Social Policy deals with social services and the daily policy that say which social services will be provided, how social services will be provided, and who is eligible to receive each social service. In other words, social policy can be understood as the impact on an individuals or group of peoples' quality of life based upon government action or inaction.

This shaping of how public goods and services are distributed on a daily basis can interact with and encompass specific policy areas such as Disaster Policy, Criminal Justice Policy, and Health Care Policy. Many times, social policy involves what we term as "Wicked Problems". Now the term wicked problems does not refer to a moral or evil attribute, rather wicked problems refers to those social issues that cannot be solved, or cannot be solved easily by a single public organization, such as a city government.

Wicked problems entail that multiple organizations must be involved or that there may never be a definitive resolution to the problem. Social Policy often results in solutions to problems that are considered to be complex with a vague better or worse result rather than a right or wrong result.