The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called the Food Stamp Program, is designed primarily to increase the food purchasing power of eligible low-income households to help them buy a nutritionally adequate low-cost diet. This book describes the rules related to eligibility for SNAP benefits as well as their redemption.

The Social Security system is currently generating surplus tax revenues. However, under the intermediate assumptions of the Social Security Board of Trustees, the trust funds are estimated to be depleted in 2040, at which point 74% of benefits would be payable with incoming receipts. This book analyses the effect of 12 Social Security solvency options on Social Security beneficiaries. These 12 individual options fall into 6 categories of reform proposals. For some reform options, the authors presented two or more variations on how they could be approached. They include the most commonly discussed or introduced proposals to improve cash flow and achieve Social Security solvency. Each section of the book focuses on one reform category and explains current Social Security policy, reasons why some policymakers propose this particular type of reform, how the reform proposal works, the distributional effects of the reform proposal on various types of Social Security beneficiaries, and legislation related to the reform being analysed.

'In this important contribution to the analysis and construction of European Union citizenship, Charlotte O'Brien provides her characteristic blend of rigorous legal scholarship and compelling social vision. She identifies challenging questions about the relationship between justice and vulnerability that should concern the shaping of law at all levels of governance.' Professor Niamh Nic Shuibhne, University of Edinburgh 'Piercing the veil of well-known proclamations of "equality" and "non-discrimination", in this intimate portrait of Union law O'Brien sounds a sobering wake up call. The Union, to the genuine surprise of some converted, is a powerful actor of injustice, failing the vulnerable Europeans at many a turn, blinded by its own proclaimed righteousness and goodness to be aware of the plight of those it lets down. The sooner we dispel the oxymoronic myth of a "market citizen" as a necessary tool of the uniquely benevolent EU internal market project, the sooner the process of healing the Union turning its back on the majority of Europeans can begin. This book is an important part of this beginning.' Professor Dimitry Kochenov, University of Groningen The EU is at a crossroads of constitution and conscience. Unity in Adversity argues that EU market citizenship is incompatible with a pursuit of social justice, because it contributes to the social exclusion of women and children, promotes a class-based conception of rights, and tolerates in-work poverty. The limitations of EU citizenship are clearest when EU nationals engage with national welfare systems, but this experience has been neglected in EU legal research. Unity in Adversity draws upon the ground-breaking EU Rights Project, working first hand with EU nationals in the UK, providing advice and advocacy, and giving ethnographic insight into the process of navigating EU and UK welfare law. Its study of EU law in action is a radical new approach, and the case studies illustrate the political, legal and administrative obstacles to justice faced by EU nationals. Taken together, the strands demonstrate that 'equal treatment' for EU nationals is an illusion. The UK's welfare reforms directed at EU nationals are analysed as a programme of declaratory discrimination, and in light of the subsequent referendum, should be treated as a cautionary tale - both to the EU, to take social justice seriously, and to other Member States, to steer away from xenophobic law-making. Shortlisted for the 2018 BBC Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography. Winner of the 2019 Hart-SLSA Book Prize.

By what criteria should public policy be evaluated? Fairness and justice? Or the welfare of individuals? Debate over this fundamental question has spanned the ages.

"Fairness versus Welfare" poses a bold challenge to contemporary moral philosophy by showing that most moral principles conflict more sharply with welfare than is generally recognized. In particular, the authors demonstrate that all principles that are not based exclusively on welfare will sometimes favor policies under which literally everyone would be worse off. The book draws on the work of moral philosophers, economists, evolutionary and cognitive psychologists, and legal academics to scrutinize a number of particular subjects that have engaged legal scholars and moral philosophers.

How can the deeply problematic nature of all nonwelfarist principles be reconciled with our moral instincts and intuitions that support them? The authors offer a fascinating explanation of the origins of our moral instincts and intuitions, developing ideas originally advanced by Hume and Sidgwick and more recently explored by psychologists and evolutionary theorists. Their analysis indicates that most moral principles that seem appealing, upon examination, have a functional explanation, one that does not justify their being accorded independent weight in the assessment of public policy.

"Fairness versus Welfare" has profound implications for the theory and practice of policy analysis and has already generated considerable debate in academia.

What does the right to the continuous improvement of living conditions in Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights really mean and how can it contribute to social change? The book explores how this underdeveloped right can have valuable application in response to global problems of poverty, inequality and climate destruction, through an in-depth consideration of its meaning. The book seeks to interpret and give meaning to the right as a legal standard, giving it practical value for those whose living conditions are inadequate. It locates the right within broader philosophical and political debates, whilst also assessing the challenges to its realisation. It also explores how the right relates to human rights more generally and considers its application to issues of gender, care and the rights of Indigenous peoples. The contributors deeply probe the meaning of 'living conditions', suggesting that these encompass more than the basic rights to housing, water, food, and clothing. The chapters provide a range of doctrinal, historical and philosophical engagements through grounded analysis and imaginative interpretation. With a foreword by Sandra Liebenberg (former Member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), the book includes chapters from renowned and emerging scholars working across disciplines from around the world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

This book addresses a topic that is currently high on the agenda in many fora: how to specify and secure a social minimum. The term 'social minimum' has different meanings, depending on the context. These contexts are examined in this book from different perspectives, including law, sociology, philosophy, politics and economics. In the first part, the social minimum is discussed from a conceptual and theoretical point of view. The second part shows the various ways in which the social minimum can be specified and measured. There is a need for new indicators that take into account, for instance, aspects of adequate social participation. As this part shows, the choice of indicators is closely intertwined with political choices. The third part approaches the social minimum from the perspective of legal obligations, addressing the nature of different obligations imposed on individuals and states. The fourth part deals with the question of social minimum in the context of courts, adjudication and justiciability. The role of international treaties and national constitutions - the interpretation of the rights they enshrine and the way these are dealt with by expert committees and courts - is discussed with a view to understanding how the guarantee of a social minimum can be promoted within individual countries. Besides being of interest for academics in fields ranging from legal theory and human rights to the social sciences, the book also serves as an important source for students as well as practitioners interested in the social minimum, and anyone who wants to gain an insight into the current debates on this extremely important issue.

This book examines the evolution of Australian unemployment law and policy across the past 100 years. It poses the question 'How does unemployment happen?'. But it poses it in a particular way. How do we regulate work relationships, gather statistics, and administer a social welfare system so as to produce something we call 'unemployment'? And how has that changed over time? Attempts to sort workers into discrete categories - the 'employed', the 'unemployed', those 'not in the labour force' - are fraught, and do not always easily correspond with people's working lives. Across the first decades of the twentieth century, trade unionists, statisticians and advocates of social insurance in Australia as well as Britain grappled with the problem of which forms of joblessness should be classified as 'unemployment' and which should not. This book traces those debates. It also chronicles the emergence and consolidation of a specific idea of unemployment in Australia after the Second World War. It then charts the eventual unravelling of that idea, and relates that unravelling to the changing ways of ordering employment relationships. In doing so, Inventing Unemployment challenges the preconception that casual work, self-employment, and the 'gig economy' are recent phenomena. Those forms of work confounded earlier attempts to define 'unemployment' and are again unsettling our contemporary understandings of joblessness. This thought-provoking book shows that the category of 'unemployment', rather than being a taken-for-granted economic variable, has its own history, and that history is intimately related to our changing understandings of 'employment'.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

Title 45 presents regulations governing highly diverse welfare programs and projects. Family assistance, child support enforcement, the Commission on Civil Rights, community services, the National Foundation for the Arts and the Humanities, refugee resettlement, foreign claims settlement, the National Science Foundation, ACTION, and human development services (ranging from Head Start to programs for older persons), are among the topics included. Additions and revisions to this section of the code are posted annually by October. Publication follows within six months.

How do you apply the principles, structures and processes of the law to everyday practice? Drawing on a wealth of contemporary case examples, this handy pocket book demystifies the complex legislation on Looked After Children and demonstrates the practical duties and responsibilities of professionals working with this group.

The aim of this book is to examine how EU law relates to and impacts on the national social security systems of the Member States. It asks three key questions. Firstly, it looks at how the internal market and its developments have eroded Member States' sovereignty over their social security systems, despite the fact that the EU has limited competence in the field. It then explores, secondly, how the Union Citizenship and, thirdly, the Charter of Fundamental Rights has affected the coordination of these regimes.

Federal programs intended to help poor and low-income people are of ongoing interest to Congress. The federal government spends billions of dollars annually on a wide range of low-income benefits and services and lawmakers routinely conduct oversight and consider legislation related to these programs. Deliberations typically focus on individual programs or their overarching authorising laws. However, Members and staff also look at low-income policy broadly and have questions about low-income programs and spending in the aggregate. For example, how much does the federal government spend altogether each year on programs specifically intended for low-income people? How has this spending changed over time? How is spending allocated among various categories of low-income benefits and services? These questions may appear straightforward but their answers are complex. This book identifies and discusses federal benefits and services targeted toward low-income populations, focusing on aggregate spending trends.

Inspired by the political interventions of feminist women of color and Foucauldian social theory, Anna Marie Smith explores the scope and structure of the child support enforcement, family cap, marriage promotion, and abstinence education measures that are embedded within contemporary United States welfare policy. Presenting original legal research and drawing from historical sources, social theory, and normative frameworks, the author argues that these measures violate the rights of poor mothers. Drawing on several historical precedents the author shows that welfare policy has consistently constructed the sexual conduct of the racialized poor mother as one of its primary disciplinary targets. The book concludes with a vigorous and detailed critique of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for welfare reform law and an outline of a progressive feminist approach to poverty policy.

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program provides benefits to insured workers with disabilities under the full retirement age and their dependants based on an individual worker's earnings and work history in covered employment. Recently, some Members of Congress and the public have expressed concern over the financial sustainability of the SSDI program. This book provides an overview of reform proposals designed to mitigate the growth in SSDI rolls. Most of the proposals discussed in this book focus on reducing the inflow (incidence) of new beneficiaries into the program. The authors also focus on information on two components of federal disability benefits, those provided through the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs, policy options for the social security disability insurance program and provide a testimony of David C Stapleton on securing the future of the social security disability program.

Child welfare services are intended to prevent the abuse or neglect of children and to ensure that children have safe, permanent homes, in addition to promoting the well-being of children and their families. Most federal child welfare programs are administered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This book provides an overview of the federal role in the assistance and improvement of child welfare services. Discussed in this compilation are The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008; Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for children in foster care; and the most recent and proposed federal funding for child welfare programs

The programs administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA) form the foundation for the nation's social insurance network that has greatly reduce poverty among the elderly through the retirement and survivors program and provides income support to people with disabilities, widows and widowers, and young children. This book addresses the current challenges facing the Social Security Administration including issues for disability and dependent benefits, the implications of different indexing choices, the need for greater transparency with regard to general revenue financing, possible effects on the elderly poor and mitigation options, legal analysis and the costs of reform.

This fourth edition of Community Care Practice and the Law has been fully updated to reflect the rapid and continuing legal, policy and practice changes affecting community care. It provides comprehensive and jargon-free explanations of community care legislation, as well as other areas of law directly relevant to practitioners, including the NHS, disabled facilities grants and housing adaptations, asylum and immigration, mental capacity, human rights, disability discrimination, health and safety at work and negligence - and a range of legal provisions relevant to the protection and safeguarding of adults. Apart from the burgeoning legal case law and ombudsman investigations, changes from the last edition include coverage of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, legal implications of 'self directed care' and 'individual budgets', changes to direct payments and 'ordinary residence' determinations. In particular, new guidance applies to the high profile issue of NHS continuing health care. The book is an essential guide for practitioners and managers in both the statutory and voluntary sectors, policy makers in local authorities and the NHS, advocates, lawyers and social work students.

Cohen challenges the assumption that one cannot work for the central or local government and challenge it at the same time. He does not encourage law breaking, but provides practical suggestions on how an official can act within the law without intentionally magnifying the problems of the person the official is obliged to serve. This book is challenging and deliberately thought-provoking, but it answers the question "what do I do?" This book should be on any syllabus on immigration and social work. Cohen has provided a thoughtful answer to many of the problems that those in social services and school are compelled to confront daily. He has done a fantastic service for all those concerned with the issue of immigration and asylum. This book cannot be praised highly enough.' - SAGE Race Relations Abstracts 'Immigration Controls, the family and the Welfare State is all in favour of the right of Labour to migrate. The rich can always find new markets or new places to build factories, while workers are denied the same right to move. This is the most practical book you could imagine. Each chapter includes case studies and suggests how a campaign around them could work' - Socialist Review 'Written primarily for social and welfare workers and advisers, the book sets out to unravel the complexities of immigration law, and its impact on the family and welfare rights. Among other things the book covers the history of controls, the practical application of law (using case studies), applying for immigration status, working with asylum seekers, interviewing, report writing, and liaison between welfare professionals, advisers and legal representatives. The author is an immigration lawyer with 25 years experience. He is former coordinator of the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, having practiced at the bar. - Welfare Benefits 'Steve Cohen is a veteran anti-racist campaigner who has for 25 years worked as an immigration adviser, and has during that period produced lucid and compelling analysis of immigration controls and the welfare state Each chapter starts with a casework problem raising important issues of practice. The issue may be about whether the headteacher of a state school can enrol a child who has been admitted for private education; or whether an 80-year-old with no permission to stay can get meals on wheels. In chapters on marriage, children, unmarried partners, asylum and on benefits, education, housing, social and health services and probation, he combines history and comprehensive guidance he explains when and why it is necessary for local authority or voluntary sector workers to ask their clients about their immigration status; how it should be done and the consequences of not doing so This book is absolutely unique in its contribution of "law, theory, politics and practice" and it is absolutely indispensable for anyone working with those affected by immigration controls.' - CARF62 'This is a work of political polemic, with an ace handbook attached. It presents current immigration law and practice for practitioners in education and the medical and social services, from an explicit anti-racist stance. It will also be of considerable use to the specialist legal practitioner It explains immigration issues as they might arise in the context of different areas of practice. Each chapter begins with a true-life tale and a casework example. Examples drawn from life and history are given throughout. The structure of the book is clear and the index likewise useful The book is to be particularly commended to all practitioners for its readability and accessibility, which is achieved without any loss of clarity about the law.' - Family Law The increasingly close relationship between immigration controls and the welfare state makes the law highly relevant to many professional groups, including workers within local authorities, the voluntary sector and the welfare state. In this comprehensive handbook Steve Cohen examines the law, including the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act, as it applies to the relationship between issues of welfare, immigration control and refugee status, giving pointers for good practice. The practical application of the law is illustrated with a wealth of case studies. The guidelines for anti-racist practice, campaigning, contesting immigration status, working with asylum-seekers, interviewing, report writing and liasing between welfare professionals and legal representatives make this book an essential resource for all professionals working in this field.

This expanded and updated edition of Legal Issues in Child Abuse and Neglect Practice will familiarize professionals from medicine, nursing, psychology, social work, and related disciplines with the innumerable legal implications in their day-to-day work. Offering a state-of-the-art exploration of the role that law can play in cases of child maltreatment, this edition closes the communication gap between legal and helping professionals that sometimes reduces efficacy and cooperation in achieving the common goal of improving the lives of victimized children. This new edition continues to provide vital information to non-lawyers regarding how the legal system works in child maltreatment cases. John E. B. Myers discusses the prevalence and effects of child maltreatment, and he outlines the child protection system with clarity. Other areas covered include the investigation and reporting laws, issues of confidentiality and disclosure, expert testimony, cross examination and impeachment, and the liability of professionals.

Legal Issues in Child Abuse and Neglect Practice is a must-read for mental health and legal professionals, health care providers, educators, and child advocates. Advanced clinical and legal students as well as academics and researchers will also find this material essential.

This comprehensive book explains the provision, both law and practice, of equipment and home adaptations to assist older or disabled people in daily living. Characterised by ill-defined statutory responsibilities and terminology, and an under-developed consumer retail market, the system of provision has long been recognised as chaotic and confusing for professionals and public alike. This is despite the fact that equipment and adaptations are meant to be a central plank of community care. Necessarily wide-ranging but maintaining its focus, the book aims critically to describe the system and thereby promote better practice. By exploring boundaries and breaking points of the system, it will also assist people to understand the law when things go wrong - from negligence to judicial review, and from contract to product safety legislation. Providing both overviews and extensive details, and so capable of use on various levels, the book will be indispensable to managers and practitioners in statutory services (social services, the NHS, housing, education and employment), advice agencies, voluntary organisations, manufacturers and suppliers, educational institutions, and lawyers. The range of items covered is great, from alarms to artificial limbs, baths to bedrooms, chopping boards to crutches, electronic toothbrushes to environmental controls, hearing aids to hoists, incontinence pads to ironing equipment, rails to ramps, speech aids to stairlifts, and walking frames to wheelchairs. Part I summarises provision and picks out main themes - including conflicts, contradictions and anxieties - emerging from a complex web of legislation, common law, guidance, everyday practices, complaints procedures, ombudsmen, formal legal remedies, broader welfare and consumer issues, and interaction of the public, private and voluntary sectors. It is pointed out that the rationing and fragmentation of welfare services, proliferation of community care legislation and guidance, and implementation of European Community Directives have merely added to the complexity. Part II explains systematically and in detail how, and on what legal basis, equipment and adaptations are provided by statutory services for people's social care, health care, housing, education and employment needs. Also covered is provision for people in residential and nursing homes. Spanning disparate areas of law, Part III illustrates what happens when things go wrong - outlining the law of negligence, and contractual issues arising about price, quality and `fitness of purpose' when people buy their own equipment. It discusses increasingly prominent European Community Directives and UK Regulations which impose legal liability in relation to defective products, lifting and handling, medical devices and general product safety. Both judicial review by the law courts and investigations by the ombudsmen are described, crucial remedies when people challenge - or statutory services defend - assessments, service delivery and rationing. Finally, Part IV lists, A-Z, equipment types from Air beds to Writing equipment, detailing what they are, how they are provided and by whom.