Review of “Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better,” Edited by Carolyn J. Heinrich and John Karl Scholz, 2009. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Paper, 348 pages.
It is very interesting to look at this perspective during the recession to see one more approach to fixing the system to help people who are at a disadvantage. The book provides evidence of the harsh reality of a broken safety net that needs attention.
Remaining patient, and being flexible in seeking resources, are two essential components of the helper’s toolbox. Social workers, community activists, advocates, and others can all make good use of what is here—and information on how it is supposed to work.
Math teachers, math whizzes, and math fans will get a great deal of information on what is happening with the US “safety net” and how it is supposed to work. This is a big book, chock full of facts and figures about the recession, poverty, government programs, and the reality of what has happened in America. The book explains the current state of poverty in the US, and it provides so much data to prove the points of the authors.
If you love charts, graphs, and tables, this book will be right up your alley. However, it is not an upbeat book for light reading.
Acting as though there is a safety net handling all of the challenges faced by the poor has not worked. This book dispels many myths about the safety net, and about the “business as usual and all things are good” kind of perspective taken by some and instead paints a very clear and unhappy picture of the true current state of our nation. On the more positive side, the book does include several readings meant to provide answers to the terrible problems of unemployment, underemployment, hunger, homelessness, and despair currently visible in our country.
The editors introduce the reader to the current problems with the safety net and include an overview of the readings to follow. The overall goal of the editors is actually to make the safety net work better, and they introduce the readings with the realities of the situation. They also provide some important reasons we should want to fix the safety net, and they give us several cross-cutting themes and questions.
The editors emphasize it is essential to look across safety net “domains” and consider the whole package. Just getting somebody a job does not necessarily solve everything. Will that act impact their access to health care? Will it provide a means for them to pay for child care suddenly? Will it pay enough to house the family? Educate them? Clothe them? Does simply getting a job in itself provide longer-term relief to the family? Does it jeopardize their safety and security by removing other essential forms of support?
The editors include readings with these areas of emphasis in the main chapters:
· Part I contains two readings that address this issue: Challenges faced by adults in achieving self-sufficiency through work. Here, the experts focus on such topics as health care, wages, self-sufficiency, and the work that is currently available.
· Part II consists of two readings focusing on this issue: Improving children’s chances of becoming self-sufficient adults. The experts discuss young children, their needs, school reform, and improved life outcomes for kids who are disadvantaged.
· Part III houses two readings focusing on addressing barriers to self-sufficiency for particularly disadvantaged groups. Incarcerated persons are one group facing huge challenges. Another group is single mothers who are often disconnected often from supports because they live in communities or states where assistance has ended because of new laws requiring them to transition to working jobs and getting off welfare and other forms of help.
· Part IV includes two readings about policy ideas from other countries and the politics involved in changing the work-based safety net. Experts in this part of the book work in the fields of public affairs, social work, political science, and sociology.
In the rest of the book, there are experts from diverse fields, such as education, medicine, economics, and research. All readings show the depth of the problem of poverty in the US and provide a huge number of facts and figures. Accepting the reality of the grave issues facing our nation can be very hard work, indeed, but as educators we must do this work also.
I recommend this book to social workers, advocates, change agents, influencers, and community organizers who work on a daily basis to help people in need. Teachers of social studies – and other educators who work in social justice areas – can get some good (older) information here about the famous American safety net.
Mitt Romney is just one political candidate who does not really understand the safety net. This hurt him—cost him an election—and proves how important comprehension of this phenomenon really is.
I recommend this book to teachers of many subjects as background reading and as a way to know how we can try to help society on a daily basis. I am sure the book is meant for graduate-level courses in fields such as economics, social work, public policy, and sociology. However, it can also be used to inform us educators who are also activists and advocates.
I also recommend this book as a resource when teachers of mathematics, social sciences, English/language arts, and world languages are writing lesson plans and designing bigger units. There are many implications here, from having students learn about their communities and write about hunger, to learning about how taxes work and where the dollars go, to learning how to read charts and graphs, and analyzing social problems. The information here can be dovetailed into the standards and goals of all seven learning areas in Illinois.
College-readiness and common-core-statements can be discussed as students of many subjects get ready to be good investigators and careful readers at the college level. Students in secondary school could work on this book in teams and draw a variety of lessons from this tricky book.