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International Social Welfare Policy

Policy Related Sources to look for Overviews

It can be essential to locate and read overviews of policy on your topic in order to understand how laws, regulations, court cases, and common practices may have influenced policies about your topic.   Here are some starting points to use, in addition to Google, in order to get a general overview about your policy topic.  Wikipedia can also be a very helpful starting place for understanding policy topics, although it is important to cite more reliable sources for your final paper.

 

Encyclopedia of Social Work
Co-published by the National Association of Social Workers and Oxford University Press.

Full-text source for information on current issues, studies, thoughts and trends of the legal world with coverage back to 1908. Search through Ebsco.

LEGALTRAC
Indexing for more than 1200 major law reviews, legal newspapers, Bar Association journals, and international law journals. Search through Gale.

Opposing ViewPoints
 

Books and Book Chapters, including E-Books

Books and book chapters can be especially helpful to obtain a big picture overview if you are new to a topic, and to include a historical perspective.   Many books you will find in OneSearch are in print in the Silberman Library's lower level and others are available electronically.  Use OneSearch on the Hunter Library homepage to find books in libraries on campus, as shown:image of results for a search for phrase social work in Africa. Books checkbox checked under Resource Type heading.

Country Overviews

The amount of information online and the organization of governments varies widely from country to country.  Governments' laws are normally published in the official language of the country, if they are published online at all.  Besides the country's official government policies and publications, you can search for journal articles and search Google for open access (free) information that may be published by local or international organizations (including research organizations, advocacy groups, humanitarian groups, etc.)  
 
The following sources offer concise information, usually including statistics, organized by country, which may be helpful to start.  
 

Concise background information on nations, updated periodically.

Global Health Observatory, World Health Organization's database
"WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for more than 1000 indicators for its 194 Member States. Data are organized to monitor progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including health status indicators to monitor progress towards for the overall health goal, indicators to track equity in health indicators, and the indicators for the specific health and health-related targets of the SDGs."

Statista
Data aggregator providing over 1million statistics from over 18,000 sources.  Focused on marketing data but also includes Human Development Index and social development data.

Starting places for U.S. policy about international topics

CQ Researcher

Resources on American government, current affairs, history, politics, public policy, and data analysis for the social sciences.  Youtube video about concerns with Whiteness and CQ Researcher (part of CQ Press Library)
Vendor: Sage

Government Accountability Office (GAO)
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the "congressional watchdog," GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. The head of GAO, the Comptroller General of the United States, is appointed to a 15-year term by the President from a slate of candidates Congress proposes.
 

Congressional Research Service CRS

Congressional Service Reports (CRS) are written for Members of Congress and provide succinct, non-biased background information on issues facing Members of Congress. "This collection provides the public with access to research products produced by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for the United States Congress. By law, CRS works exclusively for Congress, providing timely, objective, and authoritative research and analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of political party affiliation. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS has been a valued and respected resource on Capitol Hill for more than a century." More information about CRS

Every CRS Report.com

Congressional Service Reports (CRS) are written for Members of Congress and provide succinct, non-biased background information on issues facing Members of Congress.  CRS used to not make the reports publicly available. Every CRS Report.com published most of the reports on its site.  The reports were being provided to Every CRS Report.com by a bipartisan pair of members of Congress as of October 2016. [https://medium.com/demand-progress/why-i-came-to-believe-crs-reports-should-be-publicly-available-and-built-a-website-to-make-it-77b4b0f6233e]