Shifting sands that threaten policy advocacy for vulnerable children and youth: A case study

Eve E. Garrow, Sandra K. Danziger and Amanda R. Tillotson

Children and Youth Services Review, 2015, vol. 53, issue C, 211-218

Abstract: Recent changes in the institutional and political environment, including the rise of a neoliberal logic that favors private solutions to social problems and increasing political partisanship, have created new challenges for statewide legislative advocacy. Yet, there is a lacuna in the study of the sector’s response to new and contradictory environmental pressures. Using the lens of institutional and resource dependence theories on organizations, this qualitative case study targets this gap by examining how a nonprofit statewide legislative advocacy organization for vulnerable children has responded to shifting political and institutional conditions that have transpired since its founding in the early 1990s. It examines 1) how the organization has made sense of these emerging challenges and demands, 2) how these shifts have reshaped its advocacy practices, and 3) how they have influenced the viability of the organization. Adaptive responses of the organization included a shift in emphasis from direct legislative advocacy to advocacy directed at the implementation of policy and grassroots advocacy. Implications for the future of statewide legislative advocacy for vulnerable children are discussed.

Keywords: Policy advocacy; Neoliberalism; Vulnerable children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740915001309
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:53:y:2015:i:c:p:211-218

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.04.004

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().