- Also called:
- welfare service or social work
News •
In the United States the main social assistance and personal social service programs are county- and state-administered, with substantial federal government support. Many programs are delegated to local governments, and voluntary organizations are heavily subsidized by public bodies via contracts for provision of services. The Department of Health and Human Services is the chief federal agency, and each state has a counterpart of this agency. In addition there is a small but popular and growing private market for fee-charging social services that overlaps the voluntary sector.
Federal policies for the personal social services have changed significantly since the 1960s. The Social Security amendments of 1962 put a premium on the role of rehabilitative casework, although states could also include homemaking and foster care. Between 1967 and 1977, however, income maintenance services (Aid to Families with Dependent Children excepted) were regrouped under the Social Security Administration, and primary responsibility for personal social services was transferred to the Office of Human Development. The 1974 amendments to the Social Security Act (Title XX) considerably extended the scope of eligibility for social services, giving priority to preventive work and positive efforts to improve the quality of life rather than to the traditional focus on poverty abatement. Casework, or counseling, however, lost ground to community-oriented service programs such as day-care provision, mental health centres, and nutrition programs. Problems of child abuse and alcohol and drug dependence have steadily assumed greater importance.
There has been significant growth in employer-sponsored welfare programs in the private sector and service-purchase schemes linking public, voluntary, and private agencies, accompanied by increasing use of paid volunteers. The promotion of for-profit entrepreneurial services and decentralization of funding and policy management from federal to state agencies is intended to diversify still further the mixed economy of welfare that typifies the personal social services of the United States.
In both the United States and Canada special treatment programs have been developed for the prevention and treatment of child abuse, but lower priority has been given to preschool and family support programs designed to encourage better parenting and child development. The U.S. Child Abuse Coordinating Program set up in 1972 is based on an interservice approach involving municipal and quasi-public bodies, one of which provides the agency officers. American child protection law is extremely complex because of its dual federal and state components, and, although the best interests of children are generally paramount, it is thought difficult to consider them in isolation from those of the parents.
The mental health care legislation of 1970 and 1972 stepped up the funding of community mental health centres in poor areas, but it was not until the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 that priority federal funding began to reach those with the worst economic or ethnic disadvantages among the chronically ill, the retarded, and the elderly. There is a growing problem of homelessness among the more mobile patients discharged from mental hospitals, who need higher incomes and more social support if they are to resume independent lives.
Social services for elderly American citizens constitute a typical mixed economy of welfare. Amendments to the Older Americans Act of 1965 have led to the establishment of a network of more than 600 Area Agencies on Aging, which are area-wide planning and coordinating agencies. Locally sponsored senior citizen centres provide group meals and counseling, homemaker, information, referral, transportation, educational, legal, and recreational services. There are also a strong volunteer sector and a rapidly expanding private market. Provisions for the frail elderly under Medicaid and Medicare do not include long-term social care, and the poorest groups are dependent on social insurance and social assistance for the requisite finance. Many not-for-profit and for-profit agencies have developed nursing-home and other special housing schemes that are linked to various reverse-equity mortgage options. Nearly three-quarters of all the states have tax policies designed to reduce the cost of independent living for elderly homeowners with low incomes.
Administration of services in the United Kingdom and Australia
In the United Kingdom, as a result of the Seebohm reforms of 1970–71, the funding and organization of personal social services are highly centralized at the local authority level. In each local authority a single social services department serves all categories of client and welfare need. In Scotland, however, the probation service is separate. Personal social services are provided from catchment area offices, although some local authorities delegate this responsibility to small “patch” teams serving neighbourhoods. Roughly half of local authority funding comes from the central government; nevertheless, within strict cash limits, the local authorities exercise wide discretionary powers over the organization and deployment of personal social services. Social work training is centrally regulated, and there is only one (general) qualification in professional social work.
Although income maintenance was transferred to the central government in 1948, local-authority social workers continue to provide small cash grants to families with children when shortage of money is deemed likely to cause a family breakdown. In Britain the separation of income maintenance and social work services was part of an overall policy designed to end the historically stigmatizing association between public assistance and social work in particular and the more general association between poor relief and social welfare. It was also hoped that social work and the other personal social services would shed their low status and become more acceptable in all sectors of society. This philosophy was adopted by the Seebohm Report of 1968 and reflected in the Local Government and Social Services Act (1970), but the resources for a truly universal network of services oriented toward preventing problems were not forthcoming.
British child care law developed in piecemeal fashion over a long period. Nevertheless, it places a clear obligation on the local authorities to protect children at risk and to receive them into care when their welfare is at stake because their parents are deemed unable to provide satisfactory care. Under certain circumstances local authorities can assume full parental rights until a child reaches the age of 18. Separate provisions are made for compulsory admission into care through juvenile court proceedings, when children are “in need of care and control” on various defined grounds, or through matrimonial, divorce, separation, wardship, or criminal proceedings. Care orders may also be issued under the Children and Young Persons Act of 1969, as amended by the Criminal Justice Act of 1982, when children or young persons are found guilty of an offense that, if committed by an adult, would be punishable by imprisonment. Observation and assessment centres and secure community homes with educational facilities on the premises are run by the Department of Health and Social Security.
There are strict regulations on boarding out children in care with foster parents, including thorough investigation of prospective homes, frequent inspections, and the keeping of case records. In English law, adoption is an almost complete and irrevocable transfer of a child from one family to another. Adoption orders are made in the Magistrates’, County, or High courts, and adoption proceedings can be initiated only by registered, not-for-profit adoption agencies (including local authorities).
Although English law makes extensive provision for the protection of children, personal social services have a well-established tradition of working with children and families on the basis of a cooperative partnership whenever possible. This tradition includes avoidance of recourse to legal intervention or residential care unless it is in the best interests of the children concerned.
With regard to the mentally ill and mentally handicapped, the British Mental Health Act of 1959 anticipated the trend toward voluntary treatment and voluntary hospital admission, and legislation in 1982 introduced even stricter criteria for the protection of patients’ rights. Since 1983 certain procedures in the admission and discharge of mentally ill patients have belonged to a new category of specially trained social workers. In cases of compulsory detention, patients have a strengthened right of appeal to the Mental Health Review Tribunals, and there are special provisions for the guardianship of certain types of discharged patients. There are still serious deficiencies in community care for the mentally ill or handicapped as well as the elderly and the physically handicapped, but various joint government and local-authority funding schemes have helped to reduce the numbers in institutional care.
Services for the elderly and the physically handicapped account for roughly half of all British local-authority personal social service expenditure, mainly because of the steady increase in the numbers of the frail elderly and the high cost of care for the minority who live in residential homes. Extensive efforts have been made to improve the quality of domiciliary support, but relatives carry the main burden of home care. There are special housing schemes for the elderly sponsored by statutory, voluntary, and private agencies, and a growing number of local authorities employ paid volunteers to visit elderly people and help them with a range of daily tasks. Perhaps the best guarantee of independence in old age, however, is an adequate income from social security.
The formal voluntary sector makes its own important contribution to the care of all the major need groups, although it is heavily dependent on direct and indirect financial support from both central and local governments. Within the voluntary sector the churches have always played a major part in the provision of both community and residential care. Nevertheless as statutory funding has lagged well behind demand, the private market, especially with respect to services for the elderly, has begun to expand.
In Australia the state governments and the local authorities, with some federal funding, have the main responsibility for personal social services. Each state has a welfare department, usually an amalgamation of the former children’s and public relief departments, providing a general range of casework and community services. Some of the municipal authorities also provide welfare services in conjunction with their public health, educational, housing, and legal aid services. In addition there is a well-established tradition of volunteer work that is subsidized by statutory bodies, sometimes provided on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis. Some of the religiously based charities, such as the Brotherhood of Lawrence, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and the Salvation Army, are pioneers in work with severely deprived groups.
Administration of services in other developed countries
France
In France personal social services are not administratively autonomous. A variety of social workers and social care workers are employed by other major public services, such as social security, hospitals, community health care, education, housing, and the courts. There are several types of social worker, including the family social worker (assistante sociale) and other specialists in child protection, medical social work, and court work; the homemaker (travailleuse familiale); child development workers specializing in the care of handicapped children; social allowance guardians with special responsibilities for families in serious financial difficulties; and the community worker (animateur socioculturel), who serves neighbourhood groups. Apart from the statutory services there is an extensive network of semipublic agencies (caisses) based on trade unions, family associations, and religious denominations, as well as a variety of independent, not-for-profit organizations financed by state grants.
The French system of child care is explicitly family-oriented. It is based on services financed by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, in cooperation with other family income support services. The judicial services are called upon only if parents refuse to cooperate. Social workers are employed in maternal and child health centres and in municipal and family allowance agencies. Special child-protection officers work closely with pediatric nurses in cases of actual or suspected child abuse, and the procedures for removing children from the home and for providing substitute care are in principle similar to those in Britain. Child care services are unified at département level, and there is close liaison between the courts and specialized medical services in child protection work.
The reforms of the 1960s and ’70s improved the quality of French social services not only for children but also for the mentally and physically handicapped and the elderly. Since the late 1950s domiciliary care and sheltered housing provisions have been strengthened and diversified, objectives that were upheld in the Laroque Report of 1960 and in the provisions of the Sixth (1971–75) and Seventh (1976–80) Plans. The plans specifically referred to the growing need for more trained staff and for more sheltered housing, residential homes, and nursing homes in addition to increased community care and more generous income support within a better-coordinated framework of health and welfare programs at neighbourhood, local, and regional levels. Social care services for the mentally ill are mainly controlled by the health and employment authorities, but the social workers attached to the regional and local caisses play a major part in the provision and coordination of community care.
Germany
In the Federal Republic of Germany there is a long tradition of cooperation between the statutory and voluntary sectors and between these formal agencies and the informal networks of family and neighbourhood care. These arrangements exemplify the principle of subsidiarity (the belief that informal care should, whenever possible, take precedence over state intervention) in European Roman Catholic welfare philosophy, although in Germany all the major religious denominations play an important part in social welfare service. The health care provisions of the income maintenance services do not extend to the longer term welfare needs of the elderly mentally ill or handicapped or those of the physically disabled. These are met largely from public aid. About half of the total expenditure on welfare services comes from the Aid for Care program, which channels much of its funding through the larger not-for-profit charitable organizations.
Sweden
The modern Swedish welfare state emerged from poor-law and charitable traditions in which the churches were prominent. Since the years between the two world wars, the scope and funding of statutory agencies have steadily increased. Local authorities, assisted by central government grants, provide most personal social services and a social assistance scheme, in which investigation of needs and means is undertaken by social workers. There has been a trend toward the unification of specialist agencies into local joint welfare boards, but the municipal communes still exercise considerable local discretion in the organization of their services. Although the extensive role of the state in Swedish welfare has elicited much comment, the scale of voluntary effort is equally noteworthy, as it is in Norway and Denmark.
Israel
Israel has a complex system of welfare services distributed by central ministries, with subdivisions for all the major need groups, including services for wounded soldiers and surviving dependents, a Jewish agency with special responsibilities for immigrants, and a universal labour union (Histadruth) with extensive roles in insurance and welfare and a long tradition of mutual aid based on local collectives (kibbutzim) and cooperative villages (moshavim). This has been supplemented by a network of community centres funded by the central and local governments and by membership fees and overseas donations.
Japan
Japanese social welfare provision is uniquely reliant on employer- and work-based social services, although there is also an extensive but relatively underfunded system of statutory local-authority personal social services for the major need groups. Social workers in these municipal agencies are responsible for both discretionary income support and protective social care. In major cities they cooperate with a growing number of voluntary agencies, of which the Minsei-iin is the oldest and largest. As in the case of income support, health care, and housing, access to welfare services for most Japanese workers largely depends on the size and financial stature of the organizations employing them. Although traditional familial ties are still pervasive, they are weaker in the large cities, as a result of social and geographic mobility. At the same time, the number and proportion of the dependent elderly show a marked increase. Accordingly, Japanese policy has turned toward the expansion of statutory services, and much has been done to foster neighbourhood networks of mutual aid that go beyond the traditional notions of kinship and obligation.
