Social Justice and Ending Poverty

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Social Justice is about making society function better – providing the support and tools to help turn lives around. This is a challenging new approach to dealing with poverty in all its forms. It is not about income poverty alone.(SJS) Throughout this essay I will explore why Poverty is a primary issue when striving for Social Justice and how, we as professionals, can attempt to overcome this by working together to achieve a fairer more just society. Social Work, Primary Education and Community Learning and Development are working together collaboratively to achieve Social Justice. I will discuss the changes that have taken place in our professions and the guidelines and regulations that we must adhere to. In addition to this I will examine the positive and negative outcomes of my group experience working together with CLD, Social Work and Education Students. I will also address the historical perspective in addition to the philosophical perspectives.
There is a current belief within the government that the focus on income over the last decades has ignored the root causes of poverty and this has resulted in a multitude of social problems which have now become deep rooted. In 1941 the government commissioned a report to establish how society could be rebuilt after the war. The Beveridge report (1942) aimed to eradicate the ‘five evils’ to be: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. The work of Beveridge is still evident today as it led to many things which other countries are not fortunate to have such as a National Health Service which was introduced in 1948 along with our welfare state which was designed to protect us from ‘the cradle to the grave’ (bbc) The main driving force behind The Beveridge Report (1942) was to ...

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... other students. This proved rather challenging within our learning circle group as neither the Social Work Students or the Primary Education students had any idea. It had been said by one of the three social work students that they thought it was all about ‘arts and crafts’ and that we had no real involvement with social work or education departments. The whole learning circle was challenging, there was very little or no input from some group members. Opinions and ideas were requested and nothing was offered back in to the group.
During our learning circle we learned of local issues and the positive aspects of collaborative working. The Lochee Pathfinders whose aim is Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beveridge_william.shtml

Works Cited

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beveridge_william.shtml

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