I think that the emphasis that the reading puts on child education as a way to improve both health and poverty is very important. Researching for my group presentation and final paper about how education can affect people far beyond simply learning math and reading, I can truly appreciate the education I have received, and understand the importance of the policies discussed in the reading. By keeping children in school, and starting school at a younger age, children are able to develop important skills that they may not be able to master if they are home all day, watching or helping their parents work. Childhood is a key time for development of social skills, emotional health and even physical health. It is important that children work on these skills in the right environments, and that they are encouraged to keep working and do their best. If children are not properly educated, they grow up with higher chances of depression, and anxiety. They have lower self-esteem and are more likely to do things such as drugs. Additionally, by having children staying in school, not only do parents have more time to work and make money, but also children will grow up with an increased chance to do the same.
09
May 14
Social Policy
As the reading talked about the programs in the South American countries, as well as a few municipal programs in the Unites States, what struck me was how complete these programs need to be in order for us to achieve success. Just offering money to those who complete specific goals or accomplishments simply doesn’t work- we have seen enough examples of failure to know that. Rather, the plan must be integrated at every level- from the right government distribution and overseeing practices, to multiple qualifications for cash, to several checkpoints and stages through which participants are monitored. Even more so, multiple programs must be planned to compliment each other to achieve significant social change such as is seen in Brazil.
Perhaps this plays a large part in why such a program is so much harder to implement in the U.S. on a national level. We have so much infrastructure and bureaucracy already in place that restructuring to accommodate new programs on a comprehensive level is exceedingly difficult.
09
May 14
Social Policy Interventions and Health
While reading about CCTs (conditional cash transfers) in this weeks’ material, I was reminded of the first paper I wrote for this class about the different approaches taken to combat homelessness in America. I found the success of CCTs in several Latin American countries pleasantly surprising, because similar programs implemented in the United States were not as successful; a radically different approach has been shown to work instead.
CCTs force the people they help to begin helping themselves before gaining access to funds they need. Parents have to send their kids to school, and if attendance goes down, social workers are sent to check in. This has increased the rates of school attendance, says the article, and kids are learning instead of working in “degrading or hazardous conditions.” The article makes an important point, however, when describing the visits of these social workers when they do have to happen: “the programme emphasizes opportunities for greater well-being, rather than punitive measures for poor performance.”
This is an important distinction to make, because it is precisely the idea of “punitive measures” that has made similar condition-based approaches ineffective when it came to the homeless of America. The 100,000 Homes Campaign is a radical program based on the idea of housing first, a concept that gives homes to the most vulnerable (based on medical history, emergency room visits, etc) with no terms or conditions. In their manifesto, the Campaign says,
“Most homeless people were told they had to earn their way to permanent housing by checking these supplementary boxes [that they were attending job training, addiction counseling, etc].While the intentions behind this approach were good, the unfortunate result was that very few people ever escaped the streets.100,000 Homes communities believe this traditional approach is backwards, and the data agrees with them. Countless studies have now shown that we must offer housing first, not last, if we want to help people out of homelessness.”
Housing first argues that creating a system where recipients must fulfill certain requirements before getting help is “imposing”, and discourages autonomy, which is a key factor in mental health and self esteem. People need the freedom to make their own choices, and when given that freedom, the program argues, those people are more likely to make the right decisions.
So why have conditional-help programs worked for Brazil’s poor families, but not for America’s homeless? Perhaps the data for each must be studied in greater detail- cultural differences could be to blame; or perhaps familial poverty and individual homelessness are different beasts that must be attacked in different ways. Regardless, it is clearly important to have an open conversation about the pros and cons of each approach and how they would help when thinking about implementing social policy and wellness programs.
