Comparative social welfare or comparative social policy may be defined as the comparative study of welfare states, policies, and programs. Social workers have been instrumental in the development of the field of comparative social welfare and continue to make significant contributions to its international knowledge and practice base. With roots in Europe and the United States in the 1960s, comparative social welfare research evolved from descriptive case studies of welfare programs to causal and quantitative studies, all aimed at understanding and improving domestic social welfare policy through comparison with other nations. The 1990s marked a significant increase in the number of studies on comparative social welfare motivated largely by interest from the European Union, though the field has benefited from contributions by a global community of scholars since then. Although the field continues to evolve, comparative social welfare can roughly be split between theoretical studies of welfare state development and empirical studies of welfare policies, programs, and outcomes. Studies in comparative social welfare can be classified by their method of comparison, nature of comparison, and level of comparison.
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Comparative Social Welfare
Neil Gilbert and C. Taylor Brown
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Foster Care for Unaccompanied Immigrant and Refugee Children and Youth
Robert G. Hasson III, Kerri Evans, and Thomas M. Crea
Unaccompanied children are immigrants under 18 years old without a parent or guardian at their time of arrival to their host countries. In the United States, the numbers of unaccompanied children arriving at the Southern border have steadily increased since 2012, with a record number arriving in 2023. Many unaccompanied children migrate to the United States to escape extreme poverty and community violence or to reunite with family members. Like other displaced populations, unaccompanied children are vulnerable to further violence and exploitation during their migration journeys and after their arrival to the United States. Yet this population is uniquely vulnerable, given their developmental needs and their often complicated health and mental-health challenges.
The vast majority of unaccompanied children (98.9%) are placed with community sponsors, and follow-up about them is essentially impossible. A small number enter foster care under the auspices of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), through either the long-term foster care program or the unaccompanied refugee minors program. The foster care process and related policies have been put in place to ensure the safety and well-being of unaccompanied children who require foster care in the United States. Research has analyzed key policies that affect unaccompanied children, ORR’s foster care system in the United States, and the placement process and well-being outcomes. Future policy should be developed in ways that protect the best interests of unaccompanied children in the context of rapidly changing circumstances related to global migration.
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Female Genital Mutilation and Social Work Interventions
Suresh Jungari
Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injuries to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. This coercive practice is prevalent in many parts of the world and is found in developed and developing countries. However, FGM is more prevalent in African countries and some Asian countries. Substantial evidence shows that FGM has no health benefits; it is mainly governed by community traditions and cultures and is carried out on girls before they reach the age of 15. FGM practice has continued because of social, cultural, and religious beliefs and strong norms that produce gender inequality. The practice of FGM can cause severe bleeding, infections, psychological illness, and infertility; most importantly, it can lead to severe consequences during childbirth. FGM is a practice that violates the human and reproductive rights of women. Legal and social interventional efforts should be directed to curb the practice as soon as possible to mitigate the devastating consequences of FGM. Efforts in educating communities and empowering women could be sustainable solutions.
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Global Development Actors (Public, Private, Corporate)
Smitha Rao, Javier Reyes-Martinez, and Carlos Andrade-Guzmán
The global development landscape has witnessed a transformation with previously held development roles and priorities changing and increasingly overlapping with others. This is compounded by the intersection of emergent challenges, such as the climate crisis and economic downturn, that create additional inequities, making the landscape increasingly complex to navigate. The social work profession has actively engaged with international entities through service provision, education, and advocacy. Social workers have historically recommended actions or changes on behalf of individuals, communities, and groups, guided by principles of social justice, dignity, and worth of each person, as well as the importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence while interfacing with development efforts in multiple other ways. Development as a topic on a global scale emerged in response to evolving conceptualizations beyond the idea of development as growth alone. For instance, originating from development economics and initially focused on modernizing new nation-states at the end of colonialism, social development aimed to achieve economic growth as the primary means of development. Practice and scholarship on development have also moved from an “international development” framework to a “global development” framing to highlight the interdependence among various societal actors rather than a linear pathway. Finally, sustainable development and its derivative, sustainability, have become central components of the current developmental discourse due to their commitment to addressing the present needs without jeopardizing future generations’ capacity to fulfill their own. To understand this complex landscape better, it is important to identify the various actors in global development and the differential goals, strengths, and constraints they bring to the table. The public sector is the traditional source of funding and action for global development projects worldwide, with governments at all levels playing a central role in resource provision, policy setting, and program implementation. The private sector, encompassing nongovernmental organizations, civil society and community-based organizations, philanthropic foundations and entities, and social entrepreneurs focused on social initiatives, has increasingly become involved in global development. Relatedly, the corporate sector, too, has emerged as a key player with a different structure and access to infrastructural and other resources. With individual strengths and constraints, these global development actors play specific roles and often collaborate to address social and developmental causes. At the same time, important complexities and shortcomings across these sectors need to be taken into cognizance to ensure continued efforts toward global development. The global development landscape offers numerous prospects for social workers to apply their knowledge and professional expertise. An understanding of this landscape equips social workers in developing a holistic approach to cross-sectoral development initiatives.
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Critical Race Studies
Larry Ortiz and Susan Nakaoka
Critical race theory originated in law as a framework for legal studies analyzing the United States’ persistent racial divide. As an upstream theory, it focuses on the underlying social structures and cultural assumptions upholding White supremacy. Since the early 2000s, social work scholars have begun to apply critical race theory tenets to all aspects of the profession, from education to practice. Considering social work’s historic commitment to social justice, and the most recent declarations of the Council on Social Work Education as committed to antiracist education, this article advances the idea that critical race studies in social work is necessary, but the relationship requires serious and ongoing interrogation to unearth the profession’s White supremist roots.
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Climate Change and Macro Social Work
Kelly Smith
The compounding and escalating effects of environmental degradation, which include climate change, threaten the human-earth system with severe implications for the future of macro social work. Systems of power and oppression, including racial, economic, and gendered inequities, are exacerbated by environmental changes with significant impacts on human rights, public health, and various measures of well-being. While climate change is often not the root cause of inequality, it compounds existing inequities, making it substantially more difficult for marginalized populations to rebound from escalations of the myriad acute and chronic consequences due to climate change and environmental collapse. Experiences of environmental change consistently highlight the expanding resource and resiliency gaps among vulnerable populations, leading to disproportionate repercussions felt initially and, to an arduous degree, by marginalized groups. Simultaneously, these circumstances create opportunities for social workers to intervene and advance the causes of social justice. Macro-level interventions and climate solutions can emerge from social work development and support of policies and interventions that overcome short-term thinking to produce beneficial outcomes for populations and the environment by building capacity in the human-earth system and economic policy systems. Social work is ideally situated to confront climate change by balancing immediate needs with long-term ecological sustainability and relying on its historical understanding of systems to improve policy development and practical climate change mitigation approaches.
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International Community Practice
Cindy Sousa and Tamarah Moss
As social work continues the ongoing work of developing frameworks for community practice, globalization and the increase in multicultural societies make urgent the need to consult international models. Community practice must center attention on building and sustaining relationships; determining who defines need and who controls the practices within the social work cycle of engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation; and maintaining community-centered practices that grapple with power dynamics in terms of status, resources, and culture. A learning approach is needed within international social work collaborations, characterized by an ethics of respect for sovereignty, cultural integrity, and the ways historical, political, cultural, and sociocultural contexts inform practice. Solidarity, authentic collaboration, and a respect for individual and collective autonomy and grassroots power are key features of community practice in international settings. The goal of the comparative perspective is for social workers to be better able to apply an international perspective to the building of theory and practice modalities within community practice.
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Social Work and Social Policy in Namibia
Priscilla A. Gibson, Janet Ananias, Rachel Freeman, and Namoonga Chilwalo
Social work and social policy are intertwined in the Republic of Namibia and heavily influenced by its complex colonial sociopolitical history, struggle for human rights, and progress toward social development. These factors inform how the social and human needs of Namibians are being met. A human rights lens was adopted in 1990 by a democratic government that guided the delivery of social services to a diverse ethnic population. Namibia has successfully integrated social work into its society, supported by (a) a social justice mandate, (b) a capacity-building framework, and (c) Vision 2030. Social and human service needs are provided naturally by indigenous families and communities, and formal services are provided by governmental and nongovernmental agencies. This article consists of an overview of the socio-historical and political contexts of social work and social policies in this emerging democracy, along with special attention to four challenging and interrelated areas of social work practice including poverty, language and national identity, intergenerational caregiving and the Coronavirus pandemic.
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Immigrant Communities in the United States and Macro Practice
Laura Folkwein
Macro social work practice with immigrant organizations and communities in the United States requires a basic understanding of the underlying values and history of U.S. immigration laws and policy. U.S. immigration policy frequently reflects multiple and conflicting interests and values in labor needs, global politics, family unification, and national security, and policies often shift in response to political leadership, ideology, and public opinion. Some areas of the history of U.S. immigration laws and various macro social work approaches to U.S. immigration policy include (a) advocacy at local, state, and federal levels; (b) anti-immigrant legislation proposed at the state level; and (c) collaboration between grassroots organizations and local leaders to build policies and practices that support immigrants.
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Indigenous and Tribal Communities
Megan G. Sage
Indigenous populations have experienced hundreds of years of historical trauma, systemic racism, and oppression since colonization began in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Settler colonialism has created and continues to perpetuate historical and ongoing trauma and systemic racism in Indigenous populations. Despite considerable diversity and resilience among Indigenous populations globally, there is a clear pattern of significant disparities and disproportionate burden of disease compared to other non-Indigenous populations, including higher rates of poverty, mortality, substance use, mental health and health issues, suicide, and lower life expectancy at birth. Substantial gaps related to access to healthcare and service utilization exist, particularly in low-income Indigenous communities. Implementation and sustainment of White dominant-culture frameworks of care in Indigenous communities perpetuate these systems of oppression. Development and implementation of culturally informed services that address historical trauma and oppression, and systematically integrate concepts of resiliency, empowerment, and self-determination into care, are issues of policy as well as practice in social work. The co-creation and subsequent implementation, monitoring, and sustainment of effective systems of care with Indigenous populations are essential in addressing health disparities and improving outcomes among Indigenous populations globally.
