The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 - Coursework Example

The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 and how it affects today’s Social Welfare (Insert the of the here) (Insert the number here) (Insert the name of the Tutor here) (Insert the date of submission here) Abstract This paper explains how policies aimed at addressing the issue of social welfare of the poor people have been changing since the introduction of the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. In the paper, two populations of the poor people are identified for investigation. The two populations include the population of dependent children and the population of the impotent individuals. In the investigation, five policies that have been introduced since the law are identified for the discussion. Moreover, the effectiveness and impacts of these policies are evaluated to determine how they affect the identified groups of poor people. The results of the investigation show the policies related to identify groups of people have evolved greatly since the introduction of the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. Evolution of policies after the introduction of the law has brought great improvement in the government efforts to upgrade the lives of its poor people. Introduction Social welfare originates in the early years when the Elizabethan law was introduced in an effort to improve the living standards of the poor people in the United Kingdom. According to Ambrosino et al. (2011), the law was significant since it established a national policy related to the poor people’s wellbeing. The national policy established by this law aimed to reduce the number of poor people in the nation. Moreover, it aimed to improve the living standards of those incapacitated among the population of the United Kingdom. The law established three main populations of the poor people, which included the able-bodied poor, the impotent poor, and the dependent children (Zastrow, 2009). The paper investigates how services to the dependent children and the important poor have evolved. In explaining the evolution of services, the paper uses the social welfare policies that have been designed in each of the selected populations. The population of dependent children Before the establishment of the Elizabethan law of 1601, children from the poor families were lacking basic needs and services. This was because of the inability of their families to earn enough money required for paying for the essential services. As a result, with the introduction of the law, a policy was created to address this issue. The policy designed in this early time was a policy of providing apprenticeship to children of poor families (Woodside & McClam, 2011). The apprenticeship was provided in homes of other well of families living in a similar area. Apprentice on these children happened differently depending on age, gender, and economic need of the family. However, the policy had a clear objective of ensuring that the children access assistance to their financial needs through the apprenticeship. Other policies aimed at improving the standards of living of the dependent children have emerged since the introduction of the apprenticeship policy. One of the policies is the social citizenship policy (Finch, 2004). This policy provided individuals with access for paid labor regardless of their age and gender. The policy has been applied both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. When this policy was introduced, the poor-family children were enabled to gain access to paid labor thus raising their family earnings. This enabled them to be able to improve their social welfare. However, this policy was accompanied by many negative effects like the exploitation of children working in various sectors of the economy. Several social welfare policies related to the population of dependent children have emerged after the social citizenship policy. These policies relate to different aspects of life of the individuals in the dependent children like the education services policy. Education service policy requires dependent children to attend school up to the high school level on full-time basis (SMDHS, 2011). The policys aimis to improve the dependent childrens access to better employment opportunities. This could improve their ability to access essential services as well as their ability to support other members of their family. The policy restricted the dependent children from working on full-time basis but allowed them to work on part-time basis and during vacations. Working dependent children are prone to exploitation and manipulation. To avoid this, different governments of the world have introduced a minimum wage policy in their economy. According to Waltman (2008), minimum wage policy is aimed at increasing the income of low paid individuals. The dependent children are identified as among the individuals who are not well paid. This is because individuals in the identified population start working before acquiring competitive knowledge and expertise that is necessary for the well-paying positions. The policy ensured that the individuals from the identified population were not exploited by being paid very low wages. As a result, their lives were greatly improved thus enabling them to support their needy families. However, this policy also had a negative effect. It made some of the dependent children lack employment thus denying them access to money they needed to pay for essential services. According to Yeates et al. (2011), the recent social welfare policy introduced to help the dependent children was the child benefit policy. This policy had several effects on the children like the reduction of tax charged on the child benefits. Moreover, it enabled the dependent children to access funds and the insurance benefits of their deceased breadwinners. As a result, the access of money by the dependent children greatly improved resulting to a raise in their standards of living. Moreover, the policy ensured that when the individuals in the identified population work, their earnings go only to the improvement of their lives and those of their families. This policy was very significant especially to dependent children resulting from deceased or incapacitated parents. The population of impotent people Before the introduction of the Elizabethan law, individuals with disabilities had no other option of accessing basic needs except through begging. However, new policies geared towards helping this group of people emerged with the introduction of the Elizabethan Poor Law. The first introduced policy was the impotent people policy. According to White (2008), this policy required individuals from this population to be kept in institutions where they would be provided with basic needs. However, those who had other places of staying were to be allowed to do so, and were to be provided with essential services while on those places. The policy started a new era for individuals with disabilities. This is because it introduced a system in which the disabled people did not need to beg to acquire basic essentials. However, this policy allowed the individuals to access only the basic needs. Since the introduction of the first policy concerned with individuals in the impotent population, other policies have emerged to help this group of people improve their lives. The most significant among the policies is the social welfare benefit policy for people with disability (Kirst-Ashman, 2009). Social welfare benefit policy introduced a system in which people with disability were to be paid a certain amount of money as benefits by the government. The benefits are aimed at addressing their basics as well as other needs. Social welfare benefits policy greatly improved the social welfare of people in this population by enabling them to cater even for their families. However, the benefits provided for in the policy were limited in amount thus making the disabled individuals not to have a life comparable to that of the other individuals. Earlier social welfare policies had a limitation of defining the disabled people to be given the government benefits. This resulted to a need for designing a policy that would address this limitation. The social welfare policy introduced to address this issue was the disabled welfare policy (Syron, 2002). This policy clearly defined the disabled people who qualified for the governmental social welfare benefits introduced by the previously identified policy. The disabled welfare policy assisted the government to avoid wastage of resources on individuals who pretended to be disabled. As result, it enabled it to improve the benefits provided to the disabled individuals who could not be able to work thus improving their living standards. Another policy that has been introduced after the Elizabethan social welfare law is the special education policy (BCME, 2011). Introduction of this policy resulted from the discovery that education could empower the people with disability to be able to earn their money without having to rely on the government for the benefits. Special education policy resulted to establishment of special schools for individuals with disabilities. Moreover, it resulted to introduction of specialized program in schools and institutions for the disabled individuals. However, this resulted to emergence of new challenges to both the educators and the government in trying to address the needs of people with disability. This is because the people with disability had more factors hindering them from acquiring education compared to other individuals. The limitation of special education policy resulted to the introduction of the policy of No Child Left Behind. This policy introduced a system in which all the learners in schools could have access to quality education despite their disabilities. It resulted to introduction of accommodation in learning as well as assessment of the disabled students (Cortiella, 2005). As a result, the ability of the disabled individuals to acquire competitive knowledge required for working in different industries was greatly enhanced. This empowered them to work and earn a living instead of depending solely on the government benefits. The policy also resulted in the introduction of equipment that could aid the disabled individuals in the learning process. As a result, disability stopped being incapability thus making individuals in this population to have opportunity equivalent to those of other people. Conclusion Livelihood of different classes of poor people was greatly improved by introduction of the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. Among the poor people that had their lives greatly improved by this law were the dependent children and the disabled people. This is because it led to introduction of policies specifically aimed at addressing their needs. Since the introduction of the first policies to help these two groups of individuals in improving their lives, other policies have emerged to aid the introduced policies. The policies are completely different from the policies formulated during the introduction of the law. This makes us to conclude that the policies aimed at improving social welfare of the people have greatly evolved from the way they were slightly after the introduction of the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. The evolution has played a great role in improving the effectiveness of the government to improve the standards of living of the poor people and thus reduce poverty levels. References Ambrosino, R. et al. (2011). Social Work and Social Welfare: An Introduction. Belmont, CA: Books/Cole Cengage Learning Ltd. BCME. (2011). Special Education Services: A Manual of Policies, Procedures, and Guidelines. Retrieved from: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/specialed/special_ed_policy_manual.pdf. Cortiella, C. (2005). No Child Left Behind: Understanding Assessment Options for IDEA-Eligible Students. Retrieved from: http://www.cehd.umn.edu/NCEO/onlinepubs/NCLD/AssessmentOptions.pdf. Finch, N. (2004). Family Policy in UK: Welfare Policy and Employment in the Context of Family Change. Retrieved from: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/research/nordic/ukpolicy.pdf. Kirst-Ashman, K. K. (2009). Introduction to Social Work & Social Welfare: Critical Thinking Perspective. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Ltd. SMDHS. (2011). Department Policy FIP: School Attending and Student Status. Retrieved from: http://www.mfia.state.mi.us/olmweb/ex/bem/245.pdf. Syron, E. (2002). The Disabled Welfare Program: The Welfare System and the Disabled. Retrieved from: http://www.okcir.com/Articles%20I%201/HAsp02p93-103.pdf. Waltman, J. L. (2008). Minimum Wage Policy in Great Britain and the United States. New York, NY: Algora Publishing Ltd. White, B. W. (2008). Comprehensive Handbook of Social Work and Social Welfare: The Profession of Social Work. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Publishing Ltd. Woodside, M. R., & McClam, T. (2011). An Introduction to Human Services. Belmont, CA: Books/Cole Cengage Learning Ltd. Yeates, N. et al. (2011). In Defence of Welfare: The Impact of Spending Review. Retrieved from: http://www.social-policy.org.uk/downloads/idow.pdf. Zastrow, C. (2009). Introduction to Social Work and Social Welfare: Empowering People. Belmont, CA: Books/Cole Cengage Learning Ltd. Read More