Alternative Policy to the Disability Employment Policy

Alternative Policy to the Disability Employment Policy

Alternative Policy to the Disability Employment Policy

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I proprosed for the disability employment policy to address the problem of discrimination of employees or job applicants with physical or mental disabilities and help maintain the best employment practices for the disabled in society (Grizzard, 2018). In this paper, I present an alternative policy to my proposed employment policy that will address the identified problem of discrimination at work if my proposed policy is not viable. The alternative policy for my proposed employment policy is the social welfare policy.

The social welfare policy is a set of rules, acts, and laws that are used to employ the lives of people in society (Grizzard, 2018). The social welfare policy will cover all people in society and not a particular group like people with disabilities. The policy will ensure that the employment concerns for the disabled people at the workplace are addressed and that they get equal opportunities as abled people. I chose the social welfare policy as an alternative to my proposed employment policy because the policy covers a wide area that makes it a more suitable alternative. The policy covers the empowerment of people with disabilities, housing, and other programs that aim at assisting marginalized persons or people with special needs in society. The social welfare policy addresses social problems in society through programs like Medicaid and the Wage Subsidy Scheme. Medicaid supports community-based and home-based services for the disabled in society through the provision of health caregivers who take care of the disabled (Bitler et al., 2017). The Wage Subsidy Scheme is a program that offers financial support to organizations and companies that employ people with physical or mental disabilities.

According to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013, employment discrimination is any form of discrimination at the workplace that is based on an individual’s gender, race, religion, nationality, mental or physical disability (McNamara, 2020). To address this social problem of discriminating against the disabled and denying them access to job opportunities through the social welfare policy, there is a need to change frequently the outlined social needs in the policy. The world, economy, and social life of the disabled keep on changing daily and so do the problems and solutions provided by the social welfare policy. These changes require a powerful institution to change the policies and approaches to the social problems the disabled face. The state government will be in charge of making these changes to the social welfare policy in collaboration with relevant agencies and organizations because the state is responsible for implementing and passing social policies.

The social welfare policy is congruent with social work values. The social welfare policy is similar to the social work values based on their purpose of promoting the general welfare and well-being of people in society. The core values stipulated under the social welfare policy are to promote social justice, integrity, and human dignity which are identical to social work core values of social justice, service, importance of human relationships, competence, integrity, dignity, and worth of a person (Hanson, 2018).

As a good policy alternative, the social welfare policy requires a certain amount of feasibility for it to be successfully implemented by decision-makers and the public (Simon, 2020). Politicians champion for the general welfare of the people they represent and different levels of governance. The social welfare policy aims at improving and promoting the general welfare of people in society making the policy highly feasible. The policy will get high political support because of the problems the policy seeks to address which are aligned with what politicians and decisions makers want for the people they represent. The implementation of the policy requires a lot of resources but the benefits of the policy are very high making it economically feasible based on the policy’s cost-benefit analysis. The state has a lot of resources and it is likely to implement the policy and deliver the required programs like the Wage Subsidy Scheme to support the disabled (Simon, 2020).

The social welfare policy meets the social equality values of the employment policy. I proposed the disability employment to address the barriers and problems that people with disabilities face at work or in getting job opportunities. The alternative social welfare policy meets this goal because through the social welfare policy programs the disabled get equal employment opportunities.

The government is likely to support the social welfare policy because through the social welfare policy programs the government can meet the citizen’s human needs (Simon, 2020). The programs enable the government to offer assistance like unemployment compensation and housing assistance. Marxian socialists are likely to be against the social welfare policy because they believe the programs cannot solve structural and fundamental issues of capitalism.

Communication and documentation advocacy skills can be used to support the social welfare policy. Effective written and verbal communication with decision-makers and state agencies can make them support and fund the policy programs. The provision of professional findings on social problems like disability employment discrimination can help support the policy (Jansson, 2018).

The current disability employment policy affects the social work practice service delivery for their clients. The policy makes it difficult for social workers to help people with disabilities cope with their problems. Most disabled people are unemployed which makes it difficult for them to afford quality healthcare. The lack of enough money to pay for service delivery makes it hard to improve the lives of the disabled.

The changes that can be made in the policy are to provide Health insurance and healthcare programs like Medicaid to support the needs of clients seeking clinical services. Through health insurance and programs like Medicaid unemployed people and persons with disabilities will access health care services at low or no cost (Hanson, 2018).

On the advocacy activities I proposed, the updates are; social media campaigns have made it possible to create disability social awareness and employers are hiring people with disabilities, the disabled are given access to quality education through school-based and online-based programs making them competitive in the job market, bureaucratic barriers have been difficult to remove due to their complex nature, and employers are participating in state-funded programs to support the disabled through the provision of housing and transport services making it possible for the disabled to access their work stations.

References

Bitler, M. P., & Zavodny, M. (2017). Medicaid. In The Law and Economics of Federalism. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Grizzard, W. R. (2018). The US Department of Labor Perspective. In Transforming Disability Welfare Policies (pp. 51-56). Routledge.

Hanson, R. L. (2018). Liberalism and the course of American social welfare policy. In The dynamics of American politics (pp. 132-159). Routledge.

Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social justice (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Series. Chapter 11, “Developing Political Strategy and Putting It into Action in the Policy-Enacting Task” (pp. 372-419)

McNamara, K. (2020). Failing to protect: a historical analysis of The Employment Nondiscrimination Act. Sociological Spectrum, 1-20.

Simon, C. A. (2020). Alternative energy: political, economic, and social feasibility. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.