Of Witches, Welfare Queens, and the Disaster Named Poverty: The Search for a Counter-Narrative

The goals of this paper are to explore the utility of a narrative policy analysis, to locate the origins of the dependency narrative in poverty policy, examine social work's contribution to the narrative, and to discuss the potential for advancing a strong counter-narrative, organized within a trauma paradigm. This paper incorporates a historical review of the development of the dependency narrative and the construction of the deviant “welfare queen.” The conclusion offers an example of a compelling counter-narrative integrating economic/structural violence (poverty) and the trauma paradigm and offers a framework for reconceptualizing social welfare policy.