Social Justice and Social Welfare (SOCI90025)
Graduate courseworkPoints: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)
Overview
| Availability | August |
|---|---|
| Fees | Look up fees |
Our human service and welfare systems have evolved to support us through life, from early childhood to old age. Yet the systems originally intended to support us often fail to address our real concerns; placing conditions on who can receive social support or managing our needs rather than enabling us to thrive. But how did these systems become like this, and how might they work differently? What do human service and welfare systems that grow people’s capabilities look like? And how can we begin to shift the structures, power dynamics and mental models that reproduce social injustice? This subject equips students to critically analyse the effectiveness of human service systems and to understand the outcomes of welfare state spending, including unintended consequences, and the impacts on income distribution, inequalities, marginalisation, and different groups in society. Integrating conceptual and programmatic insights, this subject draws on contemporary policy thinkers, and harnesses the insights and expertise of professionals engaged in design, implementation, and evaluation, to provide students with the critical and practical skills necessary to drive systems change in their own work.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this subject students should have:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the conceptual tools needed to critically assess and engage with current and emerging policy frameworks and challenges
- Demonstrate a broad understanding of key conceptual frameworks regarding social spending as well as the distributional effects of social spending and how such spending affects key social justice outcomes including inequality and poverty
- Demonstrate an understanding of the impact of social policies and programs on socially excluded and marginalised groups and be able to identify policies and programs that have achieved success and those that have not
- Knowledge of contemporary social policy research and program evaluation, including consideration of ethical issues in applied settings
- Demonstrate an understanding of challenges relating to management, implementation and evaluation of effective social policies from a social justice perspective.
Generic skills
- Capacity for critical thinking and analysis
- Capacity to apply analytical frameworks in a professional practice context
- Research skills, based in an understanding of the importance of social, ethical and cultural contexts
- Written and oral skills in the presentation of complex ideas in practical ways.
Last updated: 8 November 2024