Understanding Social Welfare, Services, and Work

• Social Welfare encompasses actions for society's well-being, characterized by Gertrude Wilson as an organized concern for everyone.
• Walter Friedlander defines Social Welfare as the organized system of social services and institutions.
• Elizabeth Wickenden states that social welfare includes laws, benefit programs, and services ensuring that social needs are met for the population to function better.

Social Services

• Refers to assistance programs and activities provided under various organizations that address people's needs and problems
• Services can range from general community support to specialized help for specific groups with unique issues.

Social Work

• A profession focused on people's adaptation to their environment, addressing the relationship between individuals or groups and their social situations
• Social work uses scientific knowledge and skills for problem-solving, offered as a professional service to individuals, groups, or communities.

Social Work Theories

• Assist social workers in analyzing situations, understanding clients, creating interventions, predicting outcomes, and assessing results
• Theories enable social workers to investigate behavior causes and identify potential solutions.

Social Learning Theory

• Also known as the social cognitive theory, this theory, developed by Albert Bandura, states that learning occurs through observation and imitation.
• Effective social learning requires wanting to emulate someone, paying attention, remembering actions, the opportunity to repeat the behavior, and motivation.
• Social workers use this theory to understand role model influence and create interventions using positive examples, and encouraging new behaviors.

Systems Theory

• Posits that people's actions are influenced by interconnected systems rather than individual isolation
• Behavior is shaped by varied factors like family, friends, community settings, religion, economic status, and home environment
• Those applying systems theory try to understand systemic influences on clients and pinpoint system failures.

Psychosocial Development Theory

• Proposed by Erik Erikson, this states that personality develops through a series of stages
• Erikson's framework includes an eight-stage model
• Understanding a client's current developmental stage helps social workers address their challenges.

Psychodynamic Theory

• Proposed by Sigmund Freud, this centers on people's biological urges for gratification
• Processes outside conscious awareness and rooted in childhood shape these drives, affecting behavior with actions related to aggression, sex, and self-preservation
• This assists in understanding unconscious motivations and the impact of early experiences on current behavior.

Social Exchange Theory

• Proposes that relationships are based on weighing costs against benefits, where individuals seek to maximize their gains and reciprocate received benefits
• Relationships end if the risks outweigh the rewards, and power dynamics depend on the resources each person brings
• Social workers use to understand client relationships and decisions to maintain or leave them.

Rational Choice Theory

• Helps explain individual decisions by assessing risks, costs, and benefits
• Suggests people make logical choices after weighing costs versus benefits
• Social workers use to understand the decision-making processes and motivations of clients.

Social Protection

• Encompasses policies and programs aimed at reducing poverty and vulnerability
• Intends to improve the social standing and rights of marginalized groups
• Aims to promote livelihoods, protect against risks, and enhance capacity to manage problems

Objectives

• Protect from declining income/consumption due to risks.
• Strengthen adaptation for better living standards.
• Expand income opportunities and human capital investments.
• Sustain living standards despite risks.

Risk

• Defined as uncertain events that may cause damage to well-being, leading to poverty
• Risks are widespread and diverse, each needing specific responses
• Understanding risk types requires comprehensive information to tailor effective interventions.

Types of Risk

• Individual and Life-cycle Risk: Consists of both age-related changes in needs and shifts due to life events like widowhood or unemployment, leading to role and responsibility adjustments
• Economic Risk: Risks related to economic shifts, such as price increases, unemployment, or agricultural struggles, that affect wage earners, the self-employed, and small businesses
• Environmental and Natural Risk: Risks arising from natural disasters and environmental conditions like extreme weather, pollution, and deforestation
• Social and Governance Risk: Risks from exclusion from mainstream economic benefits, rule of law breakdowns, or poor governance, negatively affecting communities and families.

Principles of Risk Mitigation

• Effective mitigation requires tailored approaches based on the specific risk
• Protective: Ensuring basic needs are met with measures like price controls and scholarships.
• Preventive: Implementing actions before risks occur, such as vaccination and disaster preparedness.
• Mitigating: Providing mechanisms to reduce the impact, like crop or health insurance.
• Coping: Alleviating the impact of risk events through relief and rehabilitation.
• Adapting: Preparing for future risks through disaster preparedness.
• Promotive: Helping people save and invest and promoting diversification of livelihood.
• Transformative: Strengthening adaptive capacity through policy and program reforms that promote minority rights, remove discrimination, and provide social support

Key Interventions

• Labor Market Interventions: Efforts to improve job opportunities and worker protections, including job placement, livelihood programs, and emergency employment
• Social Insurance: Premium-based programs for mitigating income risks and promoting financial stability
• Social Welfare: Programs aimed at providing basic needs and support to various vulnerable groups, including interventions for those facing crisis, violence, or marginalization
• Social Safety Nets: Temporary measures to address specific risks affecting vulnerable populations, exemplified by responses to natural disasters

AmBisyon Natin 2040

• Represents the long-term aspirations of the Philippines for the next 25 years
• Serves as a guide for development planning across multiple administrations.

Goals

• A set of life goals for the country and its people
• The plan differs from a plan, because the plan shows the strategies to achieve set goals.
• The vision guides the future.

Social Development (by 2028)

• Filipinos are envisioned to live long, healthy lives in quality communities, supported by opportunities for lifelong learning, all while growing the well-being of the nation to become healthy, smart, and innovative people.
• Lifelong learning is key to developing capabilities
• Plans should be made to include suitable, inclusive, and strong environments promoting economic vitality.

Boost Health

• Health for Filipinos is fundamental to the goals of AmBisyon Natin 2040
• Filipinos will enjoy strong, growing lives because they will live, work, and learn in supportive communities with ensured access to quality health services.

Improve Education and Lifelong Learning

• Filipinos envision to also be very smart and innovative with the focus on learning poverty
• Lifelong learning will become instrumentl in the growth and protection of the Filipino families

Establish Livable Communities

• This will support the goals of ensuring that Filipinos are strongly rooted and comfortable
• Aims to improve human communities in a method that provides fair, equal, and inclusive chance for the improvement of well-being while adding to the economic energy of the community

Gender Perspective

• This approach requires governments to make sure that the social protection programs are well designed and carefully implemented
• There should be careful monitoring
• Programmes should reflect the certain needs of women through the different phases of their lives
• Programes must reflect the care role of women
• Programmes must reflect the differences in access to services and productive work between men and women

Gender equality

• Gender equality must act as the building block in the establishment and maintenance of social protection services and frameworks.
• Protection programs must make sure that measures made to promote gender equality do not result in the unintended effect of enabling gendered divides of labor

Important steps to adopt to support gender equality

• Promote the use of gender sensitive public services, as well as strong infrastructure, to reduce the pressures on women
• Programs should ensure that all the difficulties of women's and girls' inaccess to the job market and their capabilities are overcome
• Include processes that will address the burdens placed on women

GAD in the Phillipines

• Focuses on making sure that women's concerns are fully integrated into the execution and monitorint of programs for equal benefit for both genders
• Assesses all implications for a women in any planned initiatives

Policy

• A plan of action agreed upon by a group, business, or government.

Social Policy

• Includes aims to better the lives of the people in a society, including areas such as: Education, Healthcare, Employment, Security, Aged care, Housing, Community services
• Also adress global challenges such as: demographic, economic and social change, as well as migration, poverty, access to healthcare, inequality and globalisation.

Public Policy

• Relates to actions that the government does to enforce what impacts the general public

Public Policy covers areas such as

• Taxation, Criminal law, Labour laws, Energy and emissions, Agriculture, Anti-corruption.

Social Welfare Policy

• Government programs that help the health of a society
• Welfare policy promotes the well-being of people, society and communities

Social Workers' Role in Social Welfare Policy

• They perform an importat role in carrying out these programs
• Individuals will reach potential

Policy Making Framework

• In summary it can be difficult to make real change due to competing views and ideas
• Policymaking is often a constant battle over the ideals that guide people on their behaviours and actions

Important steps

• Agenda Setting and Problem Definition, Policy Formulation and Adoption, Policy Implementation, Policy Evaluation

Social Welfare Legislations

• They serve to protect and promote citizens to serve those who really need like the poor and disadvantged