3.00 Credits
Social welfare policy involves governmental actions or non-actions that impact the quality of life for its citizens. This course provides an introduction to public policymaking in the United States and to select substantive social welfare policy areas. Rational, political and sustainability frameworks for policy study and analysis are developed across multiple area of social welfare policy including poverty, disability, welfare, hunger, water quality and resource issues, healthcare, employment, services for children and the elderly and policies surrounding mental illness and substance abuse. How social welfare policy is impacted by politics, poverty, gender, race and crime and how social and economic resources can be made sustainable in order to alleviate some of these major societal problems will also be explored.