HPS202: Childhood Resilience to Poverty - Finance Assignment

Internal Code: MAS4572

Finance Assignment Help

Executive Summary (5 marks, ~150 words): The executive summary is the opening paragraph that highlights the purpose and importance of your brief.n There is no ‘heading’ for the Executive Summary. This section is a bit like an Abstract. Statement of issue: At the end of your executive summary, provide a statement of the issue/problem being addressed in your policy brief. The statement comes immediately after the executive summary, is brief (i.e., one or two sentences) and is not labelled with a title. The body of the brief is then set out in four sections, each of which is headed with the titles provided Why is this issue important? (10 marks, ~150 words) – The aim of this section is to alert the reader to the seriousness and potential implications of poverty in childhood. It is intended to orient the reader rather than provide detailed information (the information you provide here will be unpacked in detail in the following section, with appropriate references). This section is a little like a brief Introduction section of an essay in which you outline the main points to be covered in the body of the essay. In this section provide a general overview of: 1. The developmental outcomes associated with financial disadvantage in childhood; 2. How financial disadvantage might impact children; This is not a list of outcomes, but an explanation of how financial disadvantage and the developmental outcomes are linked (i.e. how exactly does being poor lead to outcome X). 3. What resilience is and how knowledge of resilience is important in mitigating the impact of financial disadvantage on children. 4. What does the research tell us? (total 40 marks, ~750words) In this section you will unpack the general statements made in the previous section, (with references. Please do not use secondary sources – you are expected to find original sources of information in this assignment). This section may incorporate information from your skeleton brief, but you are expected to go well beyond the resources provided therein. In AT1, you developed your knowledge of marginalization by presenting brief information from sources provided for you, and you used your understanding of theory (emotional/cognitive development) to explain children’s responses. Here, you will demonstrate your ability to conduct a review of the literature and to integrate and explain the evidence, including an examination of resilience in the context of financial disadvantage. Please note that this section requires you to provide: i. EVIDENCE (i.e., empirical evidence – no evidence/references = no marks), and ii. EXPLANATION. Use the evidence to link adversity to outcomes with modifiable risk factors. 1. What is the urgency of the problem and who is affected? (10 marks) Provide evidence and explanation about: a. The prevalence of financial disadvantage/poverty in Australian children; b. The range of negative developmental outcomes that may arise as a result of financial disadvantage in childhood ; c. Which financially disadvantaged children are at particular risk of these undesirable outcomes? 2. How does financial disadvantage cause the outcomes? (15 marks) Provide evidence and explanation of the processes through which financial disadvantage leads to the negative child outcomes you identified in 1b (look at the example policy brief; for example, excessive tv viewing causes disruptions to language in children, through distraction of background tv on the child’s attempts at play and interaction). 3. Some children are resilient in the face of financial disadvantage. Provide evidence and explanation about (15 marks): 4 a. Factors that protect children from negative outcomes in the face of financial disadvantage; and b. The ways that resilience may arise in children (i.e. how do children ‘become’ resilient when they are exposed to financial disadvantage)? What are the implications of the research? (10 marks, ~150 words) In this section you will briefly summarise (a) what causes responses to financial disadvantage, (b) the role of resilience as a protective factor, and direct the reader to the settings (physical or otherwise) in which intervention programs could occur. This helps orient the reader to focus on the modifiable factors that could be targeted for intervention, and anticipate the nature of the recommendations that you will make to address the problem in the next section. This section will be brief but powerful. Policy Recommendations (15 marks, ~300 words) 1. Examine one program available (anywhere in the world) that seeks to address adverse responses to poverty or financial disadvantage in childhood. Briefly outline the program and critique it (i.e. based on what you’ve found in your brief, what do you suspect works, and what may be problematic (or could be improved) about the program?). 2. Provide two recommendations for policy to help address adverse responses to lack of family financial resources. These should reflect your own ideas; you are welcome to reference ideas from previous programs, but please do not simply copy and paste an existing program. These should flow clearly from the body of your brief (and your critique above) and should be specific enough such that it is clear how they are to be implemented. It is not enough to recommend that ‘parents should be educated’. In order to be useful, your recommendation needs to include ways of achieving this goal. For example, if you want to suggest parenting classes, you will need to (a) have shown previously that parents currently lack this skill/knowledge, and (b) explain what parents should be taught, who should be targeted, and how they can participate.