Social Welfare Reform Research Articles

Resignation, radicalism or realism?: What role for non-government agencies in the changing context of child and family welfare?

Non-government welfare agencies have a history of both service provision and advocating for social justice and welfare reform. Current economic and social changes have had an impact on our understanding of the role of welfare and the state. There has been a significant reconfiguration of community services, with important implications for the present and future role of welfare agencies.This article seeks to identify questions confronting agencies that seek to maintain a commitment to social action by examining an 18-month child abuse prevention campaign conducted by a coalition of agencies in NSW. Significant insights and challenges that emerged from the campaign are identified. Questions about the role of non-government agencies are revisited and the value of welfare agencies’ contribution to social equity reasserted.

The New Social Policy Trend In the Current Social Welfare Reform In Japan

The New Social Policy Trend In the Current Social Welfare Reform In Japan

Book Review: Catholic Social Teaching and United States Welfare Reform

Book Review: Catholic Social Teaching and United States Welfare Reform

Diversity among hospice volunteers: a challenge for the development of a responsive volunteer program.

Voluntary organizations such as hospices are increasingly being called upon to substitute for state health and social welfare delivery at a time when volunteer contributions are threatened because of organizational and demographic changes. These changes include: the adoption by the nonprofit sector of market strategies in response to health and social welfare reforms, increases in the size and complexity of hospices, increasing professionalization of staff, and the move of women away from voluntary work in the health and welfare services to paid employment. With these changes, hospices must be knowledgeable about their volunteer workforce and resourceful if they are to continue to attract and retain volunteers. A survey of volunteers conducted at the Mary Potter Hospice, Wellington, New Zealand, examined differences in volunteers' characteristics, motivations for joining hospice, and factors affecting work satisfaction according to age, gender, and the length of time volunteers had worked. Those findings of particular relevance to program development were: (1) the tendency for the recently recruited volunteers to be in paid employment; (2) the mixed motivations of the younger volunteers, reflecting both altruistic and personal gain needs; and (3) the rewards commonly identified by volunteers, such as feeling their work is of value, being accepted by hospice staff, and feeling like important team members. Practical outcomes of the study are described.

Social Welfare Reform: Trends and Tensions

The acceleration of economic reform in the early and late 1990s has highlighted repeatedly the importance of social welfare for maintaining economic growth, social stability and political authority. Indeed each of these decade-long goals of China's government can be seen to rest on either establishing or maintaining an accessible social welfare package. Economic growth requires further enterprise reform which in turn requires alternative forms and funding of worker social welfare. Sporadic reports of urban unrest resulting from lay-offs and loss of welfare benefits and of rural discontent resulting from the continued absence of welfare benefits suggests that social stability and political authority are dependent on the government's ability to reform social welfare provisioning. Simultaneously the process of economic reform itself has altered urban and rural socio-economic and political environments and had far-reaching consequences for welfare demand, service supply and notions of security.

The Hospital Emergency Department as a Social Welfare Institution

In an era of social welfare reform marked by the erosion of a societal safety net, few institutions remain that can guarantee assistance to those most in need. The hospital emergency department is perhaps the only local institution where professional help is mandated by law, with guaranteed availability for all persons, all the time, regardless of the problem. Although the ED serves as a true social safety net, its potential as a social welfare institution generally goes underestimated, hampering its full development as an effective societal resource. More of the disadvantaged may pass through the ED than through any other community institution, making it a logical site not only for the treatment of acute illness, but also for the identification of basic social needs and the extension of existing community resources. By helping more fully incorporate the ED into the total care of its community, emergency physicians can become leaders in the design and implementation of integrated sociomedical systems of care. [Gordon JA: The hospital emergency department as a social welfare institution. Ann Emerg Med March 1999;33:321-325.]

Book Review: Catholic Social Teaching and United States Welfare Reform

Book Review: Catholic Social Teaching and United States Welfare Reform

Verifying Compliance: Social Regulation and Welfare Reform

Recent welfare reforms have regulated clients by linking behavioral requirements to the receipt of benefits (Ethridge and Percy, 1993; Handler and Hasenfeld, 1991). Such reforms use a generic policy instrument, social regulation, that has three characteristics: (1) rules or standards prescribing responsible behavior; (2) enforcement agents and auditors to monitor and deter deviations from the rules; and (3) applied to those who violate the rules (Bardach, 1989). This article examines how welfare bureaus monitor and deter deviations from the rules. In the process, the article describes and compares two alternative mechanisms for implementing social regulation. Under the auspices of federal waivers, states linked receipt of grants through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) to behaviors such as job training, school attendance, work requirements, and paternity establishment (Mead, 1986; and 1996; Besharov and Gardiner, 1996; Wiseman, 1996; Tweedie, 1995; Savner and Greenberg, 1995). Federal policy now mandates work requirements. However, many states have used their authority under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) to regulate welfare clients' behavior in a variety of other ways as well. A study by the Childrens' Defense Fund (1997) reports that of the 42 states that had submitted TANF plans, 17 included a family cap, eight required some version of Learn-fare, and seven had an immunization requirement. The mechanisms used to implement such reforms require close examination because the quality of state and local administration is critical to their success (Mead, 1996; 1997). Ethridge and Percy have described an idealized model of state program administration: states require accurate and up-to-date recordkeeping (often involving multiple bureaucratic organizations), client notification, due process protections, and efficient award of incentives or application of sanctions (1993,343-346). This idealized model may be difficult to realize in practice. Accuracy, notice, due process, and efficiency may be compromised by problems such as interorganizational coordination, organizational complexity, strategic behavior by clients, welfare fraud, or goal displacement. These problems are related to local administrative practices. The context in which we examine social regulation is the implementation of a welfare reform in Maryland, the Primary Prevention Initiative (PPI). The initiative was a statewide demonstration project linking AFDC benefits to education and health requirements, implemented under a federal waiver. In particular, this article focuses upon the procedures used to verify that clients complied with behavioral requirements. The Primary Prevention Initiative is well-suited for such an examination because it used two different procedures, one based upon the bureau-client relationship and the other based upon interorganizational relationships. We compare these procedures and discuss their significance for the design, implementation, and evaluation of behavioral welfare reforms. Evidence is presented from a variety of sources including federal, state, and local government documents; direct observation of welfare case intake and redetermination; participation in and observation of management and coordination meetings within Maryland's welfare system; analysis of administrative reports about welfare bureau performance; and interviews with key state and local officials. Detailed information from a survey of local welfare bureau staff in Maryland is also presented (see the Methodology Box for additional information on methods, including survey procedures and characteristics of respondents). The Primary Prevention Initiative The objectives of the Primary Prevention Initiative were to improve the health and education of AFDC clients or their children. The initiative had two behavioral requirements: school-aged AFDC recipients were required to attend school at least 80 percent of the time and pre-school AFDC recipients were to receive immunizations and preventive health care (Norris and Bembry, 1995). …

The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations.

What is the role of race in social policy? Have race-based programmes failed? Should welfare and civil rights be blind to colour? In this landmark book, two leading scholars challenge critics like William Julius Wilson and Theda Skocpol who seek to replace a race-specific agenda for African-Americans with class-neutral programmes. Dona Cooper Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton transform our understanding of the history of civil rights. From the New Deal to the 1990s, they demonstrate the many ways in which the civil rights movement fought not only to end racial segregation and discrimination but also to support social and economic justice for all Americans. Drawing on an unprecedented range of data, the Hamiltons describe the complex connections between race and class that have marked American social reform since the beginning of the welfare state. They reveal an aspect of the civil rights struggle which has been too long overlooked or obscured - one that has fought for policies to expand social and economic welfare for blacks and whites alike. From the NRA and WPA to the Great Society and the War on Poverty, from the NAACP, National Urban League and the Congressional Black Caucus to A. Philip Randolph, Marian Wright Edelman and the Children's Defense Fund and many others, the Hamiltons chart the changing strategies and describe the often fierce battles that civil rights groups fought over this dual agenda. Decade by decade, they demonstrate how the movement for African-American civil rights has always included economic and social welfare reform for everyone. The Dual Agenda is not only an indispensable new history of modern America, it is also a powerful critique of conventional wisdom of the left and right about the supposed failure of civil rights organizations to pay attention to universal social welfare policies. At a time of severe political retrenchment, either from the Republican right or the Democratic centre, the Hamiltons remind us, as the nation grapples with a major new welfare reform law, that the African-American struggle for civil rights has always been bound to the American ideal of equality and security for all.

Curing the Dutch Disease: An International Perspective on Disability Policy Reform.

Introduction and overview: the Dutch disability programme and how it grew Evaluating the 1987 and 1993 social welfare reforms from disappointment to potential success a United States perspective on disability programs a United Kingdom perpective on disability policy a German perspective on disability policy Curing the Dutch disease from a Swedish perspective the futureof disability policy in the Netherlands.

Social welfare reform in the context of economic-political liberalization: Latin American cases

In the 1980s most of Latin America suffered a fiscal crisis resulting from the heavy debt burden and the halting of external credit, and a deep recession induced by the implementation of structural adjustment policies. Both phenomena provoked social costs with divergent degrees of severity. The existing social welfare system (in particular social security) was incapable of coping with the ensuing social costs due to structural and conjunctural causes. The crisis of social security has worsened and most countries in the region have either reformed their systems (mainly pensions but also health case) or are considering laws or engaged in studies of reform. This paper is divided into three sections: 1. (a)a brief assessment of the social costs of economic reform, and the inability of social security to cope with them; 2. (b)an analysis of the divergent models of social security reform in pensions and health care, and their relationship with underlying political and economic models in eight countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay); and 3. (c) a discussion on future viable types of reform in the region.

Mr. Social Security: The Life of Wilbur J. Cohen.

JFK tagged him Mr. Social Security. LBJ praised him as the planner, architect, builder and repairman on every major piece of social legislation [since 1935]. The New York Times called him of the country's foremost technicians in public welfare. Time portrayed him as a man of boundless energy, infectious enthusiasm, and a drive for action. His name was Wilbur Cohen. For half a century from the New Deal through the Great Society, Cohen (1913-1987) was one of the key players in the creation and expansion of the American welfare state. From the Social Security Act of 1935 through the establishment of disability insurance in 1956 and the creation of Medicare in 1965, he was a leading articulator and advocate of expanding Social Security system. He played that role so well that he prompted Senator Paul Douglas's wry comment that an expert on Social Security is a person who knows Wilbur Cohen's telephone number. The son of Jewish immigrants, Cohen left his Milwaukee home in the early 1930s to attend the University of Wisconsin and never looked back. Filled with a great thirst for knowledge and wider horizons, he followed his mentors Edwin Witte and Arthur Altmeyer to Washington, D.C., and began a career that would eventually land him a top position in LBJ's cabinet as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Variously described as a practical visionary, action intellectual, a consummate bureaucrat, and a relentless incrementalist, Cohen was a master behind-the-scenes player who turned legislative compromise into art form. He inhabited a world in which the passage of legislation was the ultimate reward. Driven by his progressive vision, he time and again persuaded legislators on both sides of the aisle to introduce and support expansive social programs. Like a shuttle in a loom he moved invisibly back and forth, back and forth, until the finely woven legislative cloth emerged before the public's eye. Nearly a decade after his death, Cohen and his legacy continue to shadow the debates over social welfare and health care reform. While Congress swings with the prevailing winds in these debates, Social Security's prominence in American life remains vitally intact. And Wilbur Cohen is largely responsible for that.

Welfare and the Role of Women: The Juvenile Court Movement

Only in recent years, largely as a consequence of developments in women's history, have scholars begun to explore the role of women in the building of the welfare state. By placing gender at the centre of their vision, these historians have questioned established certainties and undercut old paradigms. Analysis of the role of women in welfare has, moreover, influenced the wider history of women, bringing to light new facets of a major organizing concept for historians of women: the interaction between public and private spheres. This paper, therefore, has two linked purposes: to review recent scholarship on women's role in welfare and, through an analysis of the juvenile court movement, one of the major social welfare reforms of the Progressive Era, to identify issues of controversy and debate among historians of women and welfare.

Poverty and the Single Mother Family:

This article examines how recent changes in the struc- ture of the U.S. economy have contributed to the impoverishment of single mother families. The impacts of the disappearance of the manufacturing sector, the concurrent growth in service-oriented in- dustries, the decline in real wages, and the polarization of the income distribution are considered in the context of recent social welfare reforms that have focused on the employability and employment of low-income single mothers. These policies have encouraged single mothers to move toward welfare independence, but they have not ensured that these women can attain economic self-sufficiency through employment. The authors offer public policy recommenda- tions for responding to shifts in the economy, for helping single mothers move beyond the grasp of poverty, and for providing an

Beveridge, women and the welfare state

Fifty years after the publication of the Beveridge report women con tinue to confront the welfare state on terms that are discriminatory and oppressive - the enduring legacy of an ideology of womanhood articu lated by Beveridge in his plan for social security. This paper returns to an examination of the Beveridge Committee proceedings as an arena of political struggle in which gender issues were to the forefront in order to understand the manner in which that ideology was constructed and how it came to achieve such dominance. Historical records are examined identifying the involvement of the TUC, representing an overwhelmingly male organised labour move ment, and of a range of women's organisations. It is argued that Beveridge's ideological enterprise gained considerable legitimacy both from enthusiastic TUC support and from a disunited and incoherent form of politics from those women's organisations. It is suggested that much can be learned from that period in the development of a progressive and gender-neutral agenda of social welfare reform.

The Career of Birdye Henrietta Haynes, a Pioneer Settlement House Worker

This article tells the story of Birdye Henrietta Haynes (1886-1922), a little-known black social welfare pioneer. Haynes was the first black to graduate from the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. She was the head worker at two of the most prominent social settlements for blacks in Chicago and later in New York. Racism and segregation placed strict limitations on what Haynes was able to accomplish during her social work career. This article gives special attention to Haynes's interaction, participation, and advocacy as a "race woman" and examines her relationships with some of the most prominent social welfare reformers of the Progressive Era.

The Care of Dependent African-American Children in Chicago: The Struggle Between Black Self-Help and Professionalism

During the Progressive and post World War I eras, social welfare provisions became both more organized and more professional. These developments significantly shaped modem day government programs and private philanthropy. Among the Progressive contributions to social welfare organization licensing and standard setting practices for agencies, the establishment of a policy preference for family-based care and an aversion to institutions, federated planning and fundraising for private charities, the idea that govemment's role in promoting social welfare is a residual one when private philanthropy proves inadequate, and the transition of the charity organization from a loose group of well-meaning volunteers to a business-like nonprofit corporation.l Underpinning all these contributions was the idea of professionalismthat charity should be scientific, led by skilled professionals rather than by volunteers. As Kathleen McCarthy notes, Progressive social welfare reforms were also the epitaph for the . . . volunteer,2 as well as for local initiative.3 Although these developments brought inarguable improvements in social welfare provisions for poor and troubled people, they also set in motion a problem that persists to this day the discouragement and resultant disengagement of communities in battling their social problems. This paper describes one casualty of the professionalism of social welfarethe African-American self-help tradition in caring for dependent children in Chicago. The beliefs by white social welfare professionals that blacks held outmoded policy preferences, that they could not manage programs, and that they could not manage money thwarted efforts from the black community for legitimation and public support of their services. The subsequent loss of AfricanAmerican agencies left black children entirely dependent on poorly funded and understaffed public facilities. Although the development of public responsibility was in some ways a gain for black children, as it was for others, black children uniquely lacked access to private, not-for-profit services once the public institution was established. Moreover, the demise of African-American agencies also meant the demise of some important service principles in caring for AfricanAmerican children that not to be rediscovered until much later.

Social Welfare Reform in Japan and Remaining Problems

Social Welfare Reform in Japan and Remaining Problems

The Regional Economic Structure of Argentina: An Analysis Focusing on Recent Major Macroeconomic Changes and Trends

Two aspects of the Argentine regional economic structure are presented. The first is the performance of the nation's two principal sectors: the industrial sector and the agricultural sector to shed some light on macroeconomic issues with stress on geographic and regional features. The second aspect to be proved is Argentina's economic recovery since early 1991 and the current economic development policy to prognosticate “feasible regional impacts” of the privatization program on three counts: institutional stability, investment growth and efficiency in resource allocation. After a long period of stagnation, economic isolation and hiper inflation which have plagued the nation, Argentina has made significant progress in the control of the chronic inflation, at present in line with international levels. The capital inflows are also significant as investment has become the basic tool for economic growth. Increases in investment since the implementation of the Convertibility Plan along with the Economic Deregulation and Privatization of Public Entities suggest that capital accumulation is likely to continue. The continuation of drastic fiscal, administrative and social welfare reforms will provide the framework for strengthening both the state and private enterprises in their respective functions and genuine responsabilities of serving the community.

Getting on Track: Social Democratic Strategies for Ontario

Social democrats have always understood that business will act differently if the rules governing economic life are changed: it is not because they share a commitment to gender equality that Scandinavian employers pay women and men wages that are virtually equal -- they do so because those are the rules. A modern NDP government must take immediate steps to define a coherent industrial strategy. It must devise new policies and develop industrial arrangements to change the ways firms behave, corporations invest, labour markets function, and companies compete. Piecemeal measures, the contributors to this collection insist, are not going to make the industrial sector more efficient. According to them, a redefinition of industrial strategy will only work if higher rates of growth in productivity are institutionalized and entire sectors produce differently than they do now -- without cutting wages or making labour markets more competitive than they already are. The social determinants of productivity, the contributors argue, are key to a different future -- especially in light of the wide range of issues exposed by the feminization of labour markets, the rise of the service industry, and the decline of the welfare state. The authors emphasize the continuing importance of a full employment strategy and the urgent need for income security for workers in highly fragmented labour markets, and outline tough new measures designed to close the wage gap between men and women. They delineate a fresh perspective on dealing with deficits, make a strong case for wide-reaching social welfare reform, and propose a framework by which Ontario can rebuild its shattered industries. Getting on Track convincingly demonstrates that if a modern social democratic administration expects to be dynamic and socially effective it has to have an economic strategy to restructure the economy while upholding its traditional commitment to social equality.