble on two fronts, professional and academic. Some briefs present numbers without saying where they came from, and others draw the problem so wide that the reader controls only a corner of it. If your brief targets a different rule, such as a county shelter intake policy or a school attendance referral, the structure carries over: the ask, the remit, the rule followed to contact, observation, cost and what continues. A version written for your rule and reader would keep the ask in the first paragraph and stay within two pages.
Get a MSW-513 Week 3 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 3 instructions with the format requirement and the rule you want examined, and a custom example is built to that format and returned inside 24 to 48 hours. The first one is free. Who you address it to, and what you ask them for, stays yours to decide.
More MSW 513 papers and MSW samples
- MSW 513 Week 1: Hardship Versus Injustice Post
- MSW 513 Week 2: Kin Licensing Policy Analysis
- MSW 513 Week 4: Stakeholder Analysis
- MSW 513 Week 5: Legislative Testimony Draft
- MSW 513 Week 6: Discussion Post
- MSW 513 Week 7: Advocacy Plan
- MSW 513 Week 8: Policy Change Presentation
- MSW 514 Week 3: Biopsychosocial Assessment
- MSW 512 Week 3: Process Recording of an MI Session
- MSW 511 Week 3: Marshallese Population Analysis
- MSW 509 Week 3: Anxiety Vignette Analysis
MSW 513 Week 3 questions, answered
How much practice observation can a brief carry?
One passage, kept short. Its job is to make the mechanism concrete for a reader who has only ever seen the rule on paper. Any more and the document starts reading as a complaint rather than a case. The observation must be de-identified before it goes anywhere near a brief, and nothing about a client system should be recoverable from what remains.
What if I cannot find a number for how many people fall out?
Say so, and say what you would need in order to know it. A brief that states the mechanism clearly and then admits the count is unpublished is more credible than one that borrows a national figure and applies it locally without saying it has. Naming the gap in the evidence is itself a request a decision maker can act on.
Should the brief argue on fairness or on cost?
Both, in that order, and the cost argument is not a betrayal of the justice one. A reader deciding under a budget needs to know what the current arrangement spends elsewhere: reapplications processed, appeals heard, people arriving later in worse shape. Making that visible tends to move readers whom an appeal to values alone leaves exactly where they were.
Where can I find a free MSW 513 Week 3 sample paper?
The full MSW 513 Week 3 policy brief to a state licensing director, asking for a separate kin foster home standard, is published on this page with margin notes.
Who should the MSW 513 Week 3 policy brief be addressed to?
A named official who has authority over the rule in question, such as a state licensing director for a licensing standard, so the ask is something that person could actually sign.