Social Welfare & Social Exclusion & Lone Parents

2354 Words10 Pages
Social Welfare and Social Exclusion The Social work profession is responsible for delivering services to a range of disadvantaged individuals, groups and communities; therefore it is imperative that social workers recognise the relevance of social exclusion and the implications for policy and practice (Cunningham and Cunningham, 2008). Many groups experience social exclusion (SE) and often social policies and the process of delivering welfare add to their sense of exclusion. This assignment will be based on an article by (Walker, 2009) which highlights the Prime Minister’s defence of his policy, by pledging to support marriage through the tax system, The aim of this essay is to use the article as a base to critically explore welfare delivered to lone parents looking at the historical and ideological influences past and present, and evaluate policies for lone parents. Lone parent families experience exclusion, in many forms through poverty, inequalities, from attitudes of the policy makers and media, economically and through labelling, these will be discussed throughout, however I will define key concepts, whilst incorporating the relevance of anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice in relation to the social work. Within social work, working with families is central to practice and having an understanding of the nature of family is beneficial to practice. The family is regarded as the cornerstone of society, Haralambos and Holborn (2008) describes the family as the most basic unit of social organisation and one which carries out vital tasks, such as socialising children. Lone parent(s) are an ‘invented’ concept, and traditionally the ‘nuclear family’ which consists of two married heterosexual parents with two children. However anthropologist Edmund Leach (1967) describes this as the ‘cereal packet’ family consisting of a breadwinner husband
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