How Welfare Worked In The Early United States

"The year George Washington was finishing his first term as president, 1792, William Larned was beginning his first term as overseer of the poor for Providence, Rhode Island. Larned would be re-elected for another thirty-five one-year terms and arguably exercised more authority over locals than any president could. Larned's long career in this little-known but powerful local government position illustrates several aspects of early American poor laws. Overseers of the poor could be life-savers to locals in need. They could also upend lives, forcing families out of town. They controlled the largest portion of local tax dollars, which dwarfed state and federal tax levies from the individual taxpayer's perspective. Overseers used these tax dollars to provide food, housing, healthcare, and other necessaries to people in need. An ancillary benefit was that these dollars also buoyed the incomes of local government relief contractors"--

Creating the Welfare State investigates how private business and public bureaucracy worked together to create the structure of much of the modern welfare state in America. Covering the period from the 1980s to the present, this important volume employs interdisciplinary techniques to demonstrate how politics, economics, law, and social theory merged over the course of a century of policy formulation and implementation. The authors also draw upon previously unconsulted sources from government warehouses and archives to analyze the operation of early federal social welfare programs such as vocational rehabilitation. Their discussions range from those early programs to modern ones such as cost of living pay adjustments and social security disability benefits. This emphasis on the notion of the continuing development of welfare programs is a significant factor in the welfare state controversies--a factor often ignored by other historians and writers.

There has been a major transformation in labour market policy in the United Kingdom since the mid 1990s. The obligation of unemployed people to actively seek employment has been strengthened and the receipt of social security benefit has been tied to participation in active job search and job placement programmes. The experience of the United States in experimenting with and implementing welfare to work programmes, dating back to the early 1980s, has been pivotal in shaping labour market and welfare reform programmes in the UK. In this timely work the authors track the influence of US ideology and experience on New Labour's reforms. They present the results of their pioneering examination of over fifty policy experiments in the US, checking whether the correct lessons were learned. An interview-based study of what British policy makers actually used from US experience builds upon this analysis and the book draws US and UK experiences together to understand what kind of programmes work most effectively for which groups. Welfare-to-Work offers readers a unique combination of policy evaluation and the analysis of policy making.

Perhaps the most sweeping of changes in social welfare since the enactment of the Social Security Act, was realised in 1996 with the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). PRWORA, signed into law by President Clinton amidst much national controversy, was designed to essentially transform social welfare in the United States through transferring the design, implementation and evaluation of the welfare system from the federal government to the states. This groundbreaking book highlights firstly how important the strong social welfare is to the country and secondly, how spirited the debate of the 1990s has been with regard to the nuances of social welfare policies and programmes.

The White Welfare State challenges common misconceptions of the development of U.S. welfare policy. Arguing that race has always been central to welfare policy-making in the United States, Deborah Ward breaks new ground by showing that the Mothers' Pensions--the Progressive-Era precursors to modern welfare programs--were premised on a policy of racial discrimination against blacks and other minorities. Ward's rigorous and thoroughly documented analysis demonstrates that the creation and implementation of the mothers' pensions program was driven by debates about who "deserved" social welfare and not who needed it the most. "In The White Welfare State, Deborah Ward assembles a powerful array of documentary and statistical evidence to reveal the mechanisms, centrality, and deep historical continuity of racial exclusion in modern 'welfare' provision in the United States. Bringing unparalleled scrutiny to the provisions and implementation of state-level mothers' pensions, she argues persuasively that racialized patterns of welfare administration were firmly entrenched in this Progressive Era legislation, only to be adopted and reinforced in the New Deal welfare state. With rigorous and clear-eyed analysis, she pushes us to confront the singular role of race in welfare's development, from its early 20th-century origins to its official demise at century's end." --Alice O'Connor, University of California at Santa Barbara "This is a richly informative and arresting work. The White Welfare State will force a reevaluation of the role racism has played as a fundamental feature in even the most progressive features of the American welfare state. Written elegantly, this book will provoke a wide-ranging discussion among social scientists, historians, and students of public policy." --Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University "This book offers an original and absorbing account of early policies that shaped the course of the American welfare state. It extends yet challenges extant interpretations and expands our understanding of the interconnections of race and class issues in the U.S., and American political development more broadly." --Rodney Hero, University of Notre Dame

Seeing social work and social welfare through a historical lens This book is part of the Connecting Core Competencies Series. This series helps students understand and master CSWE’s core competencies with a variety of pedagogy highlighted competency content and critical thinking questions for the competencies throughout. Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need allows students to place current issues of social concern in their historical context. Numerous original documents help students understand the impact of history on current social welfare issues.The book examines the history of social work and social welfare in the United States since the 18th century. It shows how social conditions, ideas about dependency and poverty, and institutions have shaped social policy and the efforts of voluntary organizations and individuals who work with at-risk populations. Coverage of economic developments, the impact of volunteerism, and the impact of privatization in Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need helps students understand the context of social welfare movements and policies. By examining forces of social change and continuity, the text helps students see contemporary topics like health care reform, welfare, and homelessness through a historical framework. Teaching & Learning Experience Improve Critical Thinking — Analysis of current issues requires students to think critically about historical influences. Engage Students — Numerous original documents help to engage students and Ccontemporary and cutting-edge information on health care and LGBT rights keep readers interested. Explore Current Issues — The text incorporates important topics of today, such as poverty, inequality, race, and gender. Apply CSWE Core Competencies — Integrates the 2008 CSWE EPAS throughout — highlights competencies and practice behaviors and includes expensive pedagogy. The textintegrates the 2008 CSWE EPAS, with critical thinking questions and practice tests to assess student understanding and development of competency. Support Instructors — An Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank, Computerized Test Bank (MyTest), BlackBoard Test Item File, and PowerPoint presentations are included in the outstanding supplements package.

This 20e contains 400 articles which represent a thoroughly updated and expanded look at the entire field of social work. The 4-volumes cover all aspects of social work from practice/interventions, social environments, social conditions and challenges, to social policy and history. Co-published by OUP and the National Assoc. of Social Workers, USA.

Social workers have been involved in social development for many years, but it is only recently that these ideas have been explicitly applied to social work practice. The result is that a new and distinctive approach to social work practice known as developmental social work has emerged. Developmental social work emphasizes the role of social investment in professional practice. These investments meet the material needs of social work's clients and facilitate their full integration into the social and economic life of the community. Developmental social workers believe that client strengths and capabilities need to be augmented with public resources and services if those served by the profession are to live productive and fulfilling lives. Although developmental social work is inspired by international innovations, particularly in the developing countries, it highly relevant to practice in the United States and other Western nations. In the first book to lay out a clear framework for developmental social work practice, chapters will focus on the traditional fields of social work practice, showing how social investment strategies can be adopted by social workers in their daily practice with populations including families and children, people with mental illness, homeless youth, people with disabilities, the elderly, and those in the correctional system. By facilitating clients' full social and economic participation through a variety of strategies, such as microenterprise or asset-building programs, practitioners can help bring about meaningful changes in clients' lives and throughout their communities. The editors and contributors offer a highly original exposition of developmental social work theory and practice, providing a definitive guide to an emerging and exciting new approach to practice.