Social Welfare 220: Introduction to Social Welfare Policy: Getting Started

Social policy may be defined as any formal government enactment that affects the well-being of people, including laws, regulations, executive orders, and court decisions. In the United States, with its federal tradition of shared government, social policies are made by governments at many levels—local, state, and national.

Social Policy. In Encyclopedia of Social Work. : Oxford University Press.

Public policy has a number of key attributes:

• Policy is made in response to some sort of issue or problem that requires attention.
• Policy is what the government chooses to do (actual) or not do (implied) about a particular issue or problem.
• Policy might take the form of law, or regulation, or the set of all the laws and regulations that govern a particular issue or problem.
• Policy is made on behalf of the "public."
• Policy is oriented toward a goal or desired state, such as the solution of a problem.
• Policy is ultimately made by governments, even if the ideas come from outside government or through the interaction of government and the public.
• Policymaking is part of an ongoing process that does not always have a clear beginning or end, since decisions about who will benefit from policies and who will bear any burden resulting from the policy are continually reassessed, revisited and revised.

Policy analysis emerged to both better understand the policymaking process and to supply policy decision makers with reliable policy-relevant knowledge about pressing economic and social problems. Handbook of Public Policy Analysis : Theory, Politics, and Methods

Starting Points

Encyclopedia of Social Work from the National Association of Social Workers and Oxford University Press -- a great starting place, policy on many social work topics.

Comprehensive Handbook of Social Work and Social Welfare Contains many sections on Social Policy and Policy Practice.

Oxford Bibliographies: Social Work Great overview of key topics in Social Welfare written by experts in the field.

The Green Book is a key resource for federal programs. It provides updated statistics and information on programs such as Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Foster Care and welfare. Additionally, it includes a discussion of related issues, such as the well-being of the elderly and of children and families.

Congressional Publications contains congressional documents (hearings, committee prints, documents, and legislative histories) which are searchable through this fulltext database. CRS Research Reports are particularly helpful for overviews of federal policies on an array of topics.

Nexis Uni (Formerly LexisNexis AcademicSearch) Fulltext searchable database of law reviews, cases and statutes.

The Think Tank Search from Harvard is another useful search engine.

UC Library Search (short version)

UC Library Search is the University of California's unified discovery and borrowing system.

Access it directly or from the Library homepage to find most UC books, articles, media, archival collections, and more.

See the UC Library Search User Guide and ask for research help 24/7 for more information.

Finding Articles

The Library has hundreds of databases supporting all academic disciplines at Berkeley. You can also search for databases that emphasize formats such as data, newspapers, dissertations, government documents and more. Google Scholar is another good starting point.

Related to the fields of social work, social welfare, human services, community development, and social policy.

A multi-disciplinary database of scholarly and general interest journals, books, and reports. [1865 - present]

Articles from broad array of peer-reviewed journals, popular and trade magazines and news sources for nearly all areas of study; available in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.

Indexes books, journals, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, and web sources related to public policy, politics, economics, and social issues worldwide. (Public Affairs Information Service) [1915 - present]

Includes publications from over 120 countries. Some of the indexed materials are published in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Archive covers English-language material only.

Indexes books, journals, and dissertations within the field of political science and related to comparative politics, developing nations, history and theory of political science, political psychology, political economy, public administration, and public policy. [1975 - present]

Indexes journals, books, dissertations, and reviews in the social sciences on sociological topics as well as selected anthropology, criminology, demography, law, social psychology, and urban development. [1952 - present]

Topics covered include all levels of education and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing. [1966 - present]

Indexes books, journals, reports, proceedings, statistical data, tests, dissertations, audiovisual materials, and ERIC documents on education research and practice.

Books on Social Welfare Policy

Poverty in the United States: Women's Voices This important text explores the deep relationships between poverty, health/mental health conditions, and widespread social problems as they affect the lives of low-income women.

Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality The rapid rise in the proportion of foreign-born residents in the United States since the mid-1960s is one of the most important demographic events of the past fifty years. The increase in immigration, especially among the less-skilled and less-educated, has prompted fears that the newcomers may have depressed the wages and employment of the native-born, burdened state and local budgets, and slowed the U.S. economy as a whole. Would the poverty rate be lower in the absence of immigration? How does the undocumented status of an increasing segment of the foreign-born population impact wages in the United States? In Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality, noted labor economists David Card and Steven Raphael and an interdisciplinary team of scholars provide a comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits of the latest era of immigration to the United States Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality rigorously explores shifts in population trends, labor market competition, and socioeconomic segregation to investigate how the recent rise in immigration affects economic disadvantage in the United States. Giovanni Peri analyzes the changing skill composition of immigrants to the United States over the past two decades to assess their impact on the labor market outcomes of native-born workers. Despite concerns over labor market competition, he shows that the overall effect has been benign for most native groups. Moreover, immigration appears to have had negligible impacts on native poverty rates. Ethan Lewis examines whether differences in English proficiency explain this lack of competition between immigrant and native-born workers. He finds that parallel Spanish-speaking labor markets emerge in areas where Spanish speakers are sufficiently numerous, thereby limiting the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born residents. While the increase in the number of immigrants may not necessarily hurt the job prospects of native-born workers, low-skilled migration appears to suppress the wages of immigrants themselves. Michael Stoll shows that linguistic isolation and residential crowding in specific metropolitan areas has contributed to high poverty rates among immigrants. Have these economic disadvantages among low-skilled immigrants increased their dependence on the U.S. social safety net? Marianne Bitler and Hilary Hoynes analyze the consequences of welfare reform, which limited eligibility for major cash assistance programs. Their analysis documents sizable declines in program participation for foreign-born families since the 1990s and suggests that the safety net has become less effective in lowering child poverty among immigrant households. As the debate over immigration reform reemerges on the national agenda, Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality provides a timely and authoritative review of the immigrant experience in the United States. With its wealth of data and intriguing hypotheses, the volume is an essential addition to the field of immigration studies. A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

Confronting Homelessness Whose fault is homelessness? Thirty years ago the problem exploded as a national crisis, drawing the attention of activists, the media, and policymakers at all levels¿yet the homeless population endures to this day, and arguably has grown. David Wagner offers a major reconsideration of homelessness in the US, casting a critical eye on how we as a society respond to crises of inequality and stratification. Incorporating local studies into a national narrative, Wagner probes how homelessness shifted from being the subject of a politically charged controversy over poverty and social class to posing a functional question of social-service delivery. At the heart of his analysis is a provocative insight into why we accept highly symbolic policies that dampen public outrage, but fail to address the fundamental structural problems that would allow real change.

Supporting Families Experiencing Homelessness In the face of a rapid rise in homelessness among US families, this study addresses the broader ecology of the problem, reviewing current research across a range of risk factors and making informed recommendations for future research and policy direction.

Veteran Suicide Veteran suicide has become a national imperative. Twenty-two veterans kill themselves daily; almost one per hour. An average of one active-duty GI commits suicide every 1.1 days. Suicides among those on active duty hit a record high in 2012. There were 349 suicides among active duty personnel - almost one a day. That means there are now more suicides among active duty soldiers than there are combat deaths. These troubling facts are undeniable. Veteran Suicide: A Public Health Imperative focuses on identifying, assessing, and preventing risk for suicide among veterans of military service. Book jacket.

Family Policy and Disability by Arie Rimmerman This book explores the status and scope of family policies related to households of children with disabilities, providing an in-depth, evidence-based review of legal, programmatic issues. It includes a discussion of the gaps between family needs and contemporary family policies in the United States and European countries, as demonstrated in these households' surveys. In addition, the volume offers a comparative analysis of cash benefits, tax credits and deductions, and in-kind provisions between the United States and select European countries (UK, France, and Sweden). Most importantly, this book identifies and continues the discussion regarding the critical role of family-centered policies, as expressed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), as well as the future of family policy toward families of children with disabilities at a time of economic crisis.