SW History and Policy Midterm

What is/ Purpose of Social Welfare

·      Guidelines, principles, legislation, activities that affect the living conditions conductive to human welfare and quality of life.   

-shaped by societies values and customs

·      Touches on social, political, economic problems and potential policy responses to them.

Elizabethan Poor Laws

Parents legally liable for support of their children and grandchildren, children were responsible for the care of their needy parents and grandparents. funds raised to help these groups from taxing households, if they did not pay they were threatened with imprisonment.

·      Deserving vs. Undeserving (worthy vs. unworthy) poor

-people refusing to work were punished and even put in a house of correction

Deserving Poor

Children, elderly, veterans

Undeserving Poor

Abled bodied adults

Early American Poor Laws

-came to the US with English settlers in the 1620s

-Town/city’s Overseers of the Poor who would judge whether you were deserving or undeserving enough to secure minimal aid. Overseers normally local officials who knew little to nothing about poverty.

Indoor Relief

·      required people to live in a public institution for assistance

-Workhouses, correction houses, poorfarms, poorhouses, almhouses

Outdoor Relief

provided assistance to those who needed it in their own homes

Laissez Faire

Economic and political doctrine advocating minimal or zero government interference in the economic affairs of individuals and society, supported by Social Darwinists- “survival of the fittest”

US Sanitary Commission

·      Started because many soldiers in the civil war died of infection

Freedman’s Bureau 1865-1872

·      First welfare agency

·      Bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands

·      Provided aid for formerly enslaved people- provided direct aid

·      Assisted with creations of schools for African Americans

Black Codes

·      passed by southern states to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure they could use them for cheap labor- yearly labor contract, risked being arrested if not signed

Jim Crow

laws related to segregation (specifically African americans)

o   Upheld by local laws, supported by federal gov.

o   “separate but equal” -Plessy vs. Ferguson

o   Person played character named Jim Crow, black face, used to make African American people views as less than, fueled racism

Freedom Riders

helped African American people vote

KKK

1865- disrupted political participation of African Americans violently

o   Raided lands, raped women, castrated men, lynching, burning

Race Riots

many begun by white people attacking black communities

o   Memphis 1866, New Orleans (1866), Tulsa (1921), Wilmington (1898), Atlanta (1906)

13th Amendment

abolished slavery

14th Amendment

equal protection, protection of due process

15th Amendment

African American men right to vote

Charitable Organization Societies

eliminate fraud, inefficiency and devising a method of dealing with or treating poverty

-friendly visitors: looked into each case to diagnose the cause of destitution

-scientific charity

Mary Richmond

·      social caseworker, took more scientific approach (what is scientifically wrong with a person)

Social Diagnosis

book written by Mary Richmond

-constructed foundations for scientific methodology development of professional social work

-searched for causes for poverty/social exclusion in the interaction between an individual and their environment

Scientific Charity

systems that organizes various relief energies

Settlement House Movement

·      Structural Elements of Poverty

·      Environmental factors

Jane Adams

·      Jane Adams- Hull House, issue is the environment people live in, not the people themselves

Mental Health Reform

·      Previously seen as being possessed by devil

·      Perception shifted- awareness brought on by indoor relief

Dorothea Dix

·      advocate for those living with mental health issue(s)

Institutionalized Care

·creation of private, state, and federally funded mental health institutions

Children’s Aid Society- Charle’s Long Brace

·      Address orphan/homeless children in NY

·      Charles Loring Brace found in 1853- concerned about immigrant children

·      Created trade schools, lodge houses, tackled truancy and illiteracy

Placing Out Movement

Orphan Train Movement

-first foster care system in US

-1854-1929, up to 250,000 children placed on trains

White House Conference on Children and Youth (1909)

·      Teddy Roosevelt

·      Called for foster care and oversight

·      endorsed establishment of US Children’s Bureau

US Children’s Bureau

US government office that works to protect children and help families stay safe and healthy

-signed in 1912 by William Traft

Child Labor Policies

·      Child labor: work that deprives children of their childhood, potential, dignity

·      Abusive child labor

·      Harmful to physical and mental health

o   Mental health starting to be recognized

Native American Assimilation Policies

·      Laws/practices designed to erase cultures, languages, social systems of certain groups

Residential Schools for Native Americans

·      children forced to go here (forced assimilation of Native American children)

·      1^st gov. run ran boarding school: Carlisle Indian Industrial School 1879-1918

·      About 417 of these schools, and about 100 run by Christian churches

·      Approximately 60,000 Native children forced to go, at least 900 died (death rate and burials unknown)

·      Students forced to cut hair, change names, stop speaking their own languages, convert to Christianity, unskilled or semi-skilled labor

·      Harsh Punishment

o   System free labor

o   diseases

o   physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, spiritual abuse

-Young girls impregnated- forced abortions or killed babies

Indian Adoption Project

·      1958- child welfare league campaigned for adoption of Native children to white families.  –(made up of social workers)

·      Led by belief that they were saving Native children from unworthy families and giving them another chance. Believed in deficiencies of Native mothers, white mothers seen as model

·      Social workers would take the children with no justification

·      Continued to break up Native American families and culture

Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978

·      Protected best interest of Native American children in care by keeping them connected to their families, communities, and tribes

·      Enacted due to Native children being taken from their families for no good reason and being placed in white families

Dawes Act

broke up reservation lands and assigned individual parcels

Indian Civilization Act

-government reservation schools

-Native Americans called “savages” and “uncivilized”

Indian Citizenship Act

way of controlling Native Americans

-”if they become citizens they will be able to believe in western traditions and beliefs”