American social welfare policy Essay Example

In the late 1950s, a grant proposal was funded for juvenile delinquency programs. The Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act provided grants for experimental programs in relation to juvenile delinquency.With the conservative ideology in the 1960s, delinquency prevention focused on traditional family values and public law and order. Juvenile delinquency prevention programs provided public contracts as a modern means of using federal government grants in addressing certain problems in the society through private institutions and settlements, which engaged in providing assistance and help to the youth until the following decades.

This program gained public trust and recognition while funding was made available for their effort to prevent juvenile delinquency (Fisher & Fabricant, 2002).In 1961, Thomas Gladwin of the National Conference on Social Welfare, an anthropologist employed by the National Institute of Mental Health, proposed intervention programs to change the way of life of people in the society. This is an assertion to Oscar Lewis (1961) for his idea of behavioral and psychological traits as factors that causes poverty and other social problems like alcoholism, violence, premarital sex, abandonment, and strong present time or short term orientation. Lewis focused on the cultural and sociostructural aspects of solving the problem of poverty.

He was praised by liberals such as like Michael Harrington who discussed the cultural components of poverty in his work, entitled The Other America (Curran, 2003). Local and state expenditure increased up to 50 percent in 1963. It was in 1967 when the National Welfare Rights Organizations (NWRO) was established with the aim to force change in the national welfare policy (Plait & Cooreman, 2001). Policies and funding initiatives have improved. A large percentage for

social welfare services funding, especially for settlements, has already been spent through nonprofit welfare organizations.The Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) was put in place in 1964 to administer the War on Poverty.

The amendment guaranteed federal support in the amount they could raise from private and other public groups up to 300 percent. Federal spending on OEO and Community Action Program (CAP) increased from $51. 7 million in 1965 to $2. 3 billion in 1980 (Fisher & Fabricant, 2002). In 1967, conservatives in Congress initiated cost-cutting in the social action component of the War on Poverty while deeper reductions in 1969 to 1973 under President Nixon continued to create financial constraint.

However, Nixon’s cost-cutting activities were temporary. Since the passage of Titles IV and XX of the Social Security Act was revised in 1974, the federal government was allowed to pay for private agency services and there was another increase in the public funding for community-based organizations. In 1969 the budget has doubled from less than $1 million to $2 million. In 1968, the Federal government allocated more than $30 million for the settlement projects to residents of the lower East Side of New York City.

Community mental health centers also increased spending from $143 million in 1969 to $1. billion in 1979. From the mid-60s onward, the Great Society, limits aside, wrought profound changes and brought massive funding for neighborhood work and social change (Halpern, 1995). Federal expenditures for social welfare services tripled in only five years, increasing from $812 million in 1965 to $2. 2 billion in 1970.

Despite the improvement of programs, social workers had difficulty in fund-raising activities in the 1970s. The elite

group of the society remained a great help for the settlements but support for social action continued to wane.President Nixon's administration from 1969 to 1973 experienced a more challenging effort in fund raising, deeper reduction of funds, and financial strain for settlements. The Federal government funded social welfare services about two-thirds of its annual budget ($4.

5 million) in 1975. After 1975 when privatization and economic globalization begun, the new funding relationship with Federal, which started in the 1960s, developed and permanently established different organizations whose aim was to help in the settlement programs (Fisher ; Fabricant, 2002).During the 1980s, the liberals were blamed for moral decay and lost opportunities for Americans. Newt Gingrich (1984), a critic of the "liberal welfare system" blamed liberalism for social problems such murders and public scandals. He claimed that liberalism was the reason for the increased social problems for it conveyed wrong messages and it was quite tolerant of permissive behavior.

Conservatives Ronald Reagan tightened the availability of social welfare and welfare payments but he failed to keep pace with inflation (O'Connor, 2001).Another shift in a more recent decade occurred but the legislation of Johnson's Great Society was criticized by Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) for its poor performance on welfare development. This legislation reversed the social welfare structure based on conservative political ideologies since the 1980s (O'Connor, 2001). PRWORA’s central theme resides on personal responsibility in overcoming the problems caused by welfare dependency due to single-parent births or increased number of illegitimate children.

In addition, it aimed to strengthen marriage and work ethics (PRWORA, 1996: Section 101, 401). The shift from conservative to liberal

and then conservative ideologies caused the social welfare policy to suffer financially while strategies varied from focusing on children to older groups and the community or general population. Fighting poverty may not be fully achieved through a liberalist or conservative perspective, especially when the processes and policies are not strictly implemented or earnest efforts, sufficient funding, and effective strategies are still lacking.Therefore, poverty continues to challenge leaders to create better models and more effective legislations that would help and the poor toward holistic improvement.

2) Discuss the differences between the programs of the War on Poverty (the group including Job Corps, Upward Bound, Head Start, etc) and those we discussed under the heading of Great Society (Medicare, Medicaid, Higher Education Act). What theories and concepts influenced these two initiatives? The Great Society program was launched by President Johnson upon his victory in the 1964 election but it was basically put in place by the end of 1966.Johnson viewed individualism as a problematic social phenomenon since the ties between individuals are loose and they are expected to look after one another (Schwartz, 1994). Thus, he offered a unified perspective of overcoming poverty to serve as the underpinning theory of War on Poverty (Zarefsky, 1986).

Collectivism refers to people’s loyalty to one another and strong cohesive in-group relationships in which they maintain to protect each other throughout their lifetime (Schwartz, 1994).The Great Society has resulted to profound changes in the community and increased funding for social change initiatives. It involved not only financial support in community-based services but also the creation and implementation of policies with its aims to help the poor become less dependent and provide

more employment and equal opportunities to be able to function and participate community development. It also included the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA), Civil Rights Act (CRA), food stamp legislation, and programs for mass transportation.In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act, and the Public Works and Economic Development Act were also included in the legislation (Brown-Collier, 1998). American Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act, also called “The War on Poverty", which created several programs with the goals of human capital empowerment and providing opportunity for the poor (Plait & Cooreman, 2001).

Democratic theory underpins War on Poverty to ground community action solidly.In 1967, Sargent Shriver argued that democracy was a crucial element of War on Poverty since it calls for community action and it adheres to sociotherapy and institutional change. However, this is also criticized by Theodore M. Berry, for example, claiming that the involvement of the poor was not actually a novel idea but a “quiet revolution” in an American democracy tradition (Zarefsky, 1986).

The War on Poverty renewed settlements and provided Federal financial support to social welfare organizations.It addresses the causes of poverty in the society and pursues decentralized strategy in the neighborhood (Fisher & Fabricant, 2002). It also dramatically expanded financial resources to support community-based nonprofit programs and settlements. However, it received public pressure due to the increased support the programs for social services.

As a result, the Congress amended the Social Security Act in 1967 in order to develop purchase of service contracts (POSC) with the private firms.The new financing arrangements have expanded opportunities in promoting social change and developing community-based programs. The Volunteers

in Service to America (VISTA), Job Corps, Meals-on-Wheels, Upward Bound, Neighborhood Youth Corp, and Operation Head Start were among the contracted services under War on Poverty (Fisher & Fabricant, 2002). Henry Street organized the Mobilization for Youth (MFY) based on the Great Society program as a community-based response to poverty and powerlessness was based (Fisher & Fabricant, 2002).

Both the Great Society and War on Poverty place emphasis, importance, and power on the local community where people are encouraged to be self-reliant and do something for their benefits and improvement. However, these models remained ineffective since there remain many poor Americans (Edelman, 1999; O'Connor, 2001). Despite the criticisms, challenges and failures, these legislations should not be ignored because the served as a framework in developing models for better and effective strategies in eradicating poverty. 3) Jansson describes the 1970s during the era of the Nixon administration as the ‘paradoxical era.

Why? Discuss Nixon’s approach to social policy in terms of the concepts of deserving and undeserving. Nixon's administration can be considered as paradoxical: on one hand, he is identified as a conservative by way of its Republican party but on the other, Nixon had sought to provide national social reforms that are often identified with liberals of the Democrat wing. This is monumental in American society because conservatives and liberals have historically been divergent on issues and social reform is largely a Democratic' turf.Unlike other democracies which have weak party system, American politics has clearly delineated ideologies and principles that separate Republican from Democrats.

Thus, Nixon's attempt to bridge the gap to being a liberal while personally stays as a conservative led to policies that are

often inconsistent and contrasting. However, it should be noted that despite the liberal policies that Nixon had supported, these policies were just political strategies in order to gain a broader base of support.Moreover, being a tactician, Nixon realizes that he had to dance between Conservative and Liberal policies in order to win the approval and support of the Democract-controlled legislature. First, Nixon's approach to social reform had been liberal in nature; to which, it has been the basis of contemporary American society's social welfare policies have largely focused on providing a standardized social program that will not only focus on single parents but also on working individuals who falls below the poverty line.In doing so, Nixon reformed the food stamp program to include families who are considered to be poor and initiated helping measures and even shelled out cash to augment the income of these families. Moreover, concurrent with his Supplemental Security Income program has been the revenue sharing program that conservatives would never have instituted.

Hence, Nixon was a conservative acting liberally in social welfare policies in order to attempt to broaden his base of support and power. To a significant extent, he succeeded in these reforms by winning his re-election bid through a landslide victory.Second, Nixon's social policy debated the concept of deserving and underserving by providing a nationwide standard for poverty. Through the index of poverty, families who fall below the minimum annual income will also be qualified to get food stamps; this is in contrast with earlier policies that only supported those who do not have work and single parents. Furthermore, in order to compensate for the income of workers, Nixon

provided those with income below US$4,000 to have the 10% of their income tax given back to them.

From the point of view of contemporary society, this measure is an important step in determining the deserving Americans who would need government funding. In essence, by setting a standard and objective measure of separating the deserving and underserving of social welfare, Nixon created the framework for contemporary social reform. Concurrently, despite the reforms that Nixon had instituted, he remained to be a conservative and this can be seen in the latter part of the 1970s.For instance, while his administration spent a significant amount to social reform, he also opposed measures such as the Head Start and the white backlash occurred in lieu of whites' perception that it is mostly the blacks who had benefited from the social reform.

Hence, Nixon's era is characterized by a paradoxical period propelled by his the dilemma of pushing for his personal political agenda of garnering support and of his own political and party beliefs.