Social policy
Social policy is a plan or action of government or institutional agencies which aim to improve or reform society. Some professionals and universities consider social policy a subset of public policy, while other practitioners characterize social policy and public policy to be two separate, competing approaches for the same public interest, with social policy deemed more holistic than public policy. Whichever of these persuasions a university adheres to, social policy begins with the study of the welfare state and social services. It consists of guidelines, principles, legislation and associated activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare, such as a person's quality of life. Social policy might also be described as actions that affect the well-being of members of a society through shaping the distribution of and access to goods and resources in that society. Social policy often seeks to alleviate precarity and wicked problems.
History
Social policy was first conceived as an academic subject in the 1940s by Richard Titmuss within the field of social administration in Britain. Titmuss's essay on the "Social Division of Welfare" laid the development for social policy to gradually absorb social administration. Titmuss was an essayist whose work concerned the failure of the market; the inadequacy of selective social services; and the superiority of collectivism and universal approaches.Ancient world
Some of the earliest examples of direct intervention by government in human welfare date back to Ancient Rome's Cura Annonae founded in 123 BC, and Umar ibn al-Khattāb's rule as the second caliph of Islam in the 6th century: he used zakat collections and also other governmental resources to establish pensions, income support, child benefits, and various stipends for people of the non-Muslim community.English and Western European advents
The enactment of English Poor Laws helped curb poverty and recidivism: these laws influenced the justices of Berkshire to implement the Speenhamland system, which was the first social program in the modern sense of that word. Later, surveys of poverty exposing the brutal conditions in the urban slum conurbations of Victorian Britain supplied the pressure leading to changes such as the decline and abolition of the poor law system and Liberal welfare reforms.In the modern West, proponents of scientific social planning such as the sociologist Auguste Comte, and social researchers, such as Charles Booth, contributed to the emergence of social policymaking in the first industrialised countries following the Industrial Revolution.
Rise of social insurance
Initiatives to create social insurance revolutionized social policy. The Bismarckian welfare state in 19th century Germany, which were introduced under the State Socialism ; Social Security policies in the United States introduced under the rubric of the New Deal between 1933 and 1935; and both the Beveridge Report and the National Health Service Act 1946 in Britain redefined the social role of the Great Powers.Thus, two major models of social insurance arose in practice: Bismarkian welfare from Germany and Beveridgean welfare from Britain. The Beveridge Model features government-funded, government-run healthcare, free at the point of service, financed by taxes, with public hospitals and staff. In contrast, the Bismarck Model uses non-profit "sickness funds" funded by employer/employee payroll deductions, covering private providers, ensuring universal care but with a mix of public/private delivery and often lower wait times due to competition. The key difference is Beveridge's tax-funded, public-provider system versus Bismarck's mandatory, social insurance-funded system with private providers.
Furthermore, the post-WWII economic boom spurred much of the previously war-ravaged states to incorporate elements of social democracy into their decisionmaking, leading to more generous social expenditures nationally. Many social democratic measures were championed by the labor movement.
21st century
Social policy in the 21st century is complex and in each state it is subject to local and national governments, as well as supranational political influence. For example, membership of the European Union is conditional on member states' adherence to the Social Chapter of European Union law A global influence in the retrenchment and decline of generous government support has been the introduction of workfare.University approaches
The academe of social policy study is configured in four primary ways across numerous universities: as a unique discipline, as a specialization of public policy, as a joint program, or as an interdisciplinary field.Stand-alone social policy programs
While some scholars describe social policy as an interdisciplinary field of practice, scholars like Fiona Williams and Pete Alcock believe social policy is a discipline unto itself. Formulating social policy as a discipline unto itself, universities offering a stand-alone social policy degree include the University of Birmingham, University of York, Oxford University, and the University of Pennsylvania.As specialization to public policy programs
Universities offering a social policy specialization as part of a public policy degree program include McGill University, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Harris School of Public Policy, and the Hertie School of Governance. In the Global South, social policy is offered along with public policy degree programmes, as at the Institute of Public Policy, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, combined with development policy. The Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University describes social policy as "public policy and practice in the areas of health care, human services, criminal justice, social inequality, education, and labor".As joint degree programs
Universities offering a social policy joint degree along with a similar related degree in social work or public health include the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.As interdisciplinary concept
The Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics defines social policy as "an interdisciplinary and applied subject concerned with the analysis of societies' responses to social need", which seeks to foster in its students a capacity to understand theory and evidence drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines, including economics, sociology, psychology, geography, history, law, philosophy and political science.Social policy's major subsets
According to the LSE, social policy aims to improve human welfare and quality of life by meeting the principal human needs of: Education, Health, Housing and Economic security. Therefore, with its emphasis on preventing precarity, social policy is usually seen as being separate and distinct from fiscal policy, environmental policy, foreign policy, and military/war policy. Due to this, social policy is alternatively called domestic policy or welfare policy.When such policies are formalized by a legislature passing them into law, instead of being only executive measures, they are categorically referred to as "social legislation."