Social policy primarily refers to guidelines, principles, legislation and activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare. The Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University describes it as "public policy and practice in the areas of health care, human services, criminal justice, inequality, education, and labor."
Social policy often deals with wicked problems. Social Policy is defined as actions that affect the well-being of members of a society through shaping the distribution of and access to goods and resources in that society.
Read more about Social Policy: History of Social Policy, Types of Social Policy, In Academia
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or policy:
“Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,—who is invariably the devil,—and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)