Social policy, public policy, and social welfare policy are some of our most powerful tools for shaping and interacting with the world. Our world, however, is constantly changing, so when we consider policies we must always make sure that we are acting based on the current realities rather than a distant past. There are new challenges that shape our society. Every day, people are confronted with unprecedented threats to their well-being-threats to economic welfare from an emerging global information economy, environmental threats that risk health and safety, and global political instability that has repercussions beyond national borders.

Social Welfare Policy: Responding to a Changing World is unlike other books used in social welfare policy courses. John McNutt and Richard Hoefer explicitly address the emerging information economy, the rise of globalization, and the developing environmental crisis, and provide a tightly integrated framework for understanding these forces and their impact on policy and practice. This framework is applied to the six traditional arenas of policy-child and family services, health and mental health, poverty and inequality, housing and community development, crime and violence, and aging-exploring how to find new solutions to problems both long enduring and brand new. There is an urgency to this text that is clearly communicated to readers-it is time for practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers to make decisions for the future based on the realities of the present.