Social Policy and Welfare System
SOCIAL POLICY
Social Policy and the Welfare System
Leigh-Ann Hancock
Kaplan University
HN300-01 Human Services and Social Policy
Professor Lorena Lashway
May 1, 2012
Social Policy and the Welfare System Over one hundred years ago poverty-stricken Americans’ means of assistance was met through families, local communities, and charities, typically religious. Following industrialization in the 1870s, the nation’s adult workforce was flooded by employers who were dependent on a continuing flow of money income to provide for themselves and their families (Historical Development, 1997). Over time, measures such as Mother’s pension laws, were adopted in a number of states which gave cash allowances to households without a wage-earning father so that the children could remain at home with their mother rather than being placed in institutions or foster homes (Historical Development, 1997). In the mid-twenties, some states even experimented with old-age assistance and aid to the blind. During this time the states and federal government began to realize that certain risks in an increasingly industrialized economy were best addressed through a social insurance approach to public welfare. This shifted the structure of the public welfare system from a public assistance approach, whereby only those persons in need would be eligible for benefits, to a contributory financing of social insurance programs that would ensure availability of benefits as a matter of right (Historical Development, 1997). Thus in 1911, the first constitutional state compensation law was enacted and by 1929 workers’ compensation laws were in effect in all but four states. In response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, great change in social policy manifested with President Roosevelt’s’ passing of the “New Deal”, which established Social Security and Aid to Dependent Children. This was the beginning of the American Welfare System and for the next sixty-one years the U.S. Welfare System remained
Social Policy and the Welfare System
Leigh-Ann Hancock
Kaplan University
HN300-01 Human Services and Social Policy
Professor Lorena Lashway
May 1, 2012
Social Policy and the Welfare System Over one hundred years ago poverty-stricken Americans’ means of assistance was met through families, local communities, and charities, typically religious. Following industrialization in the 1870s, the nation’s adult workforce was flooded by employers who were dependent on a continuing flow of money income to provide for themselves and their families (Historical Development, 1997). Over time, measures such as Mother’s pension laws, were adopted in a number of states which gave cash allowances to households without a wage-earning father so that the children could remain at home with their mother rather than being placed in institutions or foster homes (Historical Development, 1997). In the mid-twenties, some states even experimented with old-age assistance and aid to the blind. During this time the states and federal government began to realize that certain risks in an increasingly industrialized economy were best addressed through a social insurance approach to public welfare. This shifted the structure of the public welfare system from a public assistance approach, whereby only those persons in need would be eligible for benefits, to a contributory financing of social insurance programs that would ensure availability of benefits as a matter of right (Historical Development, 1997). Thus in 1911, the first constitutional state compensation law was enacted and by 1929 workers’ compensation laws were in effect in all but four states. In response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, great change in social policy manifested with President Roosevelt’s’ passing of the “New Deal”, which established Social Security and Aid to Dependent Children. This was the beginning of the American Welfare System and for the next sixty-one years the U.S. Welfare System remained
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