The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy uses the lens of an innovative policy model and an emphasis on social change to break new ground in social welfare policy texts. Starting from the explicit premise that every kind of social work practice embodies a social policy, the book stresses that policy knowledge enables social workers to help clients as well as to help themselves. Drawing on this awareness, the text then makes the standard social welfare policy material come alive by asking two new questions: 1) what factors trigger social change in these social policies?; and 2) how do these factors affect the social policies that influence what social workers actually do? To answer these questions, it develops a five-part policy model, which shows, through full chapters on each subject, how economics, politics, ideology, social movements, and the history of social welfare define social welfare policy.

Author Biography

Joel Blau, DSW, is Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Welfare, Stony Brook University. Mimi Abramovitz, DSW, is Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Policy, Hunter College School of Social Work and The Graduate Center, City University of New York.