Social Work 270 & 750: Social Welfare Policy

This Oxford Handbook pulls together much of our current knowledge about the origins, development, functions, and challenges of American social policy. After the Introduction, the first substantive part of the handbook offers an historical overview of U.S. social policy from the colonial era to the present. This is followed by a set of chapters on different theoretical perspectives available for understanding and explaining the development of U.S. social policy.

This fully updated and expanded edition of the bestselling Student’s Companion to Social Policy charts the latest developments, research, challenges, and controversies in the field in a concise, authoritative format.

This book uniquely chronicles and analyzes the development of social work practice theory on two levels: from the top down, looking at the writings, conference presentations, and training course material developed by leaders of the profession; and from the bottom up, looking at case records for evidence of techniques that were actually applied by social workers in the field.

Social policy is often constructed and implemented by people who have little experience of its impact as a service user, but there has been a growing interest in greater public, patient and service user involvement in social policy as both political activity and academic discipline. Social Policy First Hand is the first comprehensive international social policy text from a participatory perspective and presents a new service user-led social policy that addresses the current challenges in welfare provision.

Social Policy and Social Justice: Meeting the Challenges of a Diverse Society is built on a clear, conceptual social justice framework and provides up-to-date analyses of contemporary social policy issues, written by experts in their particular areas of research and practice. The book uses case studies and rigorous analysis to explore the relationship of social policy to economic, social, and culture transformation and the ongoing conflict between universal and population-specific conceptions of social welfare.

For generations, debating the expansion or contraction of the American welfare state has produced some of the nation's most heated legislative battles. Attempting social policy reform is both risky and complicated, especially when it involves dealing with powerful vested interests, sharp ideological disagreements, and a nervous public. The Politics of Policy Change compares and contrasts recent developments in three major federal policy areas in the United States: welfare, Medicare, and Social Security.

Welfare State 3.0: Social Policy after the Pandemic acknowledges the existing social infrastructure, considers viable options, and provides supporting data to suggest social policy reform by four strategies: consolidating programs, harmonizing applications, expanding equity, and conducting experiments. The book favors discreet, poignant proposals of social programs

The 11th edition of Social Work Speaks is a comprehensive and unabridged collection of policies adopted and revised by the NASW Delegate Assembly in 2017. Social Work Speaks is a reference tool that represents the collective thinking of thousands of social workers across all fields of practice. This user-friendly resource can assist in developing organizational responses to policy issues, conducting policy analysis, and working in advocacy coalitions. Social Work Speaks is a first-rate introductory social policy text that will spark dynamic and valuable debates on public policy and the role of social work in leading change.

To what extent do courts make social and public policy and influence policy change? This innovative text analyzes this question generally and in seven distinct policy areas that play out in both federal and state courts. The authors address these issues through the twin lenses of how state and federal courts must and do interact with the other branches of government and whether judicial policy-making is a form of activist judging. Each chapter uncovers the policymaking aspects of judicial process by investigating the current state of the law, the extent of court involvement in policy change, the responses of other governmental entities and outside actors, and the factors which influenced the degree of implementation and impact of the relevant court decisions.

Designed for upper-level and professional courses, this text is a state-of-the-art introduction to the public policymaking process that gives equal attention to issues of policy implementation and public governance. It uses an innovative systems approach, integrating the activities, actors, tools, and techniques of policymaking, to provide a comprehensive framework for policy design and analysis. The book is practice-oriented, with a focus on the ways that policymakers at all levels employ the standard "technologies" of governance - authority, agency, program, rule, contract, and budget - to design policy outputs and achieve policy outcomes.

This updated edition of American Public Policy provides a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the policy-making process, from procedural approaches and policy instruments to in-depth analysis of specific policy issues.