In this video, we'll be talking about social services.
These are social welfare benefits that are provided by directly meeting with,
engaging with somebody who's got skills to bring those skills to you.
Now, we could call education and a lot of health care,
social services for we call them education and health care.
So, in some sense,
this is also a miscellaneous category,
when we start talking about social services.
So, these are direct services to individuals.
So, some professional or some group of
professionals are meeting with individuals and providing services.
One of the principal form of this,
is therapy and counseling where someone goes to a group or
individual counseling session because of trauma that they've experienced,
because of family issues,
because of issues that have to do with personal growth and development.
So, this part can be heavily connected to the mental health system,
but it's provided by professional,
sometimes outside of the mental health system,
and so we call it part of the social services system.
Then, there's vocational support.
Say, if you're trying to change your job,
if your factory is closed,
or if you are coming back to work after a period of not having worked,
or you carry some kind of difference of ability that it's going to take effort to
get you to the place where you can find a place that's appropriate for you to work.
So, the child welfare system is part of this.
This is the system in which we assure that children are safe in our society.
There's usually an 800 number that you call
and that leads to an investigation or an assessment,
and the child welfare system then does work to make sure that the child is safe.
This is another controversial part of social services system.
We have youth and community development programs;
after school summer camps,
educational programs, and lots of ways around hiking,
around music, around the arts, gardening,
lots of different programs that we offer to youth and in community settings.
There are addiction and substance abuse problems.
So, whether it's in group or individual, residential or outpatient,
whether it's private pay or paid for by insurance or
a publicly provided benefits for people in need,
this is somewhat related to
the health care system and somewhat related to the mental health system,
but it is in many ways a domain of its own and it fits in the social service category.
Then, there's a number of services we pride to provide to offenders,
some of them are alternative to incarceration programs.
So, their diversion programs that take people through
vocational or counseling services, supervisions services.
We provide services to people who are in facilities,
who are in custody,
and then we provide services to people that are reentering to the society.
Actually, this is a particular interest to most of us
because we want to make sure that people don't re-offend,
and to prevent re-offending,
requires investing something in someone so that they
can develop a different way of handling things.
There's another social service world which is for people that have
experienced domestic violence or people who have experienced sexual violence.
This can involve safe houses,
this can involve assistance to getting court orders,
counseling, vocational counseling, childcare services,
lots of things here that are related to this.
So, these are some of the social service system.
There's more in many specific areas but I'm not going to go into in detail.
This is a large system.
It's a relatively inexpensive part of our social welfare system when we
compare it to social insurance or to education or to health care.
Social services are provided by the public,
directly public provision organizations
programs that are run by government employees or they
are often provided by nonprofit community providers who
may be contracting with an insurance company or with the government to provide services.
Then, there's a world of for profit companies that are also providing services.
So, it's quite a diverse world of delivering services.
So, having talked about education,
and health care, and income transfer programs, and social services,
Professor Garfinkel we'll be back with us for
the next lecture talking about the question of floors,
platforms, and safety nets,
and different ways we structure our social welfare system.
John RobertsonPolicy Lecturer
