Social Welfare Programs

5 The Evolution of America’s Present-Day Welfare Policies and Programs Since 1935 America’s social welfare system has grown beyond both the values and the governmental structures that originally supported it. Programs that once had clear-cut objectives have become atomized into fragments that no longer fit with the original welfare purposes or the objectives of America’s other institutions. In other words, present social welfare is out of harmony with America. For example, unemployment compensation, originally designed to provide a transition from forced unemployment into a new job situation, often prolongs unemployment for persons who are reluctant to take jobs that may be beneath their skill levels. Understanding contemporary social welfare and its development allows insight into present-day welfare dilemmas that goes beyond the usual rhetoric of welfare reform debates. This chapter shows how the original Social Security Act programs have gradually been transformed into today’s public welfare programs. Throughout the changes of the past sixty years, the philosophy about who should provide welfare has shifted back and forth. At first the federal role in welfare was to be only temporary, in contrast with the insurance programs. Yet federal administrations continued to recommend federal welfare expansion. The Social Security Act established the architecture for America’s welfare system, and this original design (discussed in Chapter 4) had a limited welfare scope. These architectural features of American welfare establish a federal activity restricted by constitutional authority, with accompanying intergovernmental limitations, incapable of pursuing broad-based national welfare objectives. Most federal welfare initiatives take place through federal grants-in-aid to states. Even though states must reshape their welfare laws to conform to grant-in-aid requirements, fundamental legislative authority for most welfare activity continues to rest in state statutes

Privately owned apart-ments are officially designated by local housing authorities as Section 8 res-idences and are available to voucher recipients. Although the mandate for housing aid comes from federal public policy, administration is often local. In recent years, some localities have contracted with private agencies to oversee the day-to-day operations of housing properties. The Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a federal program that provides nutrition and health assistance to low-income pregnant and new mothers, infants, and children up to the age of five years. The program includes vouchers that can be redeemed for nutritious foods such as milk and eggs and for educational programs. Children from low-income fami-lies can receive breakfasts or lunches at participating schools through the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). As you expand your social work experience, you will encounter numerous other programs. In addition to federal, state, tribal, and local public efforts, there are private nonprofit and for-profit programs. There are social welfare services that cover numerous concerns, including assistance for victims of vio-lence, efforts to promote literacy, programs that feed and house people who are homeless, programs to subsidize the cost of medications, and other efforts to help people and communities improve the quality of life. Social workers are leaders in these efforts and therefore need to understand the constellation of Social Welfare Programs and their historical evolution. The History of the Social Work Profession LO 5 People helping other people in need is not a new concept. For thousands of years, friends have helped bring in the harvest and care for farm animals or have watched other people’s children. But paying people a salary to help oth-ers in need is relatively new.

Welfare program rules may be likened to a text that, for better or worse, encodes the values of particular forms of a family ethic and a work ethic. 12 In every era, public policy has served not only as a means of material assistance, but also as a potent instrument of social control. Those who flout accepted social standards are subject to punitive treatment. The Historical Context of U.S. Welfare Policy 51 All these features of welfare policy can be detected in the AFDC program. It originally came into existence as ADC (Aid to Dependent Children) under Title IV of the Social Security Act. This measure, part of the Second New Deal, was signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Au-gust 14, 1935. Although historians universally consider the act a major so-cial policy landmark, it would be a serious mistake to view this first comprehensive federal welfare program for families as completely discon-tinuous from previous policy developments on the state and local levels. Theda Skocpol alerts us of the need to revise the conventional wisdom re-garding the narrative of social policy. The standard version suggests that the New Deal represents a “big bang” of social reform consisting of many un-precedented “extensions of federal power into the country’s economic and social life.” 13 A less familiar but very influential story is that of the an-tecedent phases of U.S. social provision, something that proceeded on two fronts that Skocpol links by noting their common conceptual rationale. They were based upon solidarities of gender as opposed to those solidari-ties of class position that accounted for the development of advanced wel-fare states in many European nations. 14 The first was a system of generous military pensions for veterans of the Civil War, adopted in stages during the Reconstruction Era and beyond.