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Social Welfare Policy Issue

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1. Identify the social welfare policy issue and its relevance for social work practice. Describe the major components of this policy and the issues surrounding it. For this paper, I would like to discuss the hunger issues we have in the United States. Nearly 18 million households in the US remain “food insecure” (Tanner, 2013). Being food insecure is when some does not know when or how they are going to receive their next meal. Children are not receiving the necessary nutrition they need to be able to grow and develop properly and many people in the US are becoming obese because of the unhealthy food that is available for people at such a low price. As of July of 2015, 45,480,644 people received benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition …show more content…

Through the years there have been many changes to the program as it had to compare to inflation of prices, the amount of people participating in the program and also with technology. People who were in need when the program first started would buy orange stamps that for every 1$ spent on orange you would receive $0.50 worth in blue. Though the program was around as early as 1939, the Food Stamp Act of 1964 was when the program was requested to become permanent by President Johnson and was approved. (USDA, 2014) Once the Piolet Food Stamp Program was created on May 29, 1961 Mr. and Mrs. Alderson Muncy of West Virginia were the first food stamp recipients. They were given $95 in food stamps to provide for their family of 15. (USDA, 2014) Because of such geographic expansion, participants were expanding in the FSP. In March of 1962 the amount of people in the FSP had already reached 1 million and in October 1974 it had rocketed into 15 million. (Food Research & Action center , 2015) Since the numbers had increased by so much, the program had to be changed in the early 1970. Standards were created to be used nationwide and followed clearly. Eligibility requirements and also work requirements were issued and limited households purchase requirement to 30 percent of their income. (USDA, 2014) After that the program would fluctuate and improve its services through that way. The last large …show more content…

For this particular program it is clear that the Republicans are against it and Democrats are for in. In January 2014 a bill that has been delayed over 2 years was passed in the Republicans favors which would have cuts up to $9 billion from SNAP. (Eichelberger, 2014) The Republicans thought that was not a large enough cut and Democrats thought that the cut was way too much. Though the proposed cut was $20 billion, after the 2 year long process, they compromised on $9

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