The Social Aid Regulation Reform

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was an attempt by the government to get people to be more efficient and less reliant on the government. There was a sort of “exchange” between the government and citizens. Citizens work and in return they receive financial assistances. This is referred to as the TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. It was supposed to motivate people to work, or that was the goal. Recipients were required to work at least 20 hours a week. This was actually successful in decreasing the number of Americans who were dependent on welfare systems. As diversity greatly increased, the need for welfare also increased. Welfare reform efforts were attempted because of the various changes occurring. Welfare in the United States is

Louise Gosselin has undergone a life of many obstacles. She struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, as well as psychological problems. As a result of this she has been in and out of numerous jobs of various nature. For the majority of her adult life she has received social assistance. When Quebec decided to change its existing social assistance scheme in 1984, Louise felt her constitutional and provincial rights were violated, resulting in her pursuit of legal action. This is how the case of Gosselin v. A.G. (Quebec) came to be.

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.

The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act eradicated the previous systems of relief offered to the poor in Victorian England before 1834. This legislation was written up and passed with relatively little difficulty and a lot of parliamentary support. The gist of the amendment was to decrease the amount of impoverished citizens. This was the ultimate goal without providing any actual help for the poor themselves. The 1834 amendment reformed poor laws across the country while also establishing a wide network of workhouses as was fashioned in the amendment.

During the turn of the century, in the 1900’s, conditions were harsh in working areas and big businesses were growing largely. There were many things wrong with the time period, and Theodore Roosevelt recognized this. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to introduce progressive reforms and restrictions to the country. This impacted many areas of people and businesses. Areas of reform included conditions for the coalmine workers, civil rights, and breaking trusts in businesses.

Chapter 8: Reform I think Frances Perkins was a driven woman with the best intentions. With her history, knowledge, and passion, there was no better person to lead the reforms after the Triangle fire. I think she was right to see the tragedy as an opportunity to push for social reform, because she took the basic things that so many of those workers who perished had fought for and took them even further. There was no better time to bring these issues forward for reform in my opinion, as sometimes it takes disasters for officials to see the extent of reform that is needed. I think her commitment to social reform was commendable, and the reforms that she pursued were worthy causes and consistent in their theme.

Reformers had the desire to create moral order, and between the 1830s and 1840s, they established new institutions which were meant to heal the human being spiritually and morally. Institutions like prisons, orphanages, asylums and poorhouses started to proliferate. The common ideology was that of perfectionism, by which someone who was once considered incurable could now be set free. In fact, the belief was that people who entered an institution could be rehabilitated and eventually released back into society. However, with time, many institutions would prove to be crowded places where people were simply kept away from society. On the other hand, institutions like tax supported state schools were made available for all children. Horace Mann,

Chappell, R. (2010). The Functions of Social Welfare. In Social Welfare in Canadian Society (p. 5). Toronto: Nelson Education.

H.R.1469 - Welfare Benefit Reform and Alignment Commission (BRAC) Act is a Bill that was presented to Congress 03/09/2017. This bill intends to develop a testing program in which those who are receiving assistance can improve their quality of life and be basically self-sufficient and get off the welfare rolls. The welfare system is and has been in great need of reform and reorganization.

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.

According to the National Council of Welfare, The majority of those who rely on social assistance in Canada tend to be women, children and people with disabilities, it is noted that government policy focus on getting them into the paid workforce without adequate supports such as childcare, housing, and money for basic expenses, these policies are considered to be unrealistic and create much misery for the Canadians that are forced to live under these policies (Women, 2007). According to Census 2000, the average annual pre-tax income of women from all sources including government transfers was $22,885 or 62% that of what men receive. In Canada, female lone parent families have by far the lowest average total incomes among families. Although women continue to be among the poorest of the poor in Canada, they make up a disproportionate share of the population with low income 2.4 million women in 2001 compared to 1.9 million men (Work, 2004).

Moran (1992) began following William and Nancy, an impoverished, illiterate couple living in the ghetto of Prince George during the 1940’s (p. 81). They had a family of fifteen living children together, thirteen of which received income assistance. By 1960, the family increased in size to 65 members and the majority of the grandchildren had been in care or incarcerated (Moran, 1992, p. 81). Circumstances hadn’t changed for this family by 1965- Moran shared that 80% of William and Nancy’s descendants were “dependent on government funding” and the poverty-related social ramifications of low literacy, inadequate housing, poor physical and mental health resulted in a “reoccurring pattern of anti-social behavior” (Moran, 1992, pp. 81, 145). When Moran and her coworkers attempted to determine the financial impact this family had on provincial resources, they concluded that “this multiple-problem family had cost many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars…the cost in terms of waste and suffering was beyond description and equally incalculable” (Moran, 1992, p. 82). Twenty years later, the family consisted of over 1000 members, with “700-800 in social or financial distress” (Moran, 1992, p. 146). This story demonstrated to me the importance of not just giving adequate funding to families with historical poverty – rather, providing education tailored to a family’s needs along with services such as

In response to the Great Depression, the government very slowly began, although without success at first, to develop policies that would help to alleviate the problem of poverty. The first universal social welfare program they came up with was the Family Allowance program, which was introduced by the federal government in 1944. The small unemployment insurance program, introduced during World War II, was expanded after the war. These were the foundations of Canada’s social security system or welfare state. The problem of poverty was not solved, however, and relative poverty (meaning wide gaps between low-income earners and others) persisted.

In 1729, Jonathan Swift's country, Ireland, was being controlled predominantly by England. This being the case, I do not believe this proposal to be a serious one, or at least fully. Jonathan is whole heartedly devoted to bring awareness to the current plight that Ireland is going through, this being the full domination by England. Ireland, for all intents and purposes, is already selling their children to England. This is not to be taken literally, but metaphorically in the way that they are already giving everything to England and might as well go even further by selling their own children as food to the "rich", in this case the "rich" or "upper class" being England. Jonathan Swift is known for attempting to "fix" the problems in Ireland, or at least improve the conditions in which everyone is living.

The history of welfare reform reveals that the question of personal responsibility versus assistance to those in need has been a constant in the debate over welfare. In the 1950s and 1960s, welfare reform was limited to various states' attempts to impose residency requirements on welfare applicants and remove illegitimate children from the welfare rolls. During the 1970s advocates of welfare reform promoted the theory of