Understanding Social Problems, Policies, and Programs

A comprehensive update to the standard text for social work students and practitioners

In this fourth edition of a social work standard, Leon Ginsberg and Julie Miller-Cribbs offer an updated version of the text that has introduced thousands of social work students to the defining policies and procedures of the profession. Concise yet comprehensive, the volume surveys the span of social welfare history, explains the elements of social welfare policy education, and describes the impact of executive, legislative, and judicial initiatives on the delivery of social services.

With this edition, the authors cover all the required content areas for the social welfare policy and service sequence as specified in the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards of the Council on Social Work Education's Commission on Accreditation.

Leon Ginsberg is a Carolina Distinguished Professor and the former dean of the College of Social Work at the University of South Carolina. The author of numerous books, he has served as dean of the School of Social Work at West Virginia University and associate professor of social work at the University of Oklahoma. Ginsberg is the past president of what is now the American Public Human Services Association, and has been social policy chair of the Child Welfare League of America and an officer of the National Association of Social Workers.

Julie Miller-Cribbs is an assistant professor in the College of Social Work and an affiliated faculty member of the Women's Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. She holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Washington University. Particularly interested in urban and rural poverty and welfare reform, Miller-Cribbs has published in such journals as African American Research Perspectives, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and Urban Education.