John Gal

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Passported benefits are additional benefits provided to individual or households based on a previous eligibility to a “primary” social security benefit. Although passported benefits should be easier to claim, in reality the claiming process is often cumbersome and results in low take-up. Drawing on an Israeli case study, we offer a conceptual frame...

Rather than being seen simply as social policy implementors, in recent decades there has been recognition of the unique insights that social workers can bring to policy formulation. This book offers a theoretical framework for understanding why social workers engage in policy, and the implications for research, education and practice.

Introduction Social policies seek to address human needs. Although there is wide debate over how this can best be achieved, the prime stated objective of these policies is to improve the social welfare of individuals, families, groups and communities, and to tackle the social problems that affect them. Social policies are comprised of relatively id...

Introduction Moving from the environments that provide a broad context in which social worker efforts to influence policies take place, this chapter focuses on the first of the three categories of factors that are affected by environments. These three factors – opportunity, facilitation and motivation – directly affect the level and the form of pol...

Introduction Efforts by social workers to influence policies, regardless of the stage, arena, level, mode and route that is taken to engage in this activity, or the type of policy sought (see Chapter 2), will take place in a specific context. Given that the contexts in which social workers practise differ, it is reasonable to expect that the degree...

Introduction Most social workers are employed in organisations. This seemingly trivial observation has considerable relevance to an understanding of the engagement of social workers in policy and is central to the discussion on, what we term, ‘facilitation’. Unless they are self-employed, the actual engagement of social workers in diverse policy ro...

Introduction The premise upon which this book is based is that the social work profession explicitly seeks to address the life challenges and improve the well-being of individuals, families and communities, and to promote social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people (IFSW, 2014). Social policies can,...

Introduction The relevance of social policy for social workers hardly needs to be emphasised or reiterated. It has been the subject of much discussion within the profession, it is a topic integral to the education process of social workers and the relevance of social policy for social workers has been the focus of ample scholarly attention across t...

Introduction Social workers are individuals with agency (Jeffery, 2011). In their role as either professionals or private citizens, the decision by social workers to engage in policy change or its formulation will inevitably be influenced by their motivation to do so. After having discussed the environments that provide the context in which this de...

Rather than being seen simply as social policy implementors, in recent decades there has been recognition of the unique insights that social workers can bring to policy formulation. This book offers a theoretical framework for understanding why social workers engage in policy, and the implications for research, education and practice.

The concluding chapter pulls together the different components of the policy engagement conceptual framework. It makes the claim that an understanding of efforts by social workers to impact social policy requires us to move beyond individual factors and to look at the interplay between the context in which these take place, the nature of the policy...

This chapter discusses the context in which policy engagement on the part of social workers takes place. It identifies four distinctive environments that have been identified in the literature on the policy engagement of social workers. The claim is that these environments offer a necessary context within which policy engagement emerges and that th...

As individuals with agency in their role as either professionals or private citizens, the decision by social workers to engage in policy will inevitably be influenced by their motivation to do so. This understanding requires us to explore the factors that are associated with the motivation of individual social workers in different positions to enga...

Research on social workers’ policy engagement shows that one of the most important factors linked to their policy role is the support that they get from their workplace. Thus, social workers’ engagement in policy will be facilitated if the dominant values and modes of practice in their immediate work environment, that is, ‘the organizational cultur...

This chapter provides an infrastructure for understanding the social work–social policy interface and, in doing so, sets the stage for the following chapters, which explore components of the conceptual framework. It discusses the types of social policies that social workers are likely to interact with, the various policy arenas in which social poli...

This chapter explores the specific institutions in which policy is formulated and the impact that these can have on efforts by social workers to affect social policy. The goal of the chapter is to shed light on the place of institutional opportunities in shaping levels and forms of policy engagement by social workers. The notion of opportunity stru...

Social workers have traditionally been regarded as the foot soldiers of the welfare state. Yet, over the last decades, social work scholars and professionals have offered an alternative perspective on the social work–social policy nexus which asserts that social workers should, can and do play a policy role, which takes diverse forms in different p...

Policy engagement by social workers that seeks to impact public policies that advance social justice and human rights has, and continues to be, a core component of the social work profession. This has also led to a growing volume of research focusing upon the routes that social workers can take to be part of the policy formulation process. The aim...

This study examines policy efforts to reduce administrative burden and to increase accessibility to unemployment insurance (UI) during the COVID-19 crisis in Israel and the consequences of these for claimants. A mixed-method approach was applied, utilising administrative documents, interviews and survey data. The findings suggest a mixed trend: bur...

Settlement houses are a staple in any historical account of the development of social work and the dominant approaches and enduring practices within this profession. Indeed, there appears to be wide consensus that the Settlement House Movement has played a crucial role in the development of social work and social work research internationally. Yet,...

While there has been a long-standing concern about the role of policy within social work education and social work practice, most of the emphasis has been on social work education at the BSW and MSW levels. This article examines policy education at the PhD level. It first explores how policy is taught in social work PhD programs in the United State...

בשנת 2007 הוקדש דבר העורך של ביטחון סוציאלי לסוגיה של מיצוי זכויות (גל, 2007). מערכת הביטחון הסוציאלי בישראל התקשתה אז להתאושש מתקופה של קיצוצים נרחבים חסרי תקדים, והשיח הציבורי השולט נסוב דווקא על הצד השני של המטבע: כיצד מצמצמים את תופעת ההונאה והניצול לרעה של המערכת (דורון, 2010). מטרתו של דבר העורך, פרי עטו של אחד ממחברי מאמר זה, היתה לעורר לסוג...

Knowledge on street‐level bureaucrats as policy entrepreneurs is in its infancy. This article contributes to this emerging field by examining three cases of successful efforts by social workers employed by local social services in Israel to introduce local policy change. These processes varied in the issues that they addressed and the length of tim...

The two settlement houses established in Mandatory Palestine were part of efforts by Jewish social workers to both address poverty among immigrant populations and to strengthen their integration into the Zionist project, which sought to establish a Jewish state in that country. The first settlement house was established in Jerusalem by a Zionist wo...

In historical accounts of social work, it is commonplace to identify two competing approaches within the profession. Casework, with its focus on individual change and psychosocial treatment, emerged from the Charity Organisation Society, while the social reform movement, with its emphasis on social change and the use of community social work method...

The Settlement House Movement is perceived as a major influence on the emergence of the social work profession globally. Yet, historical research on this movement in social work, and in particular, the transnational translation of this idea, is very limited. This volume sheds new light on the establishment of settlement houses in diverse societies,...

במהלך המחצית השנייה של שנות האלפיים, קידום מיצוי זכויות הפך לתמה מרכזית במדיניות המוסד לביטוח לאומי. באופן מיוחד, בין השנים 2012 – 2016 ותחת הנהגתו של מנכ"ל המוסד שלמה מור-יוסף, אומצה תפיסה שכונתה "ממשפטיות לשירותיות", שבאה לידי ביטוי בשינוי ארגוני משמעותי אשר הדגיש את הצורך בהרחבת נגישותם של אזרחים לקצבאות המוסד. המפנה לעבר מיצוי זכויות במוסד לביט...

Social workers’ policy engagement has been the subject of growing interest in the social work discourse in recent years. In order to contribute to theoretical and empirical knowledge for social workers and social work organizations seeking to undertake their policy role, this article will seek to better understand one of the types of factors that d...

Policy change is a core goal of community social workers. This study aims to identify the motivational and facilitating factors associated with community social workers’ engagement in policy practice, defined as policy involvement undertaken in the workplace context. The sample comprised of 106 community social workers employed by local government...

Introduction In social work discourse it is not only practitioners that are called on to engage in policy practice in order to further social justice (Gal & Weiss-Gal, 2013; Jansson, 2014; McBeath, 2016; Reisch, 2016) but also social work scholars (Howard, 2010). As the individuals responsible for educating future social workers, social work facult...

This study contributes to research on policy practice by enriching our knowledge about the forms that the policy engagement of social work academics takes, the dynamics of this engagement, and the factors associated with it. The study is based on structured interviews with 24 faculty members from schools of social work in Israel, all of whom are ac...

Bringing together international case studies, this book offers theoretical and empirical insights into the interaction between social work and social policy. Moving beyond existing studies on policy practice, the book employs the policy cycle as a core analytical frame and focuses on the influence of social work(ers) in the problem definition, agen...

‘Justice instead of Charity’: Chapters in the Development of Social Work in Israel is the first comprehensive account of the history of the social work profession in Israel and prestate Palestine. Edited by John Gal and Roni Holler, the volume comprises an introductory chapter by the editors and fourteen essays that focus on diverse aspects and per...

Social work education has a major role in preparing social workers to engage in policy practice intended to impact policies which can affect the well-being of their service users and address social problems. Legislative advocacy is one of these strategies. This article describes and evaluates an innovative 4-day intensive course on legislative advo...

בטחון

Social work is strongly committed to furthering social justice, among others, by incorporating efforts to influence policies into social work practice. However, there is little empirical data on if, and how, social workers seek to impact social policy as an integral part of their job. This article explores the policy-related activities which Israel...

פרופ' אברהם דורון היה ממניחי היסודות של מדינת הרווחה בישראל והדמות המרכזית בה במשך עשורים. במובנים רבים הוא היה החוקר "המחויב לרווחה", כהגדרתו של ריצ'ארד טיטמוס, וללא ספק המזוהה ביותר עם מדינת הרווחה הישראלית. הוא ליווה את הקמתה ועיצובה כעובד סוציאלי, כחוקר וכמחנך, והיה שותף פעיל בתהליכי מדיניות בצמתים המכריעים בתולדותיה. הוא הניח את היסודות לחקר מ...

על אף מרכזיותן של מערכות מדינת הרווחה בהתמודדות עם בעיות חברתיות בישראל, ולמרות העניין שנושא זה מעורר לעיתים קרובות, כתיבה עיונית על מדינת הרווחה כמעט נעדרת מהשיח הציבורי. ספר זה מתמקד בסוגיות שעומדות במרכז הדיון על אודות מדינת הרווחה. הוא מקבץ בתוכו ממיטב העבודות של פרופ' אברהם דורון בנושא, ולצדן מבואות שנכתבו על ידי עורכי הספר, חוקרי מדינת הרווחה...

This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate within European social work on the role of social work educators in influencing social policy. It reports on a study that examined the role of social work educators in furthering social policy by comparing Israeli social work educators’ engagement in policy with faculty members in professional...

While there has been a long-standing concern about the role of policy within social work education and social work practice, most of the emphasis has been on social work education at the BSW and MSW levels. This article examines policy education at the PhD level. It first explores how policy is taught in social work PhD programs in the United State...

Based on data from 12 diverse societies, this is the first cross-national comparative study on academic engagement in social policy formulation. The chapters present survey data on the policy involvement of social work academics in different countries and an analysis of this data by country experts. The findings relate to the levels and types of po...

This chapter provides an overview of the findings on the engagement of social work academics in the policy process in 12 countries. It describes the Policy Practice Engagement conceptual framework that served as the basis for the cross-national study. The levels, activities, stages and perceived impact of social work academics’ engagement in policy...

This chapter explores the academia-society nexus and, in particular, the theoretical and conceptual justifications for social work academics’ engagement in the policy process. It then presents the methodology of the cross-national study of social work academics’ policy involvement, with special attention to the tools employed in the survey, and the...

This chapter examines the engagement of social work academics in the policy process in Israel. It begins by presenting an overview of social policy and the welfare state in Israel and by discussing the emergence of the social work profession and the place of policy engagement in social work in that country. The development of social work education...

Dear Faculty Member, We would be grateful if you would fill out the attached questionnaire. It is part of an international study that seeks to better understand the involvement of the faculty of schools of social work in social welfare. Your participation in the study is voluntary and your anonymity is guaranteed. Completing the questionnaire shoul...

Israel, established in 1948, is a small country in the Middle East with a population of 8.3 million people, nearly 75% of them Jews and just over 20% Arabs, most of whom are Muslims (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 21 April 2015). Israel is a liberal democracy but also defines itself as a Jewish state, reflecting that the country was created b...

Michael Burawoy's advocacy in 2004 of a ‘public sociology’ (Acker, 2005; Burawoy, 2005; Kalleberg, 2005; McLaughlin and Turcotte, 2007; Brym and Nakhaie, 2009) rekindled a long-running debate in academia on the role of intellectuals in addressing the social concerns of the societies of which they are a part (Rein, 1980; Jacoby, 1987; Brym and Myles...

The academia–policy nexus is the topic of this book. Drawing on a cross-national quantitative study, we endeavour to better understand the degree to which academics seek to affect the policy formulation process, the means they use to try to affect it, and the factors associated with their level of engagement in this effort. While, hopefully, the fi...

This book explores the interface between social work academia and social policy in diverse societies across the globe. It does so by employing a unique cross-national comparative perspective and by focusing upon a field of academic and professional activity in which engagement in socially-relevant activities and those related to the policy process...

This article explores the transnational exchange of knowledge of ideas in social work in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing upon the notion of transnational translation of knowledge, the study presented here sheds light on the interaction between the knowledge and ideas brought to Palestine in the early 1930s by German social worker r...

The study’s aim is to expand knowledge on the level of involvement in policy-related interventions (‘policy practice’, PP) among social workers employed by non-profit human service organisations (NPHSOs) in Israel, and on the motivational and facilitating factors associated with this. The sample consisted of 106 social workers employed in NPHSOs th...

This cross-sectional quantitative study expands the knowledge on the level of involvement of social work academics (SWAs) in social policy formulation processes, and the factors associated with this. SWAs are an interesting case for exploring the academia-policy nexus because they are affiliated with a profession in which the discourse regards soci...

חקר המדיניות החברתית בישראל עבר תמורות מרחיקות לכת, הן מאז צעדיו הראשונים לאורך שנות ה 50 -של המאה הקודמת והן מאז תחילת שנות ה , 70 - תקופה שבמהלכה נעשו הצעדים המשמעותיים הראשונים למסדו כתחום מחקר אקדמי. בהתבססו על התפיסה התיאורטית הרואה במערכת המדעית זירה חברתית, מאמר זה מבקש לבחון את המגמות המאפיינות התפתחות זו, כפי שהן משתקפות בפרסומים בכתבי עת,...

The study of social policy in Israel has undergone major changes both since its initial steps during the 1950s and since the early 1970s, a period in which the first significant efforts to institutionalize it as an academic field took place. Based on a theoretical perspective that regards the scientific system as a social arena, this article seeks...

Policy practice is a core element of social work practice. The rationale for this type of practice and its key strategies and methods has been discussed at length in the literature. However, insights from public policy theories have not been employed in order to better understand the ways in which social workers can influence social policy formulat...

This article traces the construction of poverty in case reports produced by social workers, who investigated the needs of nearly 500 clients of soup kitchens in Palestine during the 1930s. Ideas expressed in the reports reflected both the tenets of Zionist ideology and dominant social work thinking in the Weimar Republic, where most of the social w...

This article offers an empirical analysis of the role of social workers as policy actors in parliamentary committees. Based on an initial finding that social workers participated in 14 per cent of all the deliberations of parliamentary committees in the Israeli parliament, the article examines the actual inputs of these social workers in the commit...

Soup kitchens are social welfare institutions that provide meals for free or for reduced prices on a regular basis. There is evidence that soup kitchens have provided meals for people at different times, in diverse civilizations, and across the globe for at least six hundred years. Though they have clearly been sidelined by services and benefits pr...

The notion that social workers should seek to influence the policies that affect the societies in which they work has existed for nearly as long as the profession itself. Indeed, the history of the social work profession is replete with examples of social workers seeking to influence policies in the societies in which they lived. In the United King...

The point of departure for this volume is that social work is a profession that embodies the values of social justice and human rights, and embraces social change as a means to achieve these values (Hare, 2004). As such, changing social welfare policies is an important, indeed crucial, aim of social work interventions because those policies can fac...

This chapter offers an introduction to the notion of policy practice in social work, a term which describes the involvement of social workers in the policy process. The chapter explores the reasons for social worker engagement in policy practice and describes existing knowledge on this. It then underscores the need for cross-national data on the ro...

Furthering social justice and human rights is a fundamental principle underlying the social work profession. Engaging in social policy formulation processes is a major route through which social workers can realise this goal. This type of social work activity has been termed “policy practice”. The aim of this book is to shed light on policy practic...

This article deals with the engagement of social workers in the policy arena. It offers a conceptual framework for the examination of why social workers engage in policy practice and how they actually do so. Drawing upon examples from a cross-national study comprising eight countries, the Policy Practice Engagement (PPE) conceptual framework presen...

Furthering social justice and human rights is a fundamental principle underlying the social work profession. Engaging in social policy formulation processes is a major route through which social workers can realise this goal. This type of social work activity has been termed ‘policy practice’. The aim of this book is to shed light on policy practic...

Recent years have seen accelerated processes of decentralization and devolution of social services from central government toward local authorities and from them to non-profit organizations (NPOs). This article describes a case study of the process of transition of power from a local authority to a NPO and the outcomes of this transition on public...

This chapter explores the unique immigration-policy model that was adopted in Israel as a contribution to the understanding of the connection between social and immigration policies in European welfare states. The discussion uses an institutional perspective to present a detailed study that explains the emergence and endurance of the categorical we...

Introduction Welfare states have faced difficulties in integrating immigrants and in dealing successfully with issues of poverty and deprivation among members of this social group. In fact, this is the case even in those European welfare states that have the most generous welfare regimes. An alternative to the immigrant policies adopted in most wel...