This book offers a sharp critique and a detailed analysis of some pernicious social welfare problems and the wide-ranging causes and consequences of those complex social issues on individuals, families, and communities. Unemployment, health-care disparities, teenage pregnancy, and intimate partner violence constitute the focus of this work. Based on empirical and historical analyses of primary and secondary data, the book provides a conceptual framework that facilitates the reader's understanding of how those social issues are interrelated. Each chapter offers some clear policy recommendations directed to address those social problems. Written by well-published scholars, this work will be of great interest not only to students majoring in the social and political sciences but also to academics and practitioners active in the field of social welfare, social policy, and social work.

This volume is the first of its kind to discuss social welfare issues using case studies from a broad range of Southern European countries, both large and small, a decade after the financial crisis. It identifies similarities and differences in the ways in which Southern European countries engage with specific welfare issues and examines whether Southern European welfare is distinct from that of the rest of the continent. The book also engages with the impact of COVID-19 on the social welfare issues under investigation. The volume is divided into four sections, each examining in detail issues including employment, education, health, sexuality, globalization, social movements and migration. With its contributions from experts in the field, the volume is recommended for academics, researchers and students of sociology, social policy, economics, education, politics and social movements.

This text offers a clear explanation of policy analysis. SOCIAL WELFARE: POLICY AND ANALYSIS, Third Edition, shows students how to apply the methods and processes of policy analysis to current American welfare programs. The description of welfare programs provides a basic introduction to the field and the explanations of how the programs have developed make them more understandable to social welfare students.

Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices gives you a thorough introduction to social welfare policy analysis. The knowledge you’ll gain from its pages will enable you to understand and evaluate individual policy issues and choices by exploring the possible choices, the effects and implications of each alternative choice, and the factors that influence each choice. Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices provides frameworks for making basic social policy choices and applying them to specific instances. You’ll find its depth of insight into the larger framework in which social policy decisions are made--beliefs, values, and interests--and its historical perspective on current “new” issues unique and invaluable. The book’s approach is to develop a framework for looking at the underlying issues, ideologies, social and economic forces, culture, and institutionalized inequalities that are constant within this changing mass. Specifically, Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices provides frameworks for looking at beliefs about: human nature the nature of society ways of thinking values and the moral and ethical implications of those values roots of those values in religion, culture, historical traditions, myths, and rationalized self-interests The insight offered in Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices will allow you to determine your own positioning; understand for strategic purposes what direction opponents, potential allies, and others are coming from; and develop a priorities perspective to guide compromises when the optimum policy is not attainable.

Social Welfare Policy: Responding to a Changing World is a topical, comprehensive introduction to social welfare policy. It uses a contemporary framework that explicitly addresses three forces that have redefined the social policy arena: the growth of the information economy, the rise of globalization, and our current environmental crisis. This framework is applied to the six traditional arenas of policy--child and family services, health and mental health, poverty and inequality, housing and community development, crime and violence, and aging, and explores how to find solutions to both long enduring and brand new problems. John McNutt and Richard Hoefer's introductory text represents a move forward in social welfare policy thinking that is built on the latest scholarship and teaches students that the time to create social policies for the future is in the present.

Reform of welfare is one of the nation's most contentious issues, with debate often driven more by politics than by facts and careful analysis. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition identifies the key policy questions for measuring whether our changing social welfare programs are working, reviews the available studies and research, and recommends the most effective ways to answer those questions. This book discusses the development of welfare policy, including the landmark 1996 federal law that devolved most of the responsibility for welfare policies and their implementation to the states. A thorough analysis of the available research leads to the identification of gaps in what is currently known about the effects of welfare reform. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition specifies what-and why-we need to know about the response of individual states to the federal overhaul of welfare and the effects of the many changes in the nation's welfare laws, policies, and practices. With a clear approach to a variety of issues, Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition will be important to policy makers, welfare administrators, researchers, journalists, and advocates on all sides of the issue.

In this singular collection, indigenous experts describe the social welfare systems of fifteen East Asian and Pacific Island nations and locales. Vastly understudied, these lands offer key insight into the successes and failures of Western and native approaches to social work, suggesting new directions for practice and research in both local and global contexts. Combining international experiences and professional knowledge, contributors illuminate the role of history and culture in shaping the social welfare systems of Cambodia, China, Hong Kong (SAR, China), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Micronesian region (including the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam [Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.], Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands [Commonwealth, U.S.A.], and Palau), Samoa and American Samoa (Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.), South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The contributors link the values and issues that concern populaces most to the development of social work practice, policy, and research. Sharlene B. C. L. Furuto then conducts a comparative analysis of the essays including their data and social service programs, highlighting the similarities and differences between the evolution of social welfare in these nations and locales. She contrasts their indigenous approaches, the responses of governments and NGOs to social issues, the availability of social work education, as well as API models, paradigms, and templates, and the overall status of the social work profession. Furuto also adds a chapter comparing the distinct social welfare systems of Samoa and American Samoa. The only volume to focus exclusively on social welfare in East Asia and the Pacific, this anthology holds immense value for practitioners and researchers eager for global perspectives.

The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge.

This book examines the conceptual, historical and practical implications that various social policies in the United States have had on ethnic minorities.

Focusing on social work and social service delivery, this book examines the social policies and programmes designed to address different societal issues and concerns across India and China. It focuses on gaining understanding of design and delivery of social welfare policies related to special interest groups, highlighting important contemporary challenges such as child labour, child abuse, exploitation of women, problems related to disabled people, mental health issue, illiteracy and unemployment. Offering a comparative perspective, the book considers the impact of political administration in both countries to critically assess key issues related to social welfare in two different political, economic, social, and cultural contexts.