John D. Morrison, DSW
Robert A. Wolf, LCSW
Dr. Morrison is Professor and Program Chair of the Masters of Social Work program of Aurora University, a 105 year old institution serving 2,000 students in the Chicago land area. Mr. Wolf is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Vice President of Children's Home & Aid Society of Illinois, a 115 year old, private agency serving 10,000 children and families a year through 700 staff and a $36 million budget.
This paper is an attempt to contrast current German and American social welfare systems. We write it from the perspective of two American social workers who had the opportunity to be part of a series of international exchanges. Under the sponsorship of the American National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the Chicago - Hamburg Sister City Program and the Hamburg Youth Authority, three, two week exchanges of professionals occurred between November, 1996 and September, 1998. In the 1996 and 1998 exchanges, twelve NASW members traveled to Hamburg to study, discuss and contrast the welfare and social service systems of both countries. In 1997 twelve German professionals traveled to Chicago to study the American system and another group of Germans will come in May of 1999.
Our analysis is based on our observations and discussions with German counterparts, and includes observations made by the Germans who visited Chicago in 1997. As Americans we have the advantage of observing the differences between German and American social services, but had the disadvantage of not having studied a great deal of the history and social legislation of Germany. Because we are writing from an American perspective, our observations about German social welfare are tentative and are offered as hypotheses for consideration by our German counterparts who might suggest alternative explanations. We are much clearer about the validity of our statements about American social welfare.
In writing this paper we have attempted to compare German and American social welfare systems. A comparative approach to studying social welfare services is useful in several ways. Looking at different systems increases the ability to understand one’s own culture and service system. By identifying differences between a system that we are familiar with and an alternative system, we can hopefully discern some of the underlying philosophy, values, history and cultural context of each. The identification of these differences suggests alternatives to the status quo and provides a broader range of practice and policy options for future consideration. A comparative analysis should not attempt to pose the question "which system is best,” but rather "under what conditions should an alternative be considered.”
We offer a series of 8 discussion points to summarize our comparison of the two systems:
1) The Role of Welfare and Social Services in a Society
Social welfare and social services do not stand alone but reflect a society's culture, values and history. Germany has had a much longer history of providing basic health and income supports, dating back to the Bismarck era in the 1880's. Indeed the term "welfare” or “wohlfahrtsstaat” in German, suggests a social contract between citizen and government in contrast to the stigma attached to welfare in America. Social welfare provisions are not only well accepted by the German public but expected. Most welfare services are citizen entitlements and available at no cost regardless of individual or family income. Germans also seem much more accepting of a strong role for government and seem to assume that government usually works in the best interest of citizens. Indeed, German professionals often expressed the view that government run services were of higher quality, than those services offered by non-public organizations. However, recent cut backs in government funding along with the increasing role of the private sector (principle of subsidiary) may change this view.
Ultimately social welfare policy revolves around whom we consider strangers rather than neighbors and the relative weight given to individualism versus the common good. The homogeneous nature of German society, with a more consistent culture and values, supports the latter, more communitarian view of social welfare. There is a strong social contract that exists between government and citizens, with an understanding that citizens can rely on government in times of need. Further this social contract is widely supported and cannot be easily modified. A limited review of enabling legislation for German day care and youth service provisions revealed a clear set of outcome expectations designed to benefit the common good such as developing individual responsibility, social commitment and becoming an international citizen.(1) Further evidence of the high value placed on common good is seen in a publication by Bonn based Intes Nations describing Germany’s social security system, and titled “One For All and All For One.” (2) We would suggest then, that social welfare is an umbrella of services which support most families in Germany and promotes the cultural, moral and ethical values that have been developed through political consensus at the Federal and State level of government.
In contrast, American social welfare provisions have no such goals of increasing social cohesion, a sense of national purpose or commitment to one another. Social welfare began selectively in the 1800's through religious and nonsectarian private efforts, rather than governmental auspices. National government sponsorship of services began much later, particularly as a reaction to the great depression of the 1930's. Initial government focus was on specific needy groups such as; military veterans, orphans, dependent families, etc., until the l960s. Probably because of America’s frontier history, its emphasis on "rugged individualism" and a population of immigrants who fled oppressive governments, Americans historically have viewed government as a necessary evil, a financial burden and a threat to individual liberties. Elevating the anti-government attitude, Senator Bob Dole in his 1996 Presidential campaign argued against large, centralized government by frequently starting his speeches with, "The scariest words in the English language are ‘I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help you’.”
The United States is a "reluctant welfare state” (3) and the social safety net is much less developed and covering fewer people who are at risk than in most European countries. Welfare programs typically identify the sickest and poorest as their charge with little interest in the working poor, common good or universal prevention approaches. While some states and localities have provided public and private funding to create local safety nets and preventive program, these initiatives reflect local values and available resources rather than a larger national consensus. There is a tendency in America to assume that the economic market, the family or the church will take care of most problems. We often see those who actually use services as lacking character and are therefore stigmatized; there is a tendency to "blame the victim.”
2) Establishing a Financial Safety Net
The German financial floor or "safety net" is set at a much higher level than in America, which makes it possible for families to maintain a relatively decent standard of living on government supports. Most programs are open to all citizens and do not require an extensive work history in order to receive benefits. The implications of this are enormous. Many social problems are correlated with poverty including child abuse and neglect, family dissolution, violence, school failure, crime and delinquency. One simply doesn't see the kind of poverty in German cities that one would experience in America. Lower rates of poverty contribute to the much lower incidents of delinquency, child abuse and neglect, violence, etc. in Germany.
American income support programs are heavily tied to employment. In America a two-tier system exists, one for those with extensive work history (five years or more for Social Security) which tends to be much more holistic and collaborative with clients (Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and Medicare) and a second for those with little work history (Public Assistance, Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid). The first is typically characterized as social insurance and recipients are seen as “worthy” and the second as “welfare” where recipients are seen as weak or flawed. Support levels are more much generous for those who have had regular employment but still lag behind German levels of assistance. An implied social contract exists for those covered by social insurance but no such contract exists for welfare recipients. We found much less of a dichotomy in German thinking and practices related to cash support.
It is unclear what level of poverty would occur "naturally" in each country without poverty mitigation programs. What is most important is that Germany does a much better job of preventing the effects of poverty. Reducing the level of absolute poverty has societal benefits; not dealing with poverty results in both social and fiscal costs. Perhaps we have an option to either pay early (Germany) or pay later (America). It is unclear what the total cost is with either option but the German model probably results in fewer casualties and a higher sense of national cohesion.
3) Meeting Need or Providing Social Control
German services express value for the individual and his or her family and tend to be much more holistic and collaborative than in the U.S. There is a tendency for Germans to deal with actual need and not to blame clients for their situation. In the German foster care system, for example, biological families unable for a variety of reasons to raise their children, can maintain a continuing relationship and legal rights to their children even after placement in a foster care home. The child can grow to adulthood in the foster home or an institution enjoying support from both biological and foster parents. In contrast, the growing cost of foster care in America led to new legislation establishing a time limit of 12 months for either rehabilitating the biological parents or legally terminating their parental rights and placing the child for adoption. It is also worth noting that German foster parents are paid almost twice as much for caring for a foster child than their American counter parts.
In Germany there is the conviction that the state should only impose on individual behavior when life and death issues are at stake. This societal preference for non-intervention may result in institutional blind spots and an under reporting of child abuse, domestic violence, etc. While American social workers assume that they also perform a social control role for society, German social workers are most uncomfortable with this concept. We believe this is a reaction to the excesses of the National Socialists when deviancy of many forms was punished by authorities. We observed a number of manifestations of this reluctance to impose professional or societal controls or values on clients. For example, despite a growing interest in “accountability” or measuring the outcomes of their work, social workers keep very few records as records had been misused by Nazis to identify deviants.
The threshold of risk tolerance is clearly much higher in Germany than in America. For youth the individual's right to make harmful decisions concerning their own life, e.g., drug addiction, prostitution, and homelessness was striking. At the same time a host of support services were provided to maintain these high risk individuals and families until they themselves decide to seek help. Indeed, several policemen talked of the open drug use and prostitution as a social not a criminal problem, even though both are illegal. Other examples include government sanctioned but unsupervised group living apartments for homeless/runaway 15 and 16 year olds; temporary court sanctioned housing in a public hotel for a violent “skin head” until a psychiatric bed became available in a hospital; and the reported reluctance to force the removal of a sexually abusive parent from the home, opting instead to remove the child victim.
German social workers (and seemingly German society) guard against imposing their middle class values on their clients. Social workers, in particular, were more tolerant of clients' rights to choose alternative life styles than their American counterparts. The openness and tolerance of drug use, prostitution and a counter culture surprised us. We asked ourselves how long the Chicago municipal administration would tolerate addicts congregating round the central station or the caravan squatters occupying open land as we saw in Altona, Hamburg. Despite civil rights issues, only a few days would elapse before the Chicago police would feel compelled by the public to take action.
Similarly there was very benign attitude toward youth crime and vandalism. The tolerance for "graffiti" and gangs stand in stark contrast to an American overt battle with both. Americans view graffiti as reflective of gang and, therefore, criminal activity. American gangs are formed for the primary purpose of carrying out illegal activity primarily the distribution of narcotics. Gang members mark their neighborhood with graffiti to show their allegiances to the gang and its territory as well as to challenge rival gangs. The Chicago Crime Commission has targeted gangs as “Public Enemy No. 1". In contrast to German authorities seeking alternatives to jailing youth for criminal offenses, America is increasingly concerned with youth violence and there is a growing tendency to incarcerate youths and try them as adults. We feel that America society is much less tolerant of deviant behavior than German society. We understand that these practices and other social policies in Germany reflect a reaction to the authoritarian abuses of the National Socialist regime. However, we would suggest our German colleagues might want to reconsider the balance between the rights of the clients with the rights of potential or actual victims and society as a whole.
4) Designing and Implementing Social Services
The focus of American social services is treatment and remediation rather than prevention. Interventions are targeted to individuals rather than communities. American social work historically embraced Freudian and psychoanalytic theory in developing its practices. These theoretical underpinnings view human problems as originating in individual pathology rather than a dysfunctional society and parallel the highly regarded medical model of diagnosis and treatment. Starting with the family therapy movement in the 1960's, the psychoanalytic model began yielding to a more holistic view of the client and eclectic interventions were developed drawing from a range of theoretical constructs. In the last decade there has been an emerging interest in America for addressing social need through developing coordinated neighborhood approaches, self-help support groups and volunteer mentors for clients. Some of these less costly approaches may well be motivated by a realization that the federal government is reducing its responsibility and financial support for social welfare.
Paralleling German reform with passage of new laws on social assistance and assistance to youth in 1961, the American government began responding to social need through enacting enabling and/or mandating legislation and allocating monies to states to develop individual plans for starting a number of new initiatives in each state. Some early Federal initiatives in the 1960s included the community mental health movement, court focused juvenile justice programs, school focused special educational services for handicapped children and President Johnson's Great Society incentives to eliminate poverty. This trend at the federal level has continued through this decade. Often when states started these federally funded initiatives, services quickly became complicated by bureaucracy, political interference, distanced from the very communities so necessary for success and costly as inflationary forces required ever increasing financial support from the states. From these combined factors and a growing tension between federal and state officials, governmental services began being transferred to the private sector. Supported by the growing new right in America and their increasing political influence and power, the current welfare reform arguments have extended this trend organizing around a concept called “devolution”. Devolution is "the passing of responsibility and (partial) authority for activities and services of the federal government to the state government and from the state government to local governments......".(4) While untested and having the potential to create holes in the safety net, devolution and the growing political popularity of localized control, is accelerating the privatization of governmental services. With this shifting of resources, remaining government run services struggled to maintain adequate funding and quality standards.
In contrast the growing private sector has successfully sought private funding in order to leverage government dollars. This additional financial support is dramatically increasing the quality of services as private agencies develop training programs, quality assurance systems and seek higher levels of professionalism through meeting accreditation standards. These standards are developed by accrediting bodies which are national in scope and represent a professional consensus on “best practices”. Agencies apply for accreditation by completing a lengthy self-study in which it describes and documents how it complies with all of the standards. The accrediting body then sends a review team of professional colleagues to spend several days in the agency verifying compliance with the standards. If successful the agency becomes accredited for a three to four year period after which the self-study and professional review is repeated. We found no equivalent process in Germany.
German counseling or personal social services, offer many contrasts to American practices. First, the counseling process itself would appear to be anchored in ego psychology and social learning theory and is intended to be short term. German counseling tends to focus on client strengths and appears to actively engage family, friends and community in problem solving and validating the dignity of the client. We were surprised but delighted to visit one agency in Hamburg whose staff were undergoing training in “Solution Focused, Short Term Therapy”. The training was being provided by the Family Institute of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an organization known and respected by these authors. Second, we found little interest in court mandated counseling, unlike America where court tolerance for deviant behavior is limited. Third, direct and/or forced government intervention in the lives of its citizens appeared rare. Social workers often describe their role as being available to help clients when clients are ready. Parent(s), rather than other professionals, seek out child welfare services for their child, define the problem and determine the type of intervention. The parent(s) “decisions in this respect have to be accepted as long as the child’s welfare is not endangered.” (5) This control and direction of services by the parent(s), stands in stark contrast to the American view of the professional knowing what is best for the client and the expectation, as in the doctor-patient relationship, that the client will accept the professional’s recommendation.
5) The Social Service Delivery System
In Germany most services are funded by the government which also directly operates many services. Social service workers are for the most part public employees. With this homogenous work force under a single employer, a shared view of purpose and methodology was evident in the professional community.
The Hamburg Youth Authority, for example, operates a wide range of services typically with its own staff rather than relying on contracts with non-governmental agencies. This makes for a high degree of stability in the provision of services and consistency of policy. It also means, on the other hand, that services aren't so responsive to changing conditions, innovations are neither sought nor rewarded and there is less sanction against marginal performance by staff. Our German colleagues, for example, had trouble thinking of situations where professionals had lost their positions due to poor performance.
A shifting of power and control is also occurring in Germany with the passage of care insurance. The new Care Insurance Funds (Pflegeversicherung) assumes responsibility for licensing providers, negotiating the cost and quality of services and creates parity between welfare associations and commercial providers. These differences we suspect will significantly impact the very nature of government and nongovernmental agencies as survival will depend on successfully competing with the commercial market and each other.
As indicated earlier most current American social services are provided by the private, non-for-profit agencies. These agencies are legally independent entities having their own governing board of directors. Typically these boards have locally prominent citizens as members. In Chicago more than 1,000 private, social service agencies operate, often with little central planning, unifying philosophy or consistent policies and procedures. At the same time, competition encourages voluntary social agencies to specialize and be innovative. Funding of agencies is fragmented and most agencies rely on multiple funding sources including government funds (the largest revenue source), private contributions and charitable foundations. Competition between agencies has been related to securing external funding rather than attracting clients, so clients have not seen benefits from competition in terms of more responsive services such as more flexible hours or individually customized services based on clients’ needs.
With this competitive environment it is not surprising, that an entrepreneurial mind set prevails. Social agencies are increasingly using the language of private corporations to describe their operations. The term "president" is replacing the earlier non-profit term, "executive director,” to describe the chief staff person and agencies are increasingly describing themselves as "companies.” Qualifications for leadership positions increasingly emphasize marketing, public relations and business credentials rather than skill at providing social services and understanding of the human condition.
6) Financing Social Welfare and Managing the Costs of Service
Both countries are re-examining social welfare provisions and their costs. Much of this discussion has unfortunately been framed in terms of globalization, international competition and fiscal restraints which sets the stage for reducing support of social services.
In America there has been a dramatic reduction in federal responsibility for public assistance for the poorest Americans. Since the 1930s a system of income support (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) has been maintained that has been primarily funded by the federal government but administered at the state level under federal guidelines.
The myth has been advanced by the political right that most public assistance clients are minorities that have used the programs on a long term basis and have become dependent on welfare. While minorities such as African-Americans and Latinos have tended to use public assistance programs proportionately more than whites, the majority of welfare clients are in fact white. This distortion, however, has led public assistance programs to be seen as programs for minorities which reduces support for such programs in the larger society. In 1997 this system, which provided grants at a level of half of the official poverty level, was replaced with a far more limited program. The new program, Temporary Aid to Need Families (TANF), eliminates most federal government standards and assigns regulation setting and administration with the states. Most importantly, the new program limits aid to a lifetime maximum of five years for a family. New emphasis is placed on moving parents into employment. One of the few positive changes is a much broader provision for day care for children of working parents and better health care provisions for children.
Increasingly, American services are subject to "managed care" provisions, which are attempts to contain the costs through rationing services. This has happened first in health care where medical services must be pre-approved by a managed care company or health maintenance organization and serves as an intermediary organization between the employers who pay for services and clients who use services. Typically in the health care arena, these quasi insurance organizations are private, for profit corporations which authorize physician and hospital services. If they provide fewer or cheaper services the corporation makes more money because they are paid on a fixed per capita basis. This trend is spreading to social services as well. A voluntary agency might, for example, be provided a fixed dollar amount by the state to deal with all aspects of care for a foster child. If the child requires less services the agency profits, if more services are required the agency must find private funds to cover the additional cost.
As mentioned earlier in this paper, the devolution movement in America will attempt to manage costs by allocating predetermined levels of funding from the federal and state governments to local governmental and private agencies. The local service providers then will have to struggle with stretching the resources to meet local needs. Options will include seeking private funds to supplement government funding, limit services through prioritizing clients based on greatest need, provide shorter and shorter lengths of service and/or reduce operating expenses through use of volunteers and hiring less qualified staff.
German Authors Bónker and Wollman identify a similar policy shift in the late 1980s: "Confronted with massive fiscal stress and growing discontent with service quality, social policy 'rediscovered' the alleged virtues of subsidiary . . . many municipalities now sought, where possible, to delegate social services to the welfare associations.” (6) Consequences of this German version of devolution are a very uneven range of services from one city or state to another dependent on the local willingness to financially support social services. With the absorbing of East Germany and global economic pressures, the resulting fiscal pressures on the German central government will probably result in decreasing support for social welfare programs. However, starting from a much higher base, it is unlikely that Germany will reduce its income support programs to American levels.
One growing trend which might minimize diminishing government support is the growth in the numbers and size of German foundations. The Executive Director of the Heinrich Boll Foundation, Ralf Focks, stated “ The question is not state or private but increasing public private partnership”. (7) With the left leaning Green Party recently proposing new laws to encourage the creation of foundations, one may argue for a developing consensus that government alone cannot meet all of the social welfare needs in German. If true, the foundations and commercial markets will become new players in the designing and implementing of social welfare policies.
7) Perceptions of Social Work
History has also affected the nature of professionalization of social services in each country. The first training or education programs for social workers in America began one hundred years ago. Because individuals entering social services were typically graduates of colleges or universities (often women, with degrees in a variety of academic disciplines), these programs began as short, post graduate, agency-based, training programs. From this beginning, university based, graduate level schools of social work evolved. Until the 1940s, faculties were usually individuals with only a master's degree in social work. Doctoral level education in social work as a discipline evolved and, currently, faculty in most social work programs (undergraduate or graduate) have a doctoral degree in social work. American social work, as a discipline, has all the trappings (although not the prestige) of other professions with journals, conferences, awards, licenses, a code of ethics, etc.
In contrast, as a profession, social work is less developed in Germany with little professional identity. The term “social work” seems more often to be used to describe job duties rather than the credentials of a person. Those employed in German social services come from a variety of educational backgrounds. Some may be trained in university based education programs (social pedagogues) others in polytechnic (fachhochschule) social work programs and still others are trained in law, psychology or sociology. Education for social services typically takes place at a post high school or bachelor's level and typically social work students are being taught by professors with education in a discipline other than social work. Lack of doctoral training in social work as a profession, as well as the absence of a coherent body of practice based knowledge and research, has limited the development of social work as a profession.
There are also status differences in terms of German education. Polytechnic education no matter how good, is not regarded in the same way as university education. In contrast, in America there is a common set of degrees: bachelor's, master's and doctorate that all colleges and universities use. This gives the appearance, at least, of similar education attainment despite the reality that there are very substantial differences between various institutions of higher education.
Social work practice seems to be driven largely by government policy. It was unclear to us to what extent public policy is influenced by client advocacy and client needs as identified by professionals in the field. German social service staff seem to regard themselves first as agency employees and only secondarily as members of a profession. Americans, partly because of job mobility and the diverse and fragmented nature of agencies, are more likely to emphasize their professional status and market their areas of expertise.
There are differences in the philosophy, theory and knowledge used by professional social service workers in each country. German social work is much more sociological than American social work which places much more emphasis on psychological theory. This is probably not surprising given the individualistic nature of American society. Our brief discussions with German social work educators suggest that German social workers are more likely to deal with fundamental philosophical issues at the policy rather than practice level. Americans seem, ultimately to be more pragmatic rather than philosophical. It seemed particularly ironic that in one school of social work, philosophical writings of German Jews who had fled to the United States were now required readings for its students. American social workers place emphasis on a professional code of ethics, but this focuses on the practice and behavior of individual social workers in relationship to individual clients rather than agency practices or governmental policy.
8) Diversity and Homogeneity.
Germany has considerable less population diversity than America, 27.9% vs. 8.9 %.(8) Diversity in Germany is thought of as Germans and foreigners meaning anyone not born German. In America diversity is discussed and organized along racial categories, i.e. white, black, Latino, Asian, etc. rather than immigrant status. While there has been some steady immigration to Germany, citizenship is not easily obtained. Second generation immigrants who had successfully obtained citizenship, reported still feeling like foreigners and therefore unequal. We saw refugees from a variety of countries and guest workers. Many, whose asylum status was not confirmed, were housed separately for example in special boats anchored in the Hamburg harbor. We speculated that this was done to minimize integration with German citizens and to make it easier to eventually return non-citizens to their homelands. While immigration is controlled in America setting aside such special housing provisions for non-citizen residents would have little support.
The integration of east and west Germany seems particularly challenging. While basic language and history are the same, a half century of different cultural development and a different reward system has made integration problematic. America has a large non-white population, mostly African-American (12.1 %(9)) but with an increasing Latino and Asian-American population that is not fully integrated into our society. Minorities, either foreigners or ethnic minorities, challenge the social welfare system to be culturally responsible in responding to their needs and in ensuring each family receives the support that is needed.
We would caution against looking at social welfare simply as a "cost;" there are considerable benefits in terms of prevention of more troublesome social problems and the ultimate costs that go with these. The value of social services in terms of quality of life for all, national stability and cohesion have too often been minimized.
Conclusions
The role social welfare plays in each country is quite different. German welfare is part of the very cultures of the people articulating government’s commitment to the common good. The German design in current practices are clearly tied to countering and guarding against a repeat of the abuses of the National Socialist Regime. American welfare, on the other hand, started with private religious organizations taking care of their own and only reluctantly did government become involved with the broader social problems. Welfare benefits are minimal by German standards and cover only the sickest and the poorest of citizens. In Germany, one does not see the level of poverty as in America nor the high rate of poverty-related problem such as delinquency, child abuse, violence, etc. Quite naturally than, American social services focus on these targeted groups and has developed various therapeutic techniques to assist clients in changing their behavior. Court ordered interventions (social control) are freely utilized when individuals or families are in trouble or are resisting services. Unfortunately, none of these efforts address the fundamental issues of being poor in a rich country. German social services, in contrast, are supportive in nature and seem to have the resources to address the fundamental issues of poverty, housing, job skills, etc. Proportionately German social services serve many fewer clients than their American counter parts. We would argue that this stands as testimony to the effectiveness of preventive services. We also would suggest that the value placed of prevention in non-intervention may actually create societal blind spot, resulting in significant under reporting of needs. The degree to which German social services tolerate and to some degree supports deviant and high risk behavior was striking to these authors. With the American preoccupation in placing blame and using the court system to sue for alleged damages, the social welfare system places considerable energy into self-protection and managing risk.
One question that we came away with is whether the Germany of the future will be like the present America in terms of level and nature of social problems. If it does, Germany might learn much from various tried and tested American models of intervention and remedial services. Technology related to individual services is better developed in America because of its emphasis on fixing the individual. Consequently, American social services have developed an extensive range of psychotherapeutic approaches and imposed intervention. These may be of value to German practitioners with appropriate modifications, if Germany eventually experiences increasing levels of social problems.
The role and function of social workers and social services reflect the culture and values of the society of which they are a part. As each society continues to modify its view of the role of social services and social welfare, changes in the role of social workers and their education will be required.
American social workers can benefit from studying the German use of environmental resources in service delivery. Given the American preference for in-patient hospital treatment, Americans could benefit from studying the German approach to addiction, from outpatient detoxification to outpatient treatment approaches which recognize relapse and tends to focus on addictive behavior and its dynamics rather than the substance or behavior addiction.
As both German and American social workers recognize the need for effective outcome measure, collaborative efforts could be most productive. German social workers, with a community and environmental focus and American social workers, with an individual focus could collectively design outcome measures from a holistic, individual, family community perspective.
Finally, it needs to be to recognize that fiscal restraints will increase on both sides of the Atlantic. Social welfare officials will have to adapt both through the development of new methods to increase efficiencies such as collaboration with other agencies, merging of smaller agencies and also through partnering with the commercial and foundation world to expand services and increase fiscal resources.
Footnotes
(1) The Child and Youth Services Act. (Social Code Book VIII).
Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. 1996, p.29-45.
(2) One For All And All For One Inter Nationes, March, 1995, Code no. 750 Q3516, Bonn, Germany.
(3) Jansson, Bruce S. The Reluctant Welfare State: American Social Welfare Policies; Past, Present and Future, 3rd Edition. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., 1997.
(4) Zalewski, John and Mannes, Mark. "Romanticizing Localism in Contemporary Systems Reform" The Prevention Report, the National Resource Center for Family Centered
Practice, 1998, 1 P. 5-9
(5) Textor, Martin R. “Youth and Family Welfare Services in Germany” International Social Work , October, 1995, 38 p.380
(6) Bónker, Frank and Wollman, Helmut . "Incrementalism and reform waves: the case of social service reform in the Federal Republic of Germany" Journal of European Public
Policy, September, 1996, 3.3, p. 441-60
(7) Stehle, Vince “German Fund Is Making Its Mark” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, July 30, 1998, 10 , p. 10
(8) US Census Bureau, (11/1/98) “Population Estimate by Race, “ Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C. State Bureau of Statistics, (1998) "Hamburg Facts and Figures",
Hamburg, Germany
(9) US Bureau of the Census, "Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1997" (117 edition) Washington, DC