A Rights-Based Approach to Social Policy Analysis, Paperback

This brief resource sets out a rights-based framework for policy analysis that allows social workers to enhance their long-term vision as well as their current practice. It introduces the emerging P.A.N.E. (Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination, Equity) model for evaluating social policy, comparing it with the traditional needs-based charity model in terms of not only effectiveness and efficiency but also inclusion and justice. Recognized standards for human rights are used to identify values crucial to informing policy goals. Exercises, key documents, and an extended example illustrate both the processes of creating empowering social policy and its best and most meaningful outcomes.

Included in the coverage:

• Rights-based and needs-based approaches to social policy analysis.
Regional and international human rights instruments.
• Grounding social policies in legal and institutional frameworks.
• Conceptualizing social issues from a human rights frame.
• Measuring progress on the realization of human rights.
• Rights-based analysis of maternity, paternity, and parental leaves in the United States.

For social workers and social work researchers, A Rights-Based Approach to Social Policy Analysis gives readers a modern platform for achieving the highest goals of the field. It also makes a worthwhile class text for social work programs. ​

About the Author:

Dr. Shirley Gatenio Gabel is an Associate Professor at Fordham University's Graduate School of Social Service. Her diverse experiences include directing public policy analyses for government and NGOs, lobbying, and organizing community efforts. Her primary research area is comparative child and family policies in both industrialized and developing countries. Dr. Gatenio Gabel's research increasingly focuses on how public policies improve the well-being of children from a child right's perspective. Dr. Gatenio Gabel has served as a consultant to UNICEF and UNESCO over the last 7 years on child poverty and advocacy strategies, social protection in developing countries and social inclusive policies and programs in developing countries. She was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Bulgaria in 2005-06 and was recently invited as a Fulbright specialist in 2013 to Argentina to teach child and family policies from a rights' perspective in FLACSO's doctoral program. She is the chair of CSWE's Commission on Global Education and recently co-edited a special issue of JSWE on the globalization of social work education. Dr. Gabel has been an invited to lecture on social work and human rights in Austria, Israel, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Argentina.