As part of the devolution process, a range of powers was granted to the newly formed Scottish Parliament in 1999. These powers principally governed social welfare where there was already a degree of Scottish autonomy. Welfare has thus been central to the devolution project. This topical book examines social welfare in Scotland since devolution. In particular, it focuses on the politics of welfare during and after the devolution process; poverty and inequality; and the two single most important powers devolved to the Edinburgh Parliament, education and health. It is the first work to attempt such a synthesis. The book: looks at why social welfare issues were central to the devolution process in Scotland; explores the particular social and financial circumstances in which Scottish policy makers operate; reviews and assesses Scottish policies for children, education and lifelong learning; examines health policy, including care for older people, an especially controversial example of 'policy divergence' from England; provides an invaluable overview of the Scottish welfare state is as it is, and discusses how it might develop in the future. This book is essential reading for all those concerned with the contemporary and historical dimensions of social policy in Scotland and how they relate to developments in other parts of the United Kingdom.

New Labour deployed community as a conceptual framework to rearticulate the state / citizen relationship to be enacted at and through new spaces of governance. An important example of this was how successive New Labour governments sought to renovate the social, political and economic cultures of poor neighbourhoods and generate trajectories of strong, empowered and ordered civic space. This was pursued through programmes such as the New Deal for Communities (NDC) that sought to invigorate and embed socially excluded citizens within localised regeneration projects. In attempting to construct community as a space through which personal and spatial renewal could be achieved, New Labour relied on problematic assumptions about the nature, scope and meaning of community and its relationship with individual social agents. Drawing on original research conducted in an NDC neighbourhood, Remaking Community addresses the interlinking uses of community in government rhetoric and practice. It explores why this concept was so central to the New Labour governing project and what it meant for individuals enveloped in the 'regeneration' of their citizenship and locality. It seeks to understand how community is conceptualised, applied, constructed, misunderstood, exploited, experienced, contested, mobilised and activated by both policy actors and neighbourhood residents and situates this discussion within an examination of the political, emotional and cultural impact of the regeneration experience. Offering a timely analysis of New Labour, regeneration and the politics of community, this book makes an original and important contribution to debates around new spaces of governance, citizen participation and the tackling social exclusion in poor neighbourhoods.

Praxis for the Poor puts the relationship of politics to scholarship front and center through an examination of the work of Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. Piven and Cloward proved that social science could inform social-policy politics in ways that helped energize a movement. Praxis for the Poor offers a critical reflection on their work and builds upon it, demonstrating how a more politically-engaged scholarship can contribute to the struggle for social justice.

Necessary reading for political scientists, sociologists, social workers, social welfare activists, policy-makers, and anyone concerned with the plight of the poor and oppressed, Praxis for the Poor shows how social science can play a role in building a better future for social welfare.

Today, in a period of economic crisis, public sector cuts and escalating class struggle, Marxism offers important tools for social workers and service users to understand the structures of oppression they face and devise effective means of resistance. This book uses Marxism's lost insights and reinterprets them in the current context by focussing on one particular section of the international working class - refugees and asylum seekers in Britain. Vickers' analysis demonstrates the general utility of a Marxist approach, enabling an exploration of the interplay between state policies, how these are experienced by their subjects, and how conflicts are mediated. The substantive focus of the book is twofold: to analyse the material basis of the oppression of refugees in Britain by the British state; and to examine the means by which the British state has 'managed' this oppression through the cultivation of a 'refugee relations industry', within a broader narrative of 'social capital building'. These questions demand answers if social workers and other practitioners are to successfully work with refugees and asylum seekers, and this book provides these through a detailed Marxist analysis.

Social Policy Review 16 has been given a new editorial lease on life and has been reorganized to reflect more closely key developments in the UK and internationally. The new look of this edition is designed to provide readers with up-to-date information about developments and changes in core UK social policy areas. Additional chapters provide in-depth analyses of topical issues from an international perspective, while the new themed section examines the changes that have taken place in UK welfare since the first Thatcher government came to power twenty-five years ago.

The realities and misconceptions of long-term care and the challenges it presents for the ethics of autonomy are analyzed in this perceptive work. While defending the concept of autonomy, the author argues that the standard view of autonomy as non-interference and independence has only a limited applicability for long-term care. He explains that autonomy should be understood as a comprehensiveness that defines the overall course of a person's life rather than as a way of responding to an isolated situation. Agich distinguishes actual and ideal autonomy and argues that actual autonomy is better revealed in the everyday experiences of long-term care than in dramatic, conflict-ridden paradigm situations such as decisions to institutionalize, to initiate aggressive treatments, or to withhold or to withdraw life-sustaining treatments. Through a phenomenological analysis of long-term care, he develops an ethical framework for it by showing how autonomy is actually manifest in certain structural features of the social world of long-term care. Throughout this timely work, the rich sociological and anthropological literature on aging and long-term care is referenced and the practical ethical questions of promoting and enhancing the exercise of autonomy are addressed.

One of America’s pre-eminent economists offers a provocative critique of the failures of liberalism.

In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies.

In this book, he describes how elites—the anointed—have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy.

Welfare experiments conducted at the state level during the 1990s radically restructured the American welfare state and have played a critical-and unexpected-role in the broader policymaking process. Through these experiments, previously unpopular reform ideas, such as welfare time limits, gained wide and enthusiastic support. Ultimately, the institutional legacy of the old welfare system was broken, new ideas took hold, and the welfare experiments generated a new institutional channel in policymaking. In this book, Rogers-Dillon argues that these welfare experiments were not simply scientific experiments, as their supporters frequently contend, but a powerful political tool that created a framework within which few could argue successfully against the welfare policy changes. Legislation proposed in 2002 formalized this channel of policymaking, permitting the executive, as opposed to legislative, branches of federal and state governments to renegotiate social policies-an unprecedented change in American policymaking. This book provides unique insight into how social policy is made in the United States, and how that process is changing.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of London's bid to host the games was its commitment to legacy where it was argued that 'the legacy would lead to the regeneration of an entire community for the direct benefit of everyone who lives there'. This book adopts a critical approach to the concept of 'legacy' focussing specifically on housing. It argues there will be a range of both intended and unintended legacy outcomes and an urgent need for revised strategies if those original objectives are to be achieved. The concept of legacy is explored in a number of ways, including an overview of housing legacy in other host cities; the experiences and perspectives of those residents decanted to make way for the Olympic Park; a critical review of legacy plans; a detailed analysis of the conversion of the Athletes' Village into housing; and a case study of the emerging area 'Stratford High Street', which explores issues of social class change and the limitation of planning policies. Whilst taking housing as its focus, this book adopts a sociological perspective by exploring the likelihood of social class change in order to draw conclusions about 'gentrification', 'social polarisation' and the extent to which 'social inclusion' is reflected in housing legacies.

The role of education in prisons, prisoners' decisions regarding education, the impact of prison culture on either encouraging or discouraging such activities, and the potential consequences of education for prisoners' reentry into society all have important implications. This extended analysis of prisoner education represents a unique contribution to an under-researched field, whilst also making important and original connections between research on education in prison and the literature on adult learning in the community. Through offering crucial insights into the varied motivations and disincentives that inform prisoners' decisions to study in prison (whether it be through distance learning or prison-based classes), the reader is also able to consider factors that inform decisions to engage in a broader range of positive and constructive activities whilst in prison. These research findings provide insight into how prison culture and prison policies may impact upon rehabilitative endeavour and suggest ways in which prisons may seek to encourage constructive and/ or rehabilitative activities amongst their inhabitants if desired. Based on interviews and questionnaires completed by British adult prisoners studying through distance learning, this qualitative study offers a valuable complement and counterpart to prison education studies that focus on measuring recidivism rates. The learner-centred approach used yields a nuanced and complex understanding of the varied ways in which education in prison actually operates and is experienced, and considers the consequences of this for the students' lives. As such, the findings offer further insight into important evidence resulting from recidivism studies reviewed within the book, whilst contributing to the reemerging interest in studies of prison life and prison culture that are based on prisoner interviews.

The Social Worker Speaks charts the motivations, work activities and attitudes of social workers across the country from 1904 to 1989. The book is about workers in the public sector (from Poor Law to Social Services Departments), probation and workers in the voluntary field (including early century philanthropic visiting societies as well as specialist societies such as the Children's Society and the NSPCC). Where possible accounts by and the words and thoughts of social workers themselves are used. Since the war, histories of social work have concentrated on practice theory and methods, developments instigated by legislation, university training and professional status, but there has been little attention paid to who social workers were, what they believed, what they actually did, and what they thought of what they did. Also, individual social workers appearing in nearly all histories have been 'leaders' - managers, teachers or academics, with people who did the job on the front line accorded barely a mention. If part of the aim of this book is to remedy this partial coverage, another aim is to offer a more human history of social workers. There is too little celebration or humour in what has been published about the history of social workers; The Social Worker Speaks deliberately includes stories of how social workers behaved, their frustrations and triumphs, passions and occasional sins. So this is deliberately not a history of social work, but a history of social workers - the first of its kind.

Addressing the multiple meanings of service integration, Human Services Integration analyzes how motivations and expectations for social service integration differ significantly among different players in the service system. In a period of major budget cutbacks and welfare reform, however, it is important that service providers collaborate to reduce or eliminate boundaries between categorically defined and provided services. This book tells you about the efforts being made to provide existing services more efficiently while avoiding duplication and waste. As you will quickly see, developing consensus for service integration efforts at the administrative, community, and staff levels will result in the ability to set achievable goals and objectives and secure cooperation at all levels.Human Services Integration covers practice principles for managing organizational and community change and offers strategies for organizing human service agencies and overcoming fragmented service integration in communities with complex problems and needs. To also help you identify specific service intergration activities that are relevant in the context of unique communities, it discusses: specifications for conducting a self-assessment of progress at the local level toward social service integration goals Georgia's Family Connection, a statewide human services initiative interweaving formal and informal systems of care in a community-centered approach to service integration a children's initiative collaborative social science theory pertinent to service integration gathering support from elected officials such as boards of supervisors, city leaders, and local elected boardsHuman Services Integration will help you understand why service integration cannot be defined by a particular service model or outcome. Its insight will also help you understand why involving service users and community members in the design and delivery of services is fundamental to developing an integrated service system that is culturally competent, empowering, and responsive to its neighborhood and community context.

In an era of rapid technological change, are qualitative researchers taking advantage of new and innovative ways to gather, analyse and share community narratives? Sharing Qualitative Research presents innovative methods for harnessing creative storytelling methodologies and technologies that help to inspire and transform readers and future research. In exploring a range of collaborative and original social research approaches to addressing social problems, this text grapples with the difficulties of working with communities. It also offers strategies for working ethically with narratives, while also challenging traditional, narrower definitions of what constitutes communities. The book is unique in its cross-disciplinary spectrum, community narratives focus and showcase of arts-based and emerging digital technologies for working with communities. A timely collection, it will be of interest to interdisciplinary researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students and practitioners in fields including anthropology, ethnography, cultural studies, community arts, literary studies, social work, health and education.

Law and Ethics: For Health Professions explains how to navigate the numerous legal and ethical issues that health care professionals face every day. Topics are based upon real-world scenarios and dilemmas from a variety of health care practitioners.

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"A collection that will interest and assist psychologists who work with the wide range of children included in this book. I learned a good deal in my reading of these articles and find it easy to recommend the book to any psychologist whose clinical practice, research, or teaching includes consideration of parent-child relationships, adoption, foster care, child custody, and the significance of family for individual development and social cohesion. . . . Wide-ranging and provocative in its approach to the issue addressed."--"The American Psychological Association"

"The essays encompass the main controversies in the field, placing them in their historical and social contexts. The book will be very useful for courses focusing on this issue, and will serve researchers in welfare history, public policy, legal history, family history, and history of childhood."--"CHOICE"

"A strong argument."--"The law and Politics Book Review"

"Cahn and Hollinger have covered diverse topics - from foster care, to attachment, to racial and ethnic identity in transracial adoption, to legal issues in gay and lesbian adoptions."--"Adoptive Families"

Since the mid-19th century, American law has recognized adoption as a way to create parent-child relationships. As the product of law, rather than blood, adoptive families have become a focal point for debates about the meaning of family, the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the best interests of children.

Families by Law brings together diverse perspectives on contemporary aspects of adoption law and practice. Following a historical overview of adoption in American law and society, the reader presents different responses to concerns about who may place children for adoption, the status of birth parents, who may adopt, and the legal and psychosocial consequences of adoption. The new frontiers of adoption are explored: from transracial and intercountry adoption, adoption by same sex couples, and the adoption of children with special needs, to the movements for opening records and maintaining post-adoption contact between adoptive and birth families. The relationship between adoption and assisted reproductive technologies is discussed, as are feminist, economic, and philosophical perspectives on adoption and procreation. The volume includes statutes and cases, advocacy organization statements, and pieces from legal scholars, social scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists in order to provide a wealth of information about the contemporary dimensions of adoption.

Families by Law provides undergraduates, as well as law, social welfare, and public policy graduate students and others interested in family relationships with a multifaceted context for understanding the complexities of contemporary family life.

EU member states have seen high levels of unemployment in recent years especially amongst young people. At the same time the fiscal crisis of welfare states has made it difficult for them to invest in new jobs and new economic growth. The EU, at least since the enactment of the Amsterdam treaty, has had a focus on how to support member states' development of an employment policy which aims for higher levels of participation, lower levels of unemployment and more gender equal approaches. Through exploring patterns in the recent development of financing and governance of social services and developments of social services and employment in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany and the UK, this volume provides readers with new knowledge and evidence of the options regarding social innovation in social services. Furthermore, it provides a comparative European perspective on how the interplay between a public and private mix of social service on the one hand might help in creating jobs, and, on the other, be a way of coping with the needs and expectations of higher level of services in the core areas of the welfare state.

Current debates around participation and marginalization dominate the agenda of many European political forums. There is an increasing concern about the stability of social cohesion and a growing number of particular groups of people who are regarded as being at risk of being socially excluded or marginalized. This volume goes beyond the surface of public discussions to look at the central role played by welfare services in European societies in either strengthening or hindering participatory citizenship and democracy. In current discussions welfare services - understood in a broad sense - are centrally positioned: there are high expectations that welfare services can hinder marginalization and enable participation. Yet marginalization is, in most cases, rooted in the deeper structures of society, with economy, participation and involvement dependent on political or highly personal factors, which are beyond the scope of welfare services. This groundbreaking volume posits that participation and marginalization are 'twin' concepts, expressing opposing sides of one and the same processes faced by individuals and communities. It will be essential reading for social workers, sociologists and policy-makers throughout Europe.

Welfare state professionals decide or establish premises as to whom will receive what, in what manner, when and how much, and when enough is enough. They control who passes through the gates of the welfare state. This book provides an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of discretion. It shows why the delegation of discretionary powers to professionals in the front-line of the welfare state is both unavoidable and problematic. Extensive use of discretion can threaten the principles of the rule of law and relinquish democratic control over the implementation of laws and policies. The book introduces an understanding of discretion that adds an epistemic dimension (discretion as a mode of reasoning) to the common structural understanding of discretion (an area of judgment and decision). Accordingly, it distinguishes between structural and epistemic measures of accountability. The aim of the former is to constrain discretionary spaces or the behavior within them while the aim of the latter is to improve the quality of discretionary reasoning. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students in the fields of applied philosophy, public policy and public administration, welfare state research, and the sociology of professions.

In the years 1849 and 1850, Henry Mayhew was the metropolitan correspondent of the Morning Chronicle in its national survey of labour and the poor. Only about a third of his Morning Chronicle material was included in his later and better known, publication, London Labour and the London Poor. First published in 1981, this series of six volumes constitutes Henry Mayhew's complete Morning Chronicle survey, in the sequence in which it was originally written in 1849 and 1850. It addresses a wealth of topics from cholera in the Jacob's Island area and to the food markets of London. The publication of this complete survey represented the first time in which the whole was Mayhew's pioneering work was available in one place. The set is introduced by Dr Peter Razzell, who was co-editor of the national Morning Chronicle survey. This first volume contains letters from October to November 1849. This series will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare, poverty and urbanisation.

First published in 1952, this is a full-scale and definitive account of the life and work of Sir Edwin Chadwick. Among the sources used are the Chadwick Papers, the Peel, Place, Russell and Gladstone Papers, the Home Office, Treasury and Ministry of Health papers and the minutes and documents of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. Centred on this mass of material, this book demonstrates that the great social reforms of the Victorian age should be attributed, not so much to the Cabinets, but to the labours of a handful of civil servants. It also argues that Edwin Chadwick was the most influential of these civil servants and through this illuminating biography, Professor Finer gives an account of early Victorian administration as seen from inside. This book will be of interest to those studying Victorian social reform, the history of the welfare state and social policy.

First published in 1854, this comprehensive work charts over three volumes the history of poor relief in England from the Saxon period through to the establishment of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and its reception. This edition, updated in 1898, also includes a biography of the author, Sir George Nicholls. Volume I examines poor relief from the Saxon period to the reign of Queen Anne. This set of books will be of interest to those studying the history of the British welfare state and social policy.

First published in 1854, this comprehensive work charts over three volumes the history of poor relief in England from the Saxon period through to the establishment of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and its reception. This edition, updated in 1898, also includes a biography of the author, Sir George Nicholls. Volume III examines poor relief from 1834 to 1898. This set of books will be of interest to those studying the history of the British welfare state and social policy.

First published in 1978, this book gathers an extensive range of documents which illuminate the complex and important process by which the State in Britain has taken on increased responsibility for the health and welfare of its citizens. It uses extracts from a variety of sources, including reports, debates, speeches, articles and reviews, and commentary from leading figures of the period, such as Disraeli, Dickens, Edwin Chadwick and Churchill. The book begins with a discussion of the notion of an 'age of laissez-faire' in the mid-nineteenth century, and an examination of the extent to which the Liberal government embarked on a conscious policy of 'welfarism' between 1906 and 1914. The extracts themselves cover the entire field of social policy, including factory legislation, public health, housing, education, poverty, pensions and unemployment. This book will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare and social policy.

This groundbreaking book by Olof DahlbAck analyzes the direct effects of the environment and the indirect effects of geographical differentiation of individuals on the offender rates of different urban areas. In order to do this, relationships between crime and independent factors are analyzed in various ways - by considering cross-sectional and longitudinal aspects, linear and non-linear models, point and change data, different time periods, micro- and macro-level interaction, and data for individuals with different patterns of moves. The offender rates analyzed refer to individuals suspected by the police. The directly crime-influencing processes focused upon imply that individuals are affected by social control and social resources. The study makes use of advanced analytical models, novel methods and comprehensive data, and it solves several problems that have hampered research.

The 1996 Community Care (Direct Payments) Act came into force in 1 April 1997, empowering social services departments to make cash payments to some service users in lieu of direct service provision. Social work and direct payments guides readers through the issues at stake in this fundamental area of practice. The book summarises and builds on current knowledge and research about direct payments in the UK and considers developments in other European countries. It identifies good practice in the area and explores the implications of direct payments, both for service users and for social work staff.