Social policy

Short description: Action of institutional agencies that aim to improve society

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Headquarters of the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, Maryland

Social policy is a plan or action of government or institutional agencies that aims to improve or reform society. Some professionals and universities consider social policy a subset of public policy,[1] while other practitioners characterize social policy and public policy to be two separate, competing approaches for the same public interest (similar to MD and DO in healthcare), with social policy deemed more holistic than public policy.[2] Whichever of these persuasions a university adheres to, social policy begins with the study of the welfare state and social services.[3] It consists of guidelines, principles, legislation, and associated activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare, such as a person's quality of life. Social policy might also be described as actions that affect the well-being of members of a society by shaping the distribution of goods and resources and access to them.[4] Social policy often seeks to alleviate precarity and wicked problems.[5]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 1.1 Ancient world
* 1.2 English and Western European advents
* 1.3 Rise of social insurance
* 1.4 21st century
* 2 Academic approaches
* 2.1 University programs
* 2.1.1 Stand-alone social policy programs
* 2.1.2 As specialization to public policy programs
* 2.1.3 As joint degree programs
* 2.1.4 As interdisciplinary concept
* 2.2 Societies
* 2.3 Journals
* 3 Major subsets
* 3.1 Health policy
* 3.2 Education policy
* 3.3 Labor policy
* 3.4 Aging and pension policy
* 3.5 Human services
* 3.6 Cultural issues
* 4 International approaches
* 4.1 United States social policy
* 4.1.1 Socioeconomic policy by administration
* 4.1.2 Federal jurisdiction
* 4.1.3 Factors to U.S. social policy
* 4.1.4 Federal social insurance programs
* 4.1.5 Federal education policy
* 4.1.6 Federal health policy
* 4.1.7 Federal assistance programs
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 Further reading

## History

Allegory or The Triumph of Justice, an 1858 painting by Hans von Aachen

Social policy was first conceived as an academic subject in the 1940s by Richard Titmuss within the field of social administration in Britain.[6] Titmuss's essay on the "Social Division of Welfare" (1955) laid the groundwork for social policy to absorb social administration gradually. Titmuss was an essayist whose work concerned the failure of the market, the inadequacy of selective social services, and the superiority of collectivism and universal approaches.

### Ancient world

Some of the earliest examples of direct intervention by government in human welfare date back to Ancient Rome's Cura Annonae (grain dole) founded in 123 BC, and Umar ibn al-Khattāb's rule as the second caliph of Islam in the 6th century: he used zakat collections and also other governmental resources to establish pensions, income support, child benefits, and various stipends for people of the non-Muslim community .

### English and Western European advents

The enactment of English Poor Laws helped curb poverty and recidivism. These laws influenced the justices of Berkshire to implement the Speenhamland system, which was the first social program in the modern sense of that word. The Speenhamland Plan was so generous, usually by supplying peasants with bread, that it led to widespread pauperization of men who remained outside the labor market. Thus, while it helped provide food assistance, it would need to be reformed to prevent men from staying paupers.

Later, surveys of poverty exposing the brutal conditions in the urban slum conurbations of Victorian Britain put pressure on changes such as the decline and abolition of the poor law system and Liberal welfare reforms. In the modern West, proponents of scientific social planning, such as the sociologist Auguste Comte, and social researchers, such as Charles Booth, contributed to the emergence of social policymaking in the first industrialised countries following the Industrial Revolution.

### Rise of social insurance

Initiatives to create social insurance revolutionized social policy. The Bismarckian welfare state in 19th century Germany, which were introduced under the State Socialism (Germany); Social Security policies in the United States introduced under the rubric of the New Deal between 1933 and 1935; and both the Beveridge Report and the National Health Service Act 1946 in Britain redefined the social role of the Great Powers.

Thus, two major models of social insurance emerged in practice: the Bismarckian welfare model from Germany and the Beveridgean welfare model from Britain. The Beveridge Model (like the UK's NHS) features government-funded, government-run healthcare, free at the point of service, financed by taxes, with public hospitals and staff. In contrast, the Bismarck Model (Germany, France, Japan) uses nonprofit "sickness funds" funded by employer- and employee-paid payroll deductions, covering private providers and ensuring universal care, with a mix of public/private delivery and often lower wait times due to competition. The key difference is between Beveridge's tax-funded, public-provider system and Bismarck's mandatory, social-insurance-funded system with private providers.

Furthermore, the post-WWII economic boom spurred many of the previously war-ravaged states to incorporate elements of social democracy into their decision-making, leading to more generous social expenditures nationally. Many social democratic measures were championed by the labor movement.

### 21st century

Social policy in the 21st century is complex, and in each state it is subject to local and national governments, as well as supranational political influence. For example, membership of the European Union is conditional on member states' adherence to the Social Chapter of European Union law A global influence in the retrenchment and decline of generous government support has been the introduction of workfare (enacting work requirements to receive assistance). Despite being a socialist alliance, the Red-Green coalition in Germany, a partnership between the Social Democrats (red) and the Greens (ecologists), ushered in neoliberal reforms to the German social security program.

## Academic approaches

### University programs

The newly minted academic field of social policy is configured in four primary ways across numerous universities: as a unique discipline, as a specialization within public policy, as a joint program, or as an interdisciplinary field.

#### Stand-alone social policy programs

While some scholars describe social policy as an interdisciplinary field of practice, scholars such as Fiona Williams and Pete Alcock believe it is an academic discipline unto itself. Formulating social policy as a discipline unto itself (rather than interdisciplinary), universities offering a stand-alone social policy degree include the University of Birmingham, University of York, Oxford University, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice.

#### As specialization to public policy programs

Universities offering a social policy specialization as part of a public policy degree program include McGill University, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Harris School of Public Policy, and the Hertie School of Governance. In the Global South, social policy is offered alongside public policy degree programmes, as at the Institute of Public Policy, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and is combined with development policy. The Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University describes social policy as "public policy and practice in the areas of health care, human services, criminal justice, social inequality, education, and labor".[7]

#### As joint degree programs

Universities offering a joint degree in social policy along with a related degree in social work or public health include the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.

#### As interdisciplinary concept

The Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics defines social policy as "an interdisciplinary and applied subject concerned with the analysis of societies' responses to social need", which seeks to foster in its students a capacity to understand theory and evidence drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines, including economics, sociology, psychology, geography, history, law, philosophy and political science.[8]

### Societies

* Social Policy Association (SPA), professional organization
* National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI), a US organization

### Journals

* Critical Social Policy
* Global Social Policy
* International Journal of Social Welfare
* Journal of Disability Policy Studies
* Journal of European Social Policy
* Journal of International & Comparative Social Policy
* Journal of Social Policy
* Social Choice and Welfare
* Social Policy & Society

## Major subsets

Statue of Lady Justice depicting justice as equipped with three symbols: a sword symbolizing the court's coercive power, a human scale weighing competing claims in each hand, and a blindfold indicating impartiality[9]

According to the LSE, social policy aims to improve human welfare and quality of life by meeting the principal human needs of: Education, Health, Housing, and Economic security.[10] Therefore, with its emphasis on preventing precarity, social policy is usually seen as being separate and distinct from fiscal policy, environmental policy, foreign policy, and military/war policy. As a result, social policy is also referred to as domestic policy or welfare policy.

When such policies are formalized by a legislature into law, rather than remaining only executive measures, they are categorically referred to as "social legislation."

### Health policy

Main article: Medicine:Health policy

Health care delivery and directives, public health, health insurance (including nationalized, health-centric social insurance varieties like Medicare), hospital organization, sexual health, and wellbeing are considered central areas of the health policy subset of social policy.

### Education policy

Main article: Social:Education policy

Access to K-12 public education, college finance and admissions (higher education), teacher training, pedagogy, school disciplinary action, credit/student/teacher transferability, and related educational issues are elements of education policy, as a subset of social policy. Some analysts view education policy as social engineering.[11]

### Labor policy

Labor market support, upward mobility, and economic security in the form of minimum wage laws, workforce development, workplace protections, unemployment insurance, job creation, poverty recidivism, welfare assistance, collective bargaining and worker rights, and contract labour are elements of the labor policy subset of social policy. Often, these policies are considered part of labour law.

### Aging and pension policy

Pensions, caregiving, social security (a form of social insurance), retirement policy and retirement planning, and issues related to aging societies are connected to social policy. In the U.S., AARP was founded to advance these issues and political equity for senior citizens and is today the largest lobbying organization in America.

### Human services

Main article: Human services

See also: Social:Social services and Child and family services

Human services are the subset of social policy that oversee community welfare offices and social care organizations. These include family policies such as child protection and children's and family services. Human services may also include the administration of criminal justice and law enforcement. Many countries and states consider housing policy, such as social housing, distribution of homelessness resources, and bettering living conditions to be human services as well.

### Cultural issues

See also: Social:Social issue

Citizenship policy, cultural policy, and cultural affairs; civil liberties; abortion legality; animal rights and animal welfare; agricultural and food policy; urban development; social exclusion; immigration; sexuality issues; and more are considered as significant cultural or social issues under the umbrage of social policy. The discussion of 'social policy,' in a North American context, certainly applies to governmental policy on social issues such as approaches to racial issues,[12] LGBT issues (such as same-sex marriage)[13] and the legal status of abortion,[14] guns,[15] euthanasia,[16] recreational drugs[17] and prostitution.[18] In other countries, these issues would be classified under health policy and domestic policy.

## International approaches

### United States social policy

A 1908 photo of William Jennings Bryan, a champion of social justice and former U.S. Secretary of State, the first major U.S. political figure to incorporate social policy into government policies

#### Socioeconomic policy by administration

* Social policy of the second Trump administration
* Economic policy of the second Trump administration
* Social policy of the Biden administration
* Economic policy of the Biden administration
* Social policy of the first Trump administration
* Economic policy of the first Trump administration
* Social policy of the Obama administration
* Economic policy of the Obama administration
* Economic policy of the George W. Bush administration
* Economic policy of the Clinton administration

#### Federal jurisdiction

At the federal level, the major areas of U.S. social policy are addressed by the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, known as the HELP Committee. A complementary committee in the House of Representatives has jurisdiction over these issues, but it changes its name each time a different party comes to power.

#### Factors to U.S. social policy

The United States was a pioneer in generous social spending (relative to comparable countries), providing substantial support for Civil War veterans and their families.[19] However, the United States would go on to lag behind other advanced industrial democracies in social spending. Religious, racial, ideological, scientific, and philosophical movements and ideas have historically influenced American social views and shaped policy debates. For example, while American collectivism was greatly impacted by Methodism and Quakerism, denominations which helped thrust the social tenets of Christianity to the forefront of developing the welfare state and laws against child labor, more conservative and Calvinistic denominations (based on teachings of John Calvin and his idea of pre-destination) and the Protestant Values of hard work and individualism, might be seen as stymying social welfare. Moreover, Social Darwinism helped mold America's ideas of capitalism and the survival of the fittest mentality. The temperance movement, labor movement, women's rights movement, environmental movement, and the Catholic Church's social teaching have also been considerably influential to the development of social welfare debates in America.

#### Federal social insurance programs

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's groundbreaking New Deal is a prime example of social policy that focused predominantly on providing work and stimulating the economy through public spending on projects, rather than on cash payments. The programs were in response to the Great Depression affecting the United States in the 1930s, including Social Security (United States). United States politicians who have favored increasing government observance of social policy often do not frame their proposals around typical notions of welfare or benefits; instead, in cases like Medicare and Medicaid, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented a package called the Great Society that framed a larger vision around poverty and quality of life.

#### Federal education policy

President Lyndon B. Johnson would also attempt to implement education policy under his Great Society package, introducing several programs and laws, such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), and the Bilingual Education Act of 1967 (BEA), and many others. These laws would form the backbone of the education policy changes of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), introduced during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush with bipartisan support. The law took effect on 8 January 2002, aiming to raise standards in education, address educational inequities (framed as an achievement gap), and address school issues framed as matters of accountability. The No Child Left Behind Act required every state to assess students on basic skills to receive federal funding. While the law did attempt to address issues underlying U.S. education, its provisions were widely viewed as unsuccessful. States continued to create their own standards while assessing themselves. NCLB also led to the closure of numerous schools labeled "low-performing" or "failing", disproportionately impacting schools that served predominantly Black students and rural communities.[20] Provisions of NCLB were changed and replaced under the Race to the Top (R2T, RTTT or RTT) and Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed during the Administration of President Barack Obama.

#### Federal health policy

Major examples of U.S. health policy are HIPAA, Medicare (United States), and Medicaid. Insurance has been a growing policy topic, and a recent example of health care law as social policy is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) formed by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, on 23 March 2010. The ACA established HealthCare.gov as the national online exchange, or "marketplace", for health insurance programs offered state by state.

#### Federal assistance programs

* WIC program - Women, Infants, and Children program
* Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - food stamps
* Temporary Assistance for Needy Families - called TANF

## See also

* Human services
* Precariat
* Social insurance
* Social issue
* Social planning
* Social services
* Social theory
* Upward mobility
* Welfare state
* Welfare spending

## References

1. ↑ "About the Malcolm Wiener Center". Presidents and Fellows of Harvard. 15 February 2006. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/socpol/about.html.
2. ↑ "Penn SP2 Mission Statement". School of Social Policy & Practice. University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice. https://www.sp2.upenn.edu/about/mission-statement/.
3. ↑ Spicker, Paul. "An introduction to Social Policy". http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/index.htm?CFID=75213086&CFTOKEN=94736152&jsessionid=50314442b009e7f430b746b7574792426401TR.
4. ↑ Social Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand: A Critical Introduction (2005) by Christine Cheyne, Mike O'Brien, & Michael Belgrave – Page 3
5. ↑ Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sci 4:155–169.
6. ↑ STEWART, JOHN (2020). Richard Titmuss: A Commitment to Welfare (1 ed.). Bristol University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv128fqbs. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv128fqbs.
7. ↑ "About the Malcolm Wiener Center". Presidents and Fellows of Harvard. 15 February 2006. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/socpol/about.html.
8. ↑ "Welcome to the Department". London School of Economics (LSE). http://www.lse.ac.uk/socialPolicy/aboutUs/introduction.aspx.
9. ↑ Luban, Law's Blindfold, 23
10. ↑ Science, London School of Economics and Political. "What is social policy?" (in en-GB). https://www.lse.ac.uk/social-policy/about-us/What-is-social-policy.aspx.
11. ↑ Wilson, Harold E. (1978). Social Engineering in Singapore: Educational Policies and Social Change, 1819-1972. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Singapore University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=O067AAAAIAAJ. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
12. ↑ Eilperin, Juliet; Mufson, Steven (28 April 2015). "Obama calls for social policy changes in wake of Baltimore riots". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-calls-for-social-policy-changes-in-wake-of-baltimore-riots/2015/04/28/4a370162-edce-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html.
13. ↑ "Gay marriage inquiry reaches consensus". AustralianMarriageEquality.org. http://www.australianmarriageequality.org/2012/06/18/gay-marriage-inquiry-reaches-consensus/.
14. ↑ "Gender and sex equality". Social Policy Digest (Cambridge Journals). http://journals.cambridge.org/spd/action/digest?type=old&category=Gender and sex equality&topic=Contraception and abortion rights. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
15. ↑ "Gun Control". Almanac of Policy Issues. http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/guns.shtml.
16. ↑ Thomasma, David C.; Graber, Glenn C. (1991). "Euthanasia: Toward an Ethical Social Policy". Ann Intern Med 114 (12): 1067. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-114-12-1067_3.
17. ↑ "Drug Use, Consequences and Social Policies". Chicago, IL: University of Illinois. http://www.udel.edu/soc/tammya/pdfs/Drug Use Concequences and Social Policies.pdf.
18. ↑ "Prostitution Policy in Canada: Models, Ideologies, and Moving Forward". Canadian Association of Social Workers. 5 September 2014. http://www.casw-acts.ca/sites/default/files/Prostitution Policy in Canada - Models, Ideologies, and Moving Forward.pdf.
19. ↑ Skocpol, Theda (1992) (in en). Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. Belknap Press. ISBN 9780674717664. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674717664. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
20. ↑ Tilsley, Alexandra (23 March 2017). Subtracting Schools from Communities. https://www.urban.org/features/subtracting-schools-communities. Retrieved 28 December 2021.

## Further reading

Library resources about
Social policy

* * *

* Resources in your library
* Resources in other libraries

* Social Policy & Administration
* Titmuss, R. M. (1951) Problems of social policy. HM Stationery Office. ISBN 9780527357665
* Dean, H. (2006). Social Policy. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-7456-3434-0.
* Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
* Ferragina, Emanuele and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, "Welfare Regime Debate: Past, Present, Futures?" Policy & Politics: 39 (2011): 4: 583–611.

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Social work and related concepts

Concepts|

| Primary|

* Social work

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Secondary|

* Anti-oppressive practice
* Crisis intervention
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* Critical social work
* Financial social work
* Gerontology
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Types of social work|

* Social case worker
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Qualifications|

* Qualifications for professional social work
* Bachelor of Social Work (BA, BSc or BSW) degree
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* International Association of Schools of Social Work
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Social workers by nationality|

* American
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Professional associations|

* International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW)
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* Australian Association of Social Workers
* British Association of Social Workers
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* Canadian Association of Social Workers
* Scottish Children's Reporter Administration

Biographies|

* Jane Addams
* Amartya Sen
* Harry Hopkins

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