Human services practitioners work across many domains of practice including direct work with individuals, groups and communities. Critically examine the social policy that impacts oneclient group and...

Running Head: HEALTHCARE        1
HEALTHCARE        2
HEALTHCARE
POLICY REFORM
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
Social Policy and Factors Affecting Social Policy Development    3
Existent Social Policy and Impact on the Client Group    4
Social Policy Making Process and Opportunities Available To Clients, Professional Bodies and Peak Bodies    6
Why Policy Change Should Be influenced    8
How Policy Change should be influenced    8
When Policy Change should be Influenced    8
Conclusion    9
References    10
Introduction
    Social policy is concerned with addressing the needs of human across the society with respect to social functions such as, education, work, health, security and much more. Further, social policies emphasise upon the actions or functions of state and society in response to global challenges, which might affect social, economic or demographic change in the society. Developmental process of a social policy is an interdisciplinary degree, which could be devised to meet the needs of clients such as, professionals, researchers, community based workers, activist and much more.
These policies require a number of reforms; and in order to plan for these reforms; policy makers are required to address the opportunities available to clients, peak bodies as well as other groups. This might be affected with these reforms. This essay will discuss major areas associated with the process of social policy development along with the ways, through which reforms could be introduced within existing policies.
Social Policy and Factors Affecting Social Policy Development
    Titmuss (2018) suggested that social policy is a multidisciplinary concept and is an essential concept to provide solutions to social issues or to address the needs of social life. It would be essential to consider that social problems or issues changes with time and these changes are dependent majorly upon social structure as well as state policies. Considering Australian concept, statistics are widely used in the development as well as evaluation of social policy.
Human service practitioners or human service professionals are a major part of social policy development. These provide direct as well as indirect client services and they assess clients’ needs as well as establish client’s eligibility for services and benefits. Human service practitioners might function across a wide range of settings such as residential care, community, institutional settings, leading groups, individual counselling and much more.
    There are a number of factors, which affect the process of social policy development and social needs are one of the inevitable aspects. Further, social ideologies of existing groups and communities, politics, violence, economic factors and much more are some of the other factors, which could influence social policy development. Likewise, social policy analysis is also an essential part aspect of policy development because it could promote interest of members in the society experiencing disenfranchisement and disadvantage. Here, human service practitioners play a major role because they acquire information related to initiation, designing, resourcing and then implementing the change.
It is essential for human service practitioners to be well versed with very step in the policy making process along with the identification of policy actors, which include politicians, advocates, NGOs, bureaucrats, social workers and much more. As presented by Carson and Kerr (2017), there are two major models discussed under positivist policymaking approaches in Australia and these are rational planning and incrementalism. Further, it would be essential to consider that social policy analysis in Australia could be easily understood through the interplay between prior presented two perspectives.
Existent Social Policy and Impact on the Client Group
    Tobacco consumption in Australia has always been significantly higher among indigenous communities compared to non-indigenous communities. There are a number of factors, which could be considered as responsible factors behind high tobacco consumption among indigenous communities; however, lack of education and chronic stress along with lack of health awareness tops the list. It would be essential to consider that before 2000, there were no specific laws or policies enacted by the Australian government in order to address the issue of higher tobacco consumption.
However, as presented by Carson and Kerr (2017), between 2000 and 2015, transition in approach was observed and it was evident from bans in tobacco consumption and changes to be inculcated in the marketing of tobacco products. The National Tobacco Strategy (NTS) 2012-2018, sets out the required national policies and frameworks for federal government as well as state and territory government in order to work together. One of the major aims of this strategy was improving the health of Australians through a significant reduction in the prevalence of smoking.
Intergovernmental Committee on Drugs Standing Committee developed NTS (2012-2018), in order to target tobacco as a sub-strategy under National Drug Strategy (2010-2015) (The Department of Health, 2018). van der Sterren, Greenhalgh, Knoche and Winstanley (2019) mentioned that one of the major aims under this strategy was to reduce the daily national smoking rate from 19.1% to 10% among Australia adults lying between the age group 18 years and older.
Further, this policy mostly emphasised upon ingenious communities such as, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, where the aim was to half the national smoking rate among these communities....