Analysis of New Era Social Welfare Policy Transformation Path

It is in the nature of social policy for social welfare services to adapt to the social demands that arise as a result of changes in social structure. Meanwhile, it is a distinguishing feature of social welfare that special attention is paid to specific social groups, particularly vulnerable and difficult communities. The economic, political, and social factors of a society influence the direction of social service policy objectives, which is also influenced by the broader trend of social development, particularly global modernization and the transformation of local social structures. As a result, sorting out and analyzing the external environment and circumstances of the development of social services is both theoretical and practical.

Caring and Grieving in the Context of Social and Structural Inequity: Experiences of Australian Carers With Social Welfare Needs

Caring for and bereavement following the death of someone with a life-limiting illness may precipitate social welfare needs related to income support and housing. Nevertheless, carer experiences of welfare policy and institutions have not received significant attention. This qualitative study explored experiences of carers who navigated social welfare policy while caring for someone with a life-limiting illness, and in bereavement. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 bereaved carers in an area associated with socioeconomic disadvantage. Carers differentially encountered precariousness, with some experiencing structural vulnerability. These positionalities appeared to be shaped by policy and process-related burdens, perceptions of the welfare state, and degrees of legitimisation or disenfranchisement of forms of capital and coping orientations. Recommendations that may improve carer experience were identified. Implications relate to the need for an expanded conceptualisation of vulnerability in health and welfare practice, policy that authentically validates caring and grieving, and upstream strategies that address inequity.

Trauma: An Ideology in Search of Evidence and its Implications for the Social in Social Welfare

A recent special issue of this journal focussed on the emergence of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) movement as a key driver of Scottish social policy. In this article, we extend the critiques advanced therein by locating ACEs within a wider cultural turn towards psychological trauma which, over the past decade, has become reified as a master theory across social welfare. Yet, the concept is insubstantial and ill-defined, and the claims made for policy based upon it are at best disputable. Its prominence is less evidence-based than it is testimony to how a particular (cultural and professional) ideology, regardless of its intellectual merit, can be insinuated into policy discourse. ACEs, we suggest, is utilised to provide the trauma paradigm with some ostensibly quantifiable substance. We illustrate our argument through reference to the Scottish Government’s National Trauma Training Programme (2020). We go on to consider some of the implications of such ideological capture for the direction of Scottish social welfare policy and practice. The prominence given to trauma perspectives has potentially iatrogenic consequences for those identified or self-identifying as traumatised. At a wider level, it reflects a professional and epistemic privileging of a narrow, ostensibly therapeutic, worldview which, in turn, acts to marginalise ‘the social’ that characterised erstwhile Scottish approaches to welfare.

Public Sector Employment as a Social Welfare Policy: The “Social Contract” and Failed Job Creation for Youth in Egypt

Although the IMF and the World Bank have advocated public sector reforms for market-oriented economic development, Egyptian authoritarian leaders have avoided such reforms. Egypt maintains a large public sector with a significant number of young Egyptians among its ranks. However, the public sector has shortcomings such as overstaffed government departments, deteriorating working conditions, and employee protests. This study uses the “social contract” concept to understand why Egypt’s political leaders have preserved this inefficient institution. The logic of the “social contract” works under two conditions: generous welfare as the main source of the regime’s legitimacy and a lack of accurate information concerning the extent to which people can tolerate painful reforms under authoritarian rule. Contrary to the conventional understanding, a lack of democratic institutions imposes “shackles” upon authoritarian leaders rather than giving them wide discretion regarding policymaking and the manipulation of institutions for their survival. The findings thus offer important insights into the dynamics of authoritarianism.

Salvaging Marginalized Men: How the Department of Defense Waged the War on Poverty

Architects of social welfare policy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations viewed the military as a site for strengthening the male breadwinner as the head of the “traditional family.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Robert McNamara—men not often mentioned in the same conversations—both spoke of “salvaging” young men through military service. The Department of Defense created Project Transition, a vocational jobs-training program for GIs getting ready to leave the military, and Project 100,000, which lowered draft requirements in order to put men who were previously unqualified into the military. The Department of Defense also made significant moves to end housing discrimination in communities surrounding military installations. Policymakers were convinced that any extension of social welfare demanded reciprocal responsibility from its male citizens. During the longest peacetime draft in American history, policymakers viewed programs to expand civil rights and social welfare as also expanding the umbrella of the obligations of citizenship.