D

Data - Collected information or facts, usually for purposes of analysis.

Day care - The supervision of children during hours when working parents cannot care for their children or want them to be in a supervised program with other children.

Debt - Something owed to someone else. On a national level, the sum total that the government owes to the bearers of  Canadian bonds. Not to be confused with the deficit, which is only the yearly total, added to the debt. In other words, each year's deficit adds to the overall debt.

Deficit - The amount of annual government spending in excess of that year's tax receipts, which is paid for by going into debt. Not to be confused with the debt, which is the sum total of all deficits. Prior to the Great Depression, deficits and unbalanced budgets were considered a moral shortcoming. Keynes, however, proved that a certain amount of deficit spending is actually helpful for promoting economic growth and climbing out of recessions and depressions.

Decolonization - A process where a colonized people, by developing a consciousness based on the remnants of the traditional culture, redefine themselves as peoples and reassert the distinct qualities that historically guided their existence.

Defence - an element of the structural social work approach, responding to client's need for immediate resources; advocacy for client rights and for greater resources to clients.

Defense mechanisms - Tactics and strategies, such as denial and rationalization, that an individual may use to reduce awareness of guilt, anxiety, or other unpleasant feeling state.

Deflection - A way of avoiding contact and awareness by being vague and indirect.

Deinstitutionalization - Removing the needy from residential facilities and placing them in the community. Reduction in the size of populations held in institutions of involuntary confinement, primarily mental hospitals and prisons. This movement began in the 1970s and was very successful in reducing the size of mental hospitals.

Democratic Socialism - A leftist political ideology that emphasizes the principle of equality and usually prescribes a large role for government to intervene in society and the economy via taxation, regulation, redistribution, and public ownership.

Demogrants – These are universal flat-rate payments made to individuals or households solely on the basis of demographic characteristics such as number of children or age rather than on the basis of proven need, in the case of minimum income programs, or contributions in the case of social insurance.  

Demographic changes - Variations in the size, composition, and distribution of a population.

Dependency approach - an approach that believes that sees advanced capitalist countries as the economic centre with developing countries around the periphery, dependent on the centre.

Dependent variable - The experimental variable that is measured because it is believed to depend on the manipulated changes in the independent variable.

Depression - An especially severe recession. Depressions suggest that fundamental corrections are occurring in the economy, much more so than in the normal fluctuations of the business cycle. Keynes believed that depressions were further distinguished by what he called the "liquidity trap." This occurred when people hoarded their money, refusing to spend, no matter how much the central bank tried to expand the money supply. In order to get the circulation of money moving again, Keynes advocated that government should do what the people were unwilling to do: spend. Economists widely credit the defence spending of World War II for eliminating the Great Depression.

Descriptive statistics - Numbers that summarize and describe the behavior or characteristics of a particular sample of participants in a study.

Deserving poor - those seen to be of good moral character and deserving of relief. the role of charity visitors was to establish who had a real need for help.

Determinism - A belief that all processes are predetermined by definite causes and natural laws and can therefore be predicted. Biological determinism and mechanical determinism are two variations of this premise. Indeterminism is the reverse of this—a belief that events are governed not by laws but by pure chance.

Detoxification - The process of eliminating accumulations of alcohol of other drugs from the body, often under supervision and as a first step in treatment of addiction.

Developmentally disabled - Individuals with a significant delay in one or more of the following areas of development: cognitive, language, and psychosocial skills.

Devolution - A system of government in which the sovereign central government devolves (delegates) power to regional governments.

Dialectical - A pattern of change that begins with some state of affairs (‘thesis’); which then is overturned because of its own contradictions, giving rise to its opposite (‘antithesis’); and which then reaches an equilibrium where the best features of the original state of affairs are preserved (‘synthesis’). Marx argues that historical change is dialectical: each stage of class society contains contradictions that lead to its overthrow, yet this series of revolutions is progressive.

Dialectics / Dialectical Materialism - From the Greek words for dispute and debate, this is the science of the general laws governing the development of nature, science, society and thought. It considers all phenomena to be in movement and in perpetual change. Marxism linked this concept to materialism and showed the process of development in all things through struggle, contradiction and the replacement on one form by another.

Dichotomy - A split by which a person experiences or sees opposing forces a polarity (weak/strong, dependent/independent).

Direct social work - involves working directly with people as individuals, in families or households and communities in a counselling role.

Disability - Any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.

Disability Benefits - People with disabilities may be eligible to receive benefits through provincial social assistance programs, Workers' Compensation, the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans, and in some cases, through the Veterans' Disability Pension

Discrimination - The unequal treatment of individuals on the basis of their personal characteristics, which may include age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnic or physical identity.

Disposable income - The amount of income that people actually have available to spend, after taxes.

Distortion of reality - Erroneous thinking that disrupts one's life; can be contradicted by the client's objective appraisal of the situation.

Division of labour - The relations of production in a given society - in other words, who does what within a productive process.

Dogma - A blind belief in things often without a material base.

Domesticity - a factor affecting the changing nature of the family, the belief that biology is destiny, that women's capacity to reproduce and that they are smaller than men in size means that men are and should be superior to women. The belief that family and individual life is most fulfilling when experienced in a private household where women are chief homemakers and caregivers. Also associated with the idea that women have moral and temperamental qualities that are best expressed in the personal and domestic sphere of life.

Domination - Institutional constraints on self-determination.

Dual labour market - believes that the labour market is divided into primary and secondary labour markets.