ABSTRACT
Values and ethics have played a major part in shaping American social welfare policy, and family and religious values have been critical in this process. The issue of who should get welfare has challenged the development of any sort of welfare policy in America. Social workers have engaged in heated debates over the issue of how welfare should be given, based on both family and religious values that were often in conflict. By the mid-1800s, the ideas of early social workers about who should get what kind of benefits and how began to be translated into an organized system of welfare. American charity became organized and its practices became more secularized, the laws governing poverty began to conflict with existing relief practices of the private Charity Organization Societies. The relief activities of the social reformers were most frequently expressed through their participation in "settlement houses.".
