This book presents a psychosocial examination of the changing relationships between users of services, professionals and managers in the post-war welfare state. It: develops practice-based perspectives on changing social relations of care; discusses the psychic dimensions of entitlement, risk, responsibility, compassion and dependency in the welfare system; develops a grid to link the interpersonal, institutional and sociopolitical dimensions of successive post-war welfare settlements; explores the potential contribution of psychoanalytic concepts to social policy and practice.
This book is aimed at all those who have an interest in the development of responsive welfare institutions, including policy makers, professionals and academics.
This is the first full-length biography of Richard Titmuss, a pioneer of social policy research and an influential figure in Britain’s post-war welfare debates.
Drawing on his own papers, publications, and interviews with those who knew him, the book discusses Titmuss’s ideas, particularly those around the principles of altruism and social solidarity, as well as his role in policy and academic networks at home and overseas. It is an enlightening portrait of a man who deepened our understanding of social problems as well as the policies that respond most effectively to them.
Has the modern Conservative Party developed a distinctive approach to the post-war welfare state? In exploring this question, this accessible book takes an authoritative look at Conservative Party policy and practice in the modern era. The book takes as its main starting point the progressive One Nation Conservative (1950-64) perspective, which endeavoured to embrace those features of the welfare state deemed compatible with the party’s underlying ‘philosophy’. Attention then shifts to the neo-liberal Conservatives (1974-97), who sought to reverse the forward march of the welfare state on the grounds of its ‘harmful’ economic and social effects. Finally, David Cameron’s (2005-present day) ‘progressive’ neo-liberal Conservative welfare state strategy is put under the spotlight. The book’s time-defined content and broad historical thread make it a valuable resource for academics and students in social policy and politics as well as social history.
Social Policy Review provides students, academics and all those interested in welfare issues with critical analyses of progress and change in areas of major interest during the past year. This year the Review takes the opportunity of the 60th anniversary of the key legislation founding the welfare state in the UK to provide a comprehensive overview of policy developments in the UK and internationally.
The first part brings together a selection of papers which have been commissioned to examine historical and contemporary developments in policy tackling Beveridge’s five evils of want, idleness, disease, squalor and ignorance, looking at how policy has changed since the aims and ideology of the inception of the post-war welfare state. The second part looks at the issue of the current challenges facing children’s welfare services internationally: always a contemporary and contentious issue. The final part brings together a selection of papers looking at the effect of policy development at various governance levels on social policy.
The contributions bring together an exciting mix of internationally renowned authors to provide comprehensive discussion of the some of the most challenging issues facing social policy today.
This study reflects a growing recognition of the contribution that studies of the post-war ‘welfare state’ can make to contemporary debates about the restructuring of welfare. Drawing on the community care debates from 1971 to 1993, it illuminates contemporary concerns about such key issues as rationing care, the health and social care divide, the changing role of residential care and the growing emphasis on provider competition.
From community care to market care focuses on the interpretation and development of national policy at local authority level in four contrasting local authorities. The results of the study will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the community care provision of older people.
What is welfare? Why is it a key part of the ‘common good’ for all? And how should we go about providing it?
Pete Alcock, a well-respected expert, explains the challenges that collective welfare faces, and explores the complexities involved in delivering it, including debates about who benefits from welfare and how and where it is delivered. His primary focus is on the UK, including the problems of poverty and inequality, and how recent political and economic changes have undermined public investment; but he also draws on international examples from Europe and other OECD countries, such as the impact of private health care in the USA.
Why we need welfare is a call for new forms of collective action to meet welfare needs in the 21st century. It offers a fresh perspective on the key issues involved, and is a great introduction to this important and topical debate.
The UK welfare state is under sustained ideological and political attack. It has also been undermined by accusations of paternalism and past failures to engage with the very people it is intended to help.
This unique book is the first to critique the past, present and future welfare state from a participatory perspective. Peter Beresford, champion of user involvement, draws on pioneering theories and practice of welfare service user movements to offer a blueprint for a new participatory social policy. He controversially challenges orthodox social policy and the limitations of both Fabian and Neo-liberal perspectives in engaging people to improve their own welfare, drawing on service users ‘ own ideas and experience, including fascinating vignettes from his own family’s experience, to demonstrate the value of ‘user knowledge’.
Filling a much-needed gap in the literature, this accessible text will provide a great introduction for students and a road-map for practitioners of an alternative vision for a future participatory and sustainable social policy. It will also command much wider interest from everyone concerned with how we look after each other in future in society.
Targeted as the ‘grey consumer’, people retiring now participated in the creation of the post-war consumer culture. These consumers have grown older but have not stopped consuming.
Based on extensive analysis over two years, this unique book examines the engagement of older people with consumer society in Britain since the 1960s. It charts the changes in the experience of later life in the UK over the last 50 years, the rise of the ‘individualised consumer citizen’ and what this means for health and social policies.
The book will appeal to students, lecturers, researchers and policy analysts. It will provide material for teaching on undergraduate courses and postgraduate courses in sociology, social policy and social gerontology. It will also have considerable appeal to private industry engaged with older consumers as well as to voluntary and non-governmental organisations addressing ageing in Britain.
The relationship between gender and welfare states is of key importance in understanding welfare states and gender equality and inequality. Western welfare states of the post-war era were built on assumptions about gender difference: they treated men as breadwinners and women as carers. Now governments are committed in principle to gender equality. But how far have they come from male breadwinner assumptions to gender equality assumptions? How much do gender differences continue in UK social policy and social practice?
The book analyses the male breadwinner model in terms of power, employment, care, time and income, providing a framework for chapters which ask about policies and practices for gender equality in each of these. This new approach to analysis of gender equality in social welfare contextualises national policies and debates within comparative theoretical analysis and data, making the volume interesting to a wide audience.
Access to justice for all, regardless of the ability to pay, has been a core democratic value. But this basic human right has come under threat through wider processes of restructuring, with an increasingly market-led approach to the provision of welfare. Professionals and volunteers in Law Centres in Britain are struggling to provide legal advice and access to welfare rights to disadvantaged communities.
Drawing upon original research, this unique study explores how strategies to safeguard these vital services might be developed in ways that strengthen rather than undermine the basic ethics and principles of public service provision. The book explores how such strategies might strengthen the position of those who provide, as well as those who need, public services, and ways to empower communities to work more effectively with professionals and progressive organisations in the pursuit of rights and social justice agendas more widely.
