Table of Contents
Social policy helps us to understand social problems in our society or world and their causes, which affects every individual and how the government have or are implementing policies to solve these social problems. The key purpose of social work is to support and protect people who are considered vulnerable in society.
Social policy aims to improve human welfare and to meet human needs for education, health, housing and economic security.
How does social policy affect family life?
Most social policies affect families in some way or other. Such policies would include those on childcare, education, housing and crime. Furthermore, many policies that impact upon families are those that make changes to the legislation on taxation and benefits, such as child tax credits.
What are the benefits of a policy analysis?
Policy analysis plays an important role in helping to define and outline the goals of a proposed policy and in identifying similarities and differences in expected outcomes and estimated costs with competing alternative policies.
Social workers have an ethical and professional responsibility to make sure that social policy does not discriminate or disadvantage members of society. Our Code of Ethics underlines our role in promoting a just and fair society through the pursuit of social justice and effective social policy.
How does public policy affect the family?
Public policies have an undeniable effect on families. Among other things, they regulate the conditions of employment, define eligibility to welfare benefits, provide education and health services, and define the rights and responsibilities of parents.
Focus on individual offenders and the social context which encourages them to commit crime. There are two broad approaches – Intervention, identifying groups and risk of committing crime and taking action to limit their offending, and Community – involving the local community in combating crime.
There are good examples of social policy being effective in reducing inequality and poverty, successfully playing more than a residual role, addressing areas beyond a safety net, and engaging with broad public policy issues of distribution, protection, production and reproduction.
What is a social policy analysis?
The Social Policy Analysis program focuses on the evaluation of alternative interventions that proposed to improve human well-being. Without evidence-based research and rigorous evaluations to test these ideas, there is no way to know which solutions work and for whom.