A brief text presenting conflicts and controversies surrounding social welfare policy. This book is part of the Connecting Core Competencies Series. This series helps students understand and master CSWE's core competencies with a variety of pedagogy highlighted competency content and critical thinking questions for the competencies throughout. Essentials of Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy (a briefer version of Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy, 7/e) introduces the major social welfare policies and programs in the United States and encourages readers to think about conflicts in social welfare today. It emphasizes the current political aspects of policymaking and major social welfare programs. In this book, social welfare policy is portrayed as the ever-evolving result of public conflict over social problems, the resources Americans choose to allocate to those problems, the debate over whether these problems can best be solved through government, and the political choices involved in reaching even tentative consensus. Teaching & Learning Experience Improve Critical Thinking -- Includes critical thinking questions in margins and end of chapter review questions that 'build' on each other. Explore Current Issues -- Includes the most recent data on healthcare reform, the midterm elections, and public policy changes, and more. Apply CSWE Core Competencies -- Integrates the 2008 CSWE EPAS throughout -- highlights competencies and practice behaviors and includes expensive pedagogy. Support Instructors -- An Instructor's Manual and Test Bank, Computerized Test Bank (MyTest), Blackboard Test Item File, and PowerPoint presentations are included in the outstanding supplements package.