The focus and aim of social policy in Canada have in part been determined by the unique sociohistorical and cultural context of the country. This entry provides a brief overview of the leading factors that have contributed to the development of social policy in Canada. Emphasis is placed on the economic, social, and cultural context of the development of the country, along with the system of governance and the ideological framework among the general populace. Following this contextualization, four dominant periods of social policy are described. These include the residual period, the emerging institutional period, the institutional period, and the postinstitutional period. In each era the forces leading to specific social policy outcomes are described. These include aspects of the changing economic system and emerging cultural and social needs among the population. Key social policies in each era are introduced and described. Fundamental to each period of social policy development are the efforts of the voluntary sector. In conclusion, future trends in social policy and social welfare in Canada are discussed.
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Jean K. Quam
Edith Abbott (1876–1957) was a social worker and educator. She was Dean of the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago from 1924 to 1942 and she helped in drafting the Social Security Act of 1935.
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Rosalie Blair
Harry Morris Cassidy (1900–1951) was a Canadian academic, social reformer, civil servant, and, briefly, a politician. A pioneer in the field of social work, he was also the founding dean of the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1940s. He then worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He subsequently became dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Toronto.
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Mark J. Stern
Between 1950 and 1980, the United States developed a welfare state that in many ways was comparable to those of other advanced industrial nations. Building on its New Deal roots, the Social Security system came to provide a “social wage” to older Americans, people with disability, and the dependents of deceased workers. It created a health-care insurance system for the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. Using the tax system in innovative ways, the government encouraged the expansion of pension and health-care protection for a majority of workers and their families. By 1980, some Americans could argue that their identification as a “laggard” in the field of social provision was no longer justified.
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James Midgley
Lord William Beveridge (1879–1963) was one of the founders of the British welfare state. His report of 1942 formed the basis for the Labour Government's social policies between 1945 and 1950 and fostered the creation of Britain's national health services.
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Jean K. Quam
Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802–1887) was a writer and pioneer in the mental health movement. She lobbied national and internationally on behalf of the deaf and insane and was responsible for the establishment of 32 public and private mental health institutions.
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Sadye L. M. Logan
Frances Lomas Feldman (1912–2008), Professor Emerita at University of Southern California (USC) School of Social Work, was an indomitable force in the social work profession. Her primary research focus was the social and psychological meanings of work and money in American life. She will be remembered for her compassion and for establishing a standard of best practice to families that protected their dignity and supported their inner strengths when seeking aid.
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Mary Bricker-Jenkins, Rosemary Barbera, and Barbara Hunter-Randall Joseph
Since the beginning of the profession, radical social work has avowed a commitment to practice dedicated to advancing human rights and social and economic justice. Since the 1980s, the rise of neoliberal global capitalism has vitiated support for robust social welfare programs; its conservatizing effect on the profession has rendered the radical agenda both more urgent and more difficult. Ensuing polarization in the economic, social, and political arenas has been mirrored in the profession as well: differences widen between the micro and macro realms and privatization engulfs the public welfare arena; the epistemological bases of knowledge and prevailing theories form competing camps; the entire project of social work for social welfare is challenged as Eurocentric and implicitly white supremacist. Radical social work has responded to these challenges with innovation and energy, deriving insight from and participating in spontaneous uprisings and resistance, while engaging theoretical and practical conundrums.
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Alexis P. Tsoukalas
America’s individualistic national identity and regressive tax systems that favor corporations and the wealthy over everyday people have increasingly exacerbated inequality. Meanwhile, social welfare needs continue to outpace the resources governments employ to address them. While fiscal issues can be complex and opaque, holding governments accountable is imperative to counter long-standing oppression of those identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), women, immigrants, and others. How state governments, in particular, raise and expend revenue has a dramatic effect on the public, especially as the federal government continues to decentralize social welfare to the states. Social workers are uniquely equipped to influence this arena, given their person-in-environment view and having borne witness to the numerous ways misguided priorities have severely harmed those they are called to serve.
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Marilena Dellavalle and Carlotta Mozzone
Angela Zucconi (1914–2000) was an expert in community social work and social work training. For many years, she directed the Centro di Educazione Professionale per Assistenti Sociali, a social work education center in Rome. After an early life devoted to literature, she embraced social and political commitment after World War Two.
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Robert Carter Arnold
Bill Reid (1928–2003) was acclaimed in the social welfare field for his task-centered model—a new method and philosophy of practice for social work—which is now widely used as the basis for delivering and managing private and public social work services.
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Kenneth S. Carpenter
Robert Vinter (1921–2006) was an educator and consultant and worked at the University of Michigan School of Social Work for 31 years. He was well known for this work in the fields of juvenile delinquency and group work. He was a founding member of the National Association of Social Workers
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Jonathan Dickens
Clement Attlee was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, leading his Labour government on a radical program of postwar reconstruction. Attlee himself came from a privileged background, and the decisive influences that brought him to left-wing politics came from his time working with children and families in the East End of London, in the years before World War I. His book The Social Worker, published in 1920, drew on these experiences.
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Mark R. Rank
Poverty has been a subject of concern since the beginnings of social work. This entry reviews three key research areas. First, the extent and dynamics of poverty are examined, including the measurement of poverty, patterns of cross-sectional and comparative poverty rates, the longitudinal dynamics of poverty, and poverty as a life-course risk. Second, reasons for poverty are discussed. These are divided into individual versus structural level explanations. The concept of structural vulnerability is offered as a way of bridging key individual and structural determinants in order to better understand the existence of poverty. Third, strategies and solutions to poverty are briefly reviewed.
