127 Transitional Labour Markets and training SEVEN Transitional Labour Markets and training: rebalancing flexibility and security for lifelong learning Harm van Lieshout and Ton Wilthagen Introduction This chapter applies the transitional labour market (TLM) perspective to the (re)institutionalisation of education, training and labour markets in order to facilitate a new perspective on lifelong learning. Following this introduction, this chapter introduces TLM theory, and a related policy paradigm that has developed in the Netherlands over the past few years
Two decades have passed since the devolution of social care policy, with key differences emerging between the UK’s four systems, but what impact have these differences had? This book presents for the first time research on the perspectives of social care policy makers on the four systems in which they operate and the ways in which they borrow from one another.
Drawing on extensive interviews with national and local policy makers across the UK, the book raises vital questions about the role of ‘standardisation’ and ‘differentiation’ in social care, concluding that when given equal capacity to reform their respective systems, the regimes in each nation may take radically different shapes.
Chapter 4 and chapter 7 are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
In this collection, innovative and eminent social and policy analysts, including Colin Crouch, Anna Coote, Grahame Thompson and Ted Benton, challenge the failing but still dominant ideology and policies of neo-liberalism.
The editors synthesise contributors’ ideas into a revised framework for social democracy; rooted in feminism, environmentalism, democratic equality and market accountability to civil society.
This constructive and stimulating collection will be invaluable for those teaching, studying and campaigning for transformative political, economic and social policies.
Tony Blair was the longest serving Labour Prime Minister in British history. This book, the third in a trilogy of books on New Labour edited by Martin Powell, analyses the legacy of his government for social policy, focusing on the extent to which it has changed the UK welfare state. Drawing on both conceptual and empirical evidence, the book offers forward-looking speculation on emerging and future welfare issues.
The book’s high-profile contributors examine the content and extent of change. They explore which of the elements of modernisation matter for their area. Which sectors saw the greatest degree of change? Do terms such as ‘modern welfare state’ or ‘social investment state’ have any resonance? They also examine change over time with reference to the terms of the government. Was reform a fairly continuous event, or was it concentrated in certain periods? Finally, the contributors give an assessment of likely policy direction under a future Labour or Conservative government.
Previous books in the trilogy are “New Labour, new welfare state?" (1999) and “Evaluating New Labour’s welfare reforms" (2002) (see below). The works should be read by academics, undergraduates and post-graduates on courses in social policy, public policy and political science.
ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
In recent years, the ‘city region’ has seen a renaissance as the de facto spatial centre of governance for economic and social development.
Rich in case study insights, this book provides a critique of city-region building and considers how governance restructuring shapes the political, economic, social and cultural geographies of devolution. Reviewing the Greater Manchester, Sheffield, Swansea Bay City Regions, Cardiff Capital Region and the North Wales Growth Deal, the authors address the tensions and opportunities for local elites and civil society actors.
Based on original empirical material, situated within cutting edge academic and policy debates, this book is a timely and lively engagement with the shifting geographies of economic and social development in Britain.
Britain faces extraordinary challenges, from climate change to growing inequality and global economics, but as a nation it has no plan for the future. This unique book asks a simple question: how can Britain organise itself, not just for survival but to build a fairer and sustainable society? The arguments refer to the high ambitions of those who pioneered the planning movement and campaigned for a clear set of progressive values, but whose drive for utopia has now been forgotten.
The book takes a distinctive approach to exploring the value to society of social town planning and offers a doorway for how planning, both morally and practically, can help to meet key challenges of the 21st century. It challenges the widely held view that it’s impossible to achieve a better future by suggesting that there is real choice in how society develops and pointing to contemporary examples of utopia.
This accessible book makes essential reading for students in the built environment and the wider social sciences who have an interest in UK and European examples of sustainable communities.
Written by an established author in the field, this book explores the politics of modernisation and transformation of probation in the criminal justice system. It is unique in drawing upon innovative social theories and moral perspectives to analyse changes in the probation service by including data from quantitative and qualitative empirical research. This highlights the challenges to, but also support of, the platform of modernisation that culminated in the transformative Rehabilitation Revolution. Providing critical tools for the reader to use in their own work and studies, it makes a timely contribution to criminal justice and probation theory and uniquely provides insights into what representatives of other organisations think about probation – from the outside looking in.
Health policy thinking must change. This book explores the fundamental currents and tensions that lie behind recent trends such as shared decision-making, co-production, and personalisation.
These are often discussed in relation to an epidemiological transition but this text argues that they embody a philosophical transition – a change in our conceptions of healthcare and of appropriate forms of knowledge and analysis. As clinical concerns are increasingly nested within social concerns then policy analysis must engage with the multiple philosophical tensions that are now centre stage.
This focus on key underlying ideas and tensions in healthcare couldn’t have come at a better time. With international relevance, the book’s arguments help fuel a shift away from a ‘delivery’ model towards a more deliberative model of healthcare.
Social Policy in a Cold Climate offers a data-rich, evidence-based analysis of the impact Labour and coalition government policies have had on inequality and on the delivery of services such as health, education, adult social care, housing and employment in the wake of the greatest recession of our time.
The authors provide an authoritative and unflinching analysis of recent approaches to social policy and their outcomes following the financial crisis, with particular focus on poverty and inequality. Through a detailed look at spending, outputs and outcomes the book offers a unique appraisal of Labour and the coalition’s impact as well as an insightful assessment of future directions.
This volume offers a much-awaited follow-up to the critically acclaimed ‘A more equal society?’ (2005) and ‘Towards a more equal society?’ (2009).
This book examines the challenges in delivering a participatory planning agenda in the face of an increasingly neoliberalised planning system and charts the experience of Planning Aid England.
In an age of austerity, government spending cuts, privatisation and rising inequalities, the need to support and include the most vulnerable in society is more acute than ever. However, forms of Advocacy Planning, the progressive concept championed for this purpose since the 1960s, is under threat from neoliberalisation.
Rather than abandoning advocacy, the book asserts that only through sustained critical engagement will issues of exclusion be positively tackled and addressed. The authors propose neo-advocacy planning as the critical lens through which to effect positive change. This, they argue, will need to draw on a co-production model maintained through a well-resourced special purpose organisation set up to mobilise and resource planning intermediaries whose role it is to activate, support and educate those without the resources to secure such advocacy themselves.
