To provide further insight about my own social and cultural experiences -what serves as the driving force for my passions as a social worker is fueled by the discrepancies individuals face in regards to access- specifically that of which comes from the physical world; or Natural Environment. Having grown up in an upper middle class town in CT, my experience of the Natural world was therapeutic and rejuvenating, I unknowingly reaped the benefits of lacking things such as noise pollution and environmental toxins all of which leads to mental and physical health benefits. Through these experiences and my undergraduate courses in Ecopsychology, I believe that at the base of social welfare is the welfare of the environment. None of the authors focused on the connection between the Natural world and Social Welfare. I seek to advocate for environmental justice. Both as an ancient society and modern, humans have founds means to essentially rape the natural world of its resources and through this process; limit access. When access is limited social welfare is negatively affected producing rippling effects upon every member of the society. To me social welfare is defined as- the collective ability which each individual human has to access resources which allow them not only live but thrive, collectively this serves as a reflection of the overall health of the human cohort. I believe social welfare can be examined through a defined population, this is why the social welfare of high class citizens “haves” (higher socioeconomic level) is often better than the social welfare of the lower class citizens “have nots” (lower socioeconomic level) (Segal, 2007).
Wagner (2005) summarizes how labels not only categorize and create a means for distinguishing generalizable information about a person, but also contributes to how information (labels) can be actually be misinformation- consequently leading to stereotypes and negative self-perception. Due to the fact that children cannot choose things like, who they are born to, where they are born, what socioeconomic status they have, exc. I feel it is up to the government to impede upon and into the framework of our society; as much as needed- in order to make sure access to resources is fairly distributed…
