Social Welfare Policy

2 Pages 586 Words

The Social Welfare Policy is a government program designed to improve individual’s quality of life. The reason I choose this topic is because I wanted to know what welfare is and how people get over on the system just because they choose not to work. Not to my knowledge there are many other ways people can get on welfare with the different programs that are designed to assist low-income families, single families, and disabled people.
Since 1996 welfare has changed a lot. The Aid to families with Dependent children was abolished and replaced with a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. This program was designed to promote working rather than welfare dependence. If involved in this new program majority of families could not receive benefits for more than five years, and work within two years after assistance payments began. If these requirements aren’t met than the states could lose a lot of federal money. The policy is used to help people to improve their health and physical well being, provide educational and employment training opportunities, on the other hand to help them have productive lives. These policies are meant to help segments of society, but especially the less fortunate ones. As the years go on political leaders expect the generosity of social welfare programs to grow. Like in the 1960’s new programs provided food stamps and health care to meet the needs of the disadvantaged. The benefits for older programs with social security grew to keep up with the cost of living. “Some statistics for welfare are that in March of 1999 there were 2.7million families who were on welfare, 47 percent fewer families than the high of 5.1 million families in March of 1994,” (Karen-Sabato ). There are many other statistics about welfare but these are the most recent ones.
One type of welfare I’m going to discuss is AFDC. This program provides cash assistance and work support for low-inco...