The Impact Of Welfare Reforms On Mental Health

This highlights the importance of the chosen service improvement, not only for individuals with mental health issues but for those at risk of developing mental illness and the NHS as a whole. These recommendations are present in No Health without Mental Health: A Guide for General Practice (DoH, 2012, online), The NHS Outcomes Framework 2012/13 (DoH, 2011, online), and numerous others.

Contemporary Challenges in Mental Health Care Provision and Management 2 B73M20 Cohort 09/09 Student ID: 20328

The current (US) welfare reform consists of more than cash payment that the poor US citizen could bank on. There is a monthly payment that each poor person received in spite of their ability to work. The main people who received this payment were both mothers and children. Moreover, the payment does not have time limit and those people could not remain on the welfare for the rest of their live.

Changes within the welfare system as a result of policy shifts and by new thinking, more generally in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have had many methods, but the one that seemed most important, was that welfare recipients were required to do much more to justify their income support payments than before. The foundation of this new idea is that income support programs should allow individuals to maximise their participation in work. Due to the general shift in welfare administration, the number of activity test requirements an individual in Australia must meet in order to receive unemployment benefits, has expanded significantly since the early 1990s. This complex, overly bureaucratic process means that disadvantaged individuals cannot access the income support payments they require.

Mental Health coverage prior to the Affordable Care Act was far to none. With about nearly one-third of currently covered individuals having no coverage for substance abuse disorder services and approximately 20% having no coverage for mental health services. Services such as outpatient therapy visits, impatient crisis intervention and stabilization were among many that were not offered. Since the Affordable Health Care Act has been passed more individuals are able to afford health insurance that were once uninsured. It has helped many individuals in being able to obtain medical services that were once inaccessible.

The effects of the 1996 welfare reform bill helped declined caseloads on the social and economic well-being of fragile families, single mothers, and children. Although, the welfare reform was documented for making several positive changes such as reducing poverty rates, lowering the out of-wedlock childbearing, and formulated a better family structure, it is undeniable that poverty remained high among single mothers and their children. The reality of the matter was that most welfare recipients experienced serious barriers to maintain a stable employment due to their lack of skills, not having anyone available to take care of their young children when they leave for work as well as not gaining long-time employment with decent pay to help foster the family. As a result, most poor women and children were faced with the instability of economic and social future as welfare eligibility exhausted their efforts of supporting their families.

"The U.S. Congress kicked off welfare reform nationwide last October with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, heralding a new era in which welfare recipients are required to look for work as a condition of benefits." http://www.detnews.com/1997/newsx/welfare/rules/rules.htm. Originally, the welfare system was created to help poor men, women, and children who are in need of financial and medical assistance. Over the years, welfare has become a way of life for its recipients and has created a culture of dependency. Currently, the government is in the process of reforming the welfare system. The welfare reform system’s objective was to get people off the welfare system and onto the

mental health and social care. Politicians face severe pressure from the media, service users and

All throughout history welfare services have been available to the general public. While these benefits have changed over time, the basic intentions of the welfare system has stayed the same. The welfare system provides benefits and monetary assistance to those who qualify. Different acts over the past two hundred years have been amended in order to try to help the poor, and while not all have been practical and successful, many programs have indeed done an outstanding job in aiding those in need. But, just like with all good things, there is a negative side. Even with all the reforms to try perfect the welfare system there are still some holes in it. Not only is the welfare system easy to manipulate, according to usgovernmentspending.com, eleven percent of the federal budget is spent on welfare, leaving tax payers livid. (usgovspending.com) It 's obvious there is a need for a welfare system in the United States, but with the abuse the welfare system has endured a major change needs to be seen in order to ensure the welfare system be used as efficiently as possible.

What would happen if the government made changes to the welfare system? There are approximately 110,489,000 of Americans on welfare. Many people benefit from what the system has to offer: food stamps, housing, health insurance, day care, and unemployment. Taxpayers often argue that the individuals who benefit from the system, abuse the system; however, this is not entirely true. Many of the people who receive benefits really and truly need the help. Even though some people believe welfare should be reformed, welfare should not be reformed because 40% of single mothers are poor, some elderly people do not have a support system, and college students can not afford to take extra loans.

Several states have recently begun to enact legislation that requires welfare recipients to submit to drug tests before they are eligible to receive any public assistance. The purpose of mandatory drug testing is to prevent the potential abuse of taxpayer money, help individuals with drug problems, and ensure that public money is not subsidizing drug habits (Wincup, 2014). While these are noble intentions, current programs are not meeting these standards.

The Welfare reform act of 1996, is the most significant piece of welfare legislation since Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the Neal Deal. The goals of this act were to move people of the welfare, limiting the amount of time on public assistance, and requiring that recipients work and inquire personal responsibility. However, this proposed about as many questions as it answered. For many it was unclear how people would find employment but nonetheless, what would happen to children once their family was no longer eligible for the system. Overtime, the reform did just as it was established to do; it made personal responsibility and work central to the welfare agenda, shifting welfare to the states.

The effects of welfare reform on children’s development encompass factors across a variety of settings in families’ lives as per Yoo, J., Slack, K. S., & Holl, J. L. (2010). According to Yoshikawa, psychologists and sociologists might suggest that changes in welfare policy might affect family income, which also affects children’s development and well-being through changes in parental well-being and quality of parenting. This can be stated as reward and punishment toward the children in parenting. Social capital-based theories on the other hand would suggest that changes in welfare policy might affect neighborhood-level poverty and income, which will affect the children’s development through changes in the availability of positive role models, social networks, or collective

Chapter 17 of the textbook We the People: An Introduction to American Politics covers the topic of social policy. The two main issues of social policy in today’s society are welfare and health care reform. They are considered the main issues because they require the most government spending, and are the two most controversial and debated parts of social policy in America.

However, while the welfare state flourished in post-war Britain, during times of economic downturn, the welfare state was the first to be targeted. Following the successful post-war years, the government was met with a period of economic recession, major inflation and rising unemployment. As a result of this, the 1970s saw the abandonment of post-war policy and “the emergence of a period of privatisation and deregulation.” Ultimately, the great welfare post-war period was removed and a new “post-welfare” phase was introduced. And the socio-economic policies of the 1970s were described as ‘creating a “crisis” for social policy and the demise of the British welfare state’ This, headed by the then conservative government, was very much a predecessor for the welfare reforms of 2012. The 1970s saw the introduction of ‘means-tested benefits’ to tackle the negative opinions surrounding benefits. In terms of housing, the Conservative government sought to emphasise private ownership, as opposed to local authority housing, which was introduced through the 1980 Housing Act and the ‘right to buy’. This arguably led to a further divide in inequality, as the increase in housing ownership led to the increase in rent. Because of this, the government was left with shortage of housing, which “impacted adversely on housing costs and standards, including overcrowding” . This also meant local authorities had “difficulties in raising capital” which led to the introduction of