Understanding Social Welfare and Development

Social Welfare

• Aims to aid individuals and groups in achieving satisfactory life standards, health, and social connections.
• Supports capacity development and well-being, harmonizing individual and community needs.
• Comprises laws, programs, benefits, and services ensuring social needs are met and the social order functions effectively.
• Provisions target:
  • Reinforcing existing systems.
  • Reducing individual and group hardships.
  • Creating innovative services.
  • Improving social structures, including new programs.
  • Combining all strategies to meet social needs.
• Includes social interventions promoting individual and societal well-being.
• Focuses on addressing social issues, developing resources, and enhancing life quality.
• It's an organized concern for all people.

Developmental Social Welfare

• Occurs when social welfare specifically addresses social development.
• Involves institutionalizing essential services and encourages self-reliance to improve living conditions.
• Development means growth and positive change.
• Requires combining resources to overcome challenges to realize human potential.
• It is considered the “first-line of support".
• Enables people to navigate economic and social changes and ensures institutional stability and progress.
• Encompasses the well-being of society members.
• Addresses physical, mental, emotional, social, economic, and spiritual dimensions.
• Implementation varies across countries based on their capacity to meet needs.
• All countries seek to ensure basic health and social needs are met.
• Social welfare systems differ due to varied histories, values, and goals.

Goals of Social Welfare

• Humanitarian and Social Justice Goal:
  • Rooted in democratic ideals, focusing on aiding the most vulnerable.
  • Reforms institutions for a humane and just society.
• Social Control Goal:
  • Recognizes that deprived groups may act out against society.
  • Secures society against threats to life, property, and stability.
  • Uses reciprocity (linked to work) and individualism (linked to responsibility) to maintain order.
• Economic and Development Goal:
  • Prioritizes programs increasing production and economic development.
  • Benefits able-bodied and relatively well-off community members.

Levels of Developmental Social Welfare

• Macro Level:
  • Formulates laws, policies, programs, and benefits for social justice.
  • Supports employed youth, working mothers, and employee benefits.
  • Protects against exploitation.
  • Conducts research for social welfare planning and policy/legislation.
• Micro Level:
  • Re-orients existing social welfare services.
  • Establishes services responsive to societal changes.
  • Identifies social welfare aspects of development programs.

Functions of Social Welfare

• Rehabilitative:
  • Aims to restore clients to normal social functioning.
  • Supports people with disabilities and relocates disaster-affected families.
  • Improves conditions beyond just normal.
• Preventive:
  • Focuses on programs addressing issues before they cause lasting harm.
  • Supports full potential development.
• Developmental:
  • Provides opportunities for productive roles and well-being.
  • Emphasizes planned social change and essential resources for social functioning.

Evolved Social Welfare Concepts

• Residual vs. Institutional:
  • Old concepts provided welfare only when people couldn't help themselves, termed "Residual".
  • Modern views offer "Institutional" support, always accessible for development.
• Safety Net:
  • Shifts from selective aid to universal equal opportunity support.
• Stigmatizing vs. Non-Stigmatizing:
  • The state ensures well-being, granting service rights, shifting away from stigmatization.
• Temporary vs. Permanent:
  • Changes from short-term charity to long-term citizen rights and public concern.
• Limited vs. Optimum:
  • Seeks optimal conditions for nurturing potential, moving beyond minimum survival.
• Individual vs. Social Reform:
  • Addresses systemic imbalances, not just individual character defects.
• Welfare of the Poor vs. Welfare of the Society:
  • Aims to enhance society's overall welfare instead of focusing solely on the poor.

Collectivity and Perspectives

• Social welfare involves diverse contributions from various professions.
• It is a vehicle for emergencies and a last resort to help people become self-sufficient.

Direct Mandate

• The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is mandated to address citizen's welfare.
• RA 5416 (Social Welfare Act of 1968) elevated the Social Welfare Administration to a Department.
• The Local Government Code of 1991 (RA 7160) impacted the roles/functions of the DSWD.
• Executive Order No. 15 (1998) redirected DSWD's functions.
• Executive Order No. 221 (2003) amended EO 15, redefining DSWD's mandate, roles, powers, and functions.

DSWD's Mandate, Roles, Powers, and Functions

• Mandate:
  • Provides aid to LGUs, NGOs, NGAs, POs, and civil society to reduce poverty.
  • Empowers disadvantaged groups and implements programs not devolved to LGUs.
• Roles:
  • Functions as an enabler, implementer, developer/monitor, licensor, and accreditor.
• Powers and Functions:
  • Sets standards, accredits, consults, and monitors social welfare activities.
  • Implements residential care, pilot programs, special services, statutory programs, and crisis intervention.

Social Services

• Organized activities that convert, protect, and improve human resources.
• Aims to help individuals adjust to their environment, meet needs, and improve conditions through cooperation.

Social Assistance

• It provides resources to meet basic needs, acting as a safety net for those unable to support themselves.

Social Work

• Profession that facilitates relationships and adjustments between individuals and their environment.
• Uses social work methods to benefit individuals and society.
• Interventions change social situations to meet the needs of at-risk people.
• Accountable activity enabling identification of differences affecting individuals, families and groups.
• Supports equality, and protects the vulnerable.
• Social work promotes social welfare and responds to need, promoting equal opportunities.
• It adheres to social justice, human rights, responsibility, and respect for diversity.
• Empowers people to overcome challenges and enhance well-being.

Social Worker

• Professional aids vulnerable groups in improving their lives.
• Social workers prioritize activities promoting independence and preventative functions.
• Employs systematic problem-solving and interventions: Intercession-Mediation and Mobilizing Resources.
• Social workers mobilize people and identify, train, and assist leaders.
• They facilitate access and participate in welfare planning, implementing advocacy.
• They evaluate impacts and examine social-work practices.

Need

• Condition where something necessary or desirable is lacking.
• Basic to human existence, requiring fulfillment, as necessary to avoid deprivation.

Understanding Need

• Encompasses problems people face.
• Requires specific responses.
• It is a relationship between problems and service availability.

Categories of Needs

• Material needs.
• Non-material needs.

Taxonomy Of Need

• Normative: Defined by experts.
• Felt: What users want.
• Expressed: Needs combined with action.
• Comparative: Needs arise from circumstances.

Maslow’s Hierarchy

• Needs must be satisfied in order.
• Lower needs must be met before higher needs can be addressed.

Problem

• A problem is an unmet need affecting many, stemming from societal dysfunction.
• It impacts individual social functioning and involves undesirable conditions evaluated with a clear basis.

Social Problem

• Arises from societal tensions.
• Reflects people's perceptions and common human needs.

Types of Social Problems

• Closed/Uncontested
• Open/Contested

Concepts

• Manifest need.
• Person-centered.
• Universal and singular.
• Cause and consequence.
• Institutional lack.
• Challenge and opportunity.
• Requires Social Welfare services and Social Worker's help.

Social Provisions

• They ensure resources for well-being and are extended through:
  • Social Agencies: Public, private, or quasi-public organizations promoting well-being.
  • Individual and Group Efforts: Volunteer efforts responding to community needs.
  • Major Social Institutions: Meeting human needs, adapting to change.

Social Welfare Programs

• A planned action to improve well-being.
• Includes subsidies for low-income families and a programming process.

Social Development

• Planned social change promoting well-being alongside economic development.
• Links to economic development, has an interdisciplinary focus, and explicit goals.
• Aims for betterment, is progressive, and results from policies and planning.
• It enhances capabilities for improved living via: resources, opportunities, and equitable distribution.
• It raises living standards, distributes income, enhances socio-economic strata, and promotes mobility.

Economic Development

• Net gain of money flow into a community.
• Achieved through surplus production after needs are met.

Policy

• Plans turned into actions.
• Principles guide actions, chosen to guide decisions.
• A rule clarifying goals, values, and ideals.
• Distinguishes action from intent, differentiating from choices.
• Frames organizational activities, ensuring stability.

Social Policy

• Collective decisions promoting well-being.
• Addresses security, education, health, and responses to global challenges.
• Aims at identifying how to reduce inequality.

Social Welfare Policy

• Government actions affecting quality of life.
• Encompasses taxation, defense, and assistance.
• The direct social worker's capacity to act is constrained by their specific environment.

Ideologies: Perspectives

• Social welfare reflects tensions and contradictions due to competing ideologies.
• Welfare results from reforming institutions and acts as social control.

Conservatism

• Values individual responsibility and minimal government intervention.
• Opposes change, trusts tradition, and views people distrustfully.

Liberalism

• Supports government involvement to protect rights and promotes social justice.
• Believes in progress and nurturing environments.

Radicalism

• Sees the system as incapable of providing justice.
• Advocates for structural changes for equality.
• Examples: Poverty stemming from exploitation, benefiting higher classes.

Desired End Goals Based on Ideologies

• Radical: Structural change to institutions.
• Liberal: Reform that creates a universal safety net.
• Conservative: Individual responsibility and charity.

Skills for Social Workers

• Analyze, propose, advocate, and administer policy-based programs.
• Deliver services in face-to-face interactions, requiring direct practice skills.