Social Policy Research StarterThe ambitious vision of social policy first emerged with President Franklin Roosevelt’s landmark New Deal programs designed to bring the country out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Since then, social policy has sought to use government resources to assist society’s most vulnerable citizens: the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly, persons of color, first-generation immigrants, members of the LGBT community, and children.
Global Social Issues: An Encyclopedia by 
The Handbook of Social Policy by