Human Service Policies: Henry VIII And The Roman Catholic Church

There has always been classes of the haves and the have-nots, people with extreme wealth and those that live in squalor without the means to provide for themselves or their family members. Early human service policies can be dated back to the mid-1300s under the reign of Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church. As laws and policies evolved over the years, so did the organizations who oversaw managing the support of the poor and how the poor were cared for. From the initial development of the Elizabethan Poor Laws to the Charity of Organization of Society (C.O.S.), the Settlement Movement and finally, to today’s social policy benefits there have been some exemplary gains. The history of human services policies has evolved from an indignant

The services provided through the enactment of codifying the Poor Laws was the first time that the poor were supported outside of the church. The enactment of the government stepping up to care for the poor and unemployed, allowed the government to create and set the rules and laws surrounding these services. The government created a parish that oversaw the implementation of the laws and state-regulated services. Services were supported by the increase in tax collected by the government to offset the costs of subsidizing and housing the worthy-poor and the beggars, idlers, and street people. In effect, this was the beginning of ‘the assumption of public responsibility for the relief of the dependent poor’ (Guest, 1997, p. 12), which contrasted to the responsibility of the poor from being solely dependent on the goodwill of volunteers at the church. The Elizabethan Poor Laws supported people with indoor relief as well as outdoor relief. Indoor relief saw the removal of street people, idlers, and beggars who were sent to live in workhouses or correctional facilities, and the disabled, frail, and elderly were housed in hospitals. Those who were destitute but considered worthy of support received outdoor relief, that supported the giving of basic necessities to the deserving-poor, in the form of clothing, food, and money. The Elizabethan Poor Laws saw the indoctrination of laws to recognize and

1). Inefficient transit systems, resulted in workers living close to their places of employment, often paying extremely high rent for below par living conditions. With the influx of the working poor living in the downtown core of cities, the middle- and upper-class moved outwards physically ‘segregating the city into rich and poor districts’ (James, 2001, p. 1). The settlement movement was seen as an opportunity to break free of the ‘deleterious, outdated practices and perspectives’ (James, 2001, p. 2) that had previously paved the way for charity and poor relief. The settlements focused on movement between the classes, required the ‘privileged class to live with people who are from a disempowered class’ (Lengermann & Niebrugge-Brantley, 2002, p. 7), live in a neighborly context, systematic and experiential learning from the experience, and to use the knowledge and skills learned while at the settlement. (Lengermann & Niebrugge-Brantley, 2002) The focus of the settlement movement was to build a community of neighbours to recognize their obligations of being interdependent upon one another for the greater good of oneself and as a contributing member of the community. Social