A Rights-based Approach to Social Policy Analysis

???This brief introduces a rights-based approach to policy analysis for social workers. Conventional methods of policy analysis tend to emphasize outcomes and neglect the process by which social protection systems are established, whereas a rights-based approach embraces both the process and the outcomes. This book guides social workers through how to integrate human rights principles into social policies with the goal of developing long and short-term responses to current social issues that further human rights. A growing number of international entities (U.N. agencies, donor groups, NGOs, community-based organizations) utilize a rights-based framework in their development. It benefits social workers to be familiar with and skilled in this approach. The policy analysis framework introduced here is based on human rights standards and principles, and it can be used to establish policy goals whether they are local, national, or global issues.? ?

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.