Denmark is one of the most progressive countries in terms of family support policies. This book, however, reveals a backdrop of diminished rights, inequalities and family violence in the lives of vulnerable lone mothers. If this is the case in Denmark, what is the situation in other countries, including the USA, the UK and other EU member states? Diminished rights is a unique qualitative study that documents the daily lives of vulnerable lone mothers and their children in Denmark. Loss of rights, gender and ethnic inequality, and family violence all emerge as key themes, with far-reaching international implications. The book: * presents vivid case stories to illuminate the voices and experiences of the women involved in the study; * identifies lone mothers as part of an emerging post-modern underclass in Denmark; * highlights the disturbing prevalence of domestic violence that pervades many lone mothers' lives; * raises questions around legal and child custody rights and the lack of redress in a patriarchal justice system. Policy and practice recommendations are made with wide-ranging applications for an international audience of policy makers, practitioners and academics.

Issues of 'difference' are on the agenda right across the social sciences, and are encountered daily by practitioners in policy fields. A central question is how the welfare state and its institutions respond to impairment, ethnicity and gender. This book provides an invaluable overview of key issues set in the context of housing. Touching on concerns ranging from minority ethnic housing needs to the housing implications of domestic violence, this broad-ranging study shows how difference is regulated in housing. It deploys a distinctive theoretical perspective which is applicable to other aspects of the welfare state, and bridges the agency/structure divide. Housing, social policy and difference: brings disability, ethnicity and gender into the centre of an analysis of housing policies and practices; offers a new approach to housing, informed by recent theoretical debates about agency, structure and diversity; develops the ideas of 'difference within difference' and 'social regulation'; looks beyond the concerns of postmodernism to create an original account of difference and structure within the welfare state. The book will be an important text for students and researchers in housing, social policy, planning, urban studies, sociology, disability studies, gender studies and ethnic relations. It will also interest practitioners committed to greater equalities of opportunities and a fairer society.

Innovation is promoted to improve performance and increase the quality of services provided by public service organisations. Managing public services innovation provides the first in-depth exploration of innovation and the management of innovation in the housing association sector. Drawing on longitudinal case studies and data sets, including the Housing Corporation's Innovation and Good Practice database, Managing public services innovation: indicates that housing associations have innovative capacity and classifies innovation in the sector; identifies the 'innovative housing association' and its key characteristics; explores the way innovation has been managed in housing associations making recommendations for best practice; develops techniques to develop evidence-based policy in the housing association sector; discusses the implications of innovating in regulated public service industries. Managing public services innovation is essential reading for housing industry and public management professionals, policy makers and academics in housing, business and public management departments.

In the last decade, developed welfare states have witnessed a pendulum swing away from unconditional entitlement to social assistance, towards greater emphasis on obligations and conditions tied to the receipt of financial aid. Through administrative reforms, conditions of entitlement have been narrowed. With the introduction of compulsory work for recipients the contract between the state and uninsured unemployed people is changing. The product of research funded by the European Union, this book compares 'work-for-welfare' - or workfare - programmes objectively for the first time. It considers well publicised schemes from the United States alongside more overlooked examples of workfare programmes from six European countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Britain. It is the first time that details of workfare programmes have been collated in such an easily accessible format. 'An offer you can't refuse' provides an analysis of the ideological debates that surround compulsory work programmes and gives a detailed overview of the programmes implemented in each country, including their political and policy contexts and the forces that have combined to facilitate their implementation. Similarities and differences between programmes are explored. Explanations for differences and lessons for policy makers are discussed.

Myths and related stories describe essential human experience which, requiring the use of the imagination, reconcile and give voice to fantasy and reality. In this book the author reflects on the processes of grief and more than 50 folk tales are included. The ancient stories vividly convey mankind's struggle with death and loss, the despair and hope, with bitterness and love. The use of stories in therapy is explained, specifically bereavement counselling through storymaking.

More than a decade on from their conception, this book reflects on the consequences of income management policies in Australia and New Zealand. Drawing on a three-year study, it explores the lived experience of those for whom core welfare benefits and services are dependent on government conceptions of 'responsible' behaviour. It analyses whether officially claimed positive intentions and benefits of the schemes are outweighed by negative impacts that deepen the poverty and stigma of marginalised and disadvantaged groups. This novel study considers the future of this form of welfare conditionality and addresses wider questions of fairness and social justice.

Over the last three decades Britain has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the number of people receiving welfare benefits that has provoked fears of a growing underclass and mass welfare dependency. The making of a welfare class? provides the first comprehensive analysis of the reasons for this growth and subjects notions of welfare dependency and the underclass to empirical test. It focuses on four principal groups of benefit recipients - children and families, retirement pensioners, disabled people, and unemployed people - and, using important new evidence, explores the relative importance of economic, demographic, institutional and normative factors in the pattern of growth. The book addresses a phenomenon - growth in benefit recipiency - which is common to all advanced industrial countries and nowhere well understood. As a central focus of government policy and a key development in modern society, the issues explored in the book will therefore be of interest to academics and policy commentators alike. Written in an accessible style and assuming no prior knowledge, with succinct chapters, elegant summaries and extensive use of graphics, complex arguments appear simple. A comprehensive glossary of technical terms is included. As a result, The making of a welfare class? is compulsory reading for undergraduates and postgraduate students of sociology, social policy and economics and anyone else interested in the development of modern British society and welfare policy.

As the global economy seeks to recover from the financial crisis and warnings about the consequences of climate change abound, it is clear that we need a fundamentally new approach to tackle these issues. This innovative book offers a unique perspective, stressing the necessity of both ecological and social change as it discusses how to create a "red-green" or "eco-socialist" society. Examining the current crises of welfare capitalism as well as the challenges and conflicts of an eco-socialist society, the book proposes a new social order that would combine the ideals of egalitarianism and of environmental sustainability. It analyses the key social and ecological issues related to the welfare state, including green Keynesianism, ecological Marxism, the limits of growth and no-growth, capitalist barriers to a renewable energy transition, proposals for a universal basic income and the role of technology. Finally, the book outlines possible paths of transformation towards creating an eco-socialist society, drawing out lessons that can be applied internationally. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers in economics, environmental studies and political science.

Estates of multi-storey housing present some of the most intractable problems for urban policy. Many attempts to deal with these problems have either failed or presented poor value for money. Shelter is not enough is an up-to-date evaluation of the issues. It traces the development of multi-storey housing in Britain from its early beginnings, to the period from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s when most of the contemporary legacy of estates was built. The problems in use are examined as are the responses of the authorities faced with mounting technical and social difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of past practice, a 'model framework' is defined which can help to create successful approaches for the regeneration of multi-storey housing. From the experience of the development of multi-storey housing in Britain, its problems and attempted solutions, implications are drawn for public policy, and a strategic approach is outlined which can reform the estates and reintegrate them into the mainstream urban environment. Finally, the British experience is placed in a broader context - the parallel problems surrounding multi-storey estates in Europe, and the contribution transformed multi-storey estates might make in creating more sustainable cities in the millennium. This book provides valuable information for all those involved in urban regeneration - academics and students of housing, architecture and urban studies; development officers, designers and others working in the practice of estate regeneration.

Based on his studies of over 9,000 families, Murray A Straus, the foremost researcher on family violence in the world, discusses the extent to which parents in the United States use corporal punishment (such as spanking and slapping) and its effects on their children. The question of whether corporal punishment is an effective method of discipline is hotly debated. Straus contends that this believed-to-be-"minor" form of physical violence is precursor to much violence that plagues our world.

Children who are spanked quickly learn that love and violence can go hand in hand. Since spanking is generally done by loving, caring parents -- for the child's own good -- a child can learn that hitting is "morally right". Straus describes what he has learned through two decades of research: children who are spanked are from two to six times more likely to be physically aggressive, to become juvenile delinquents, and later, as adults, to use physical violence against their spouses, to have sadomasochistic tendencies, and to suffer from depression. Straus alerts parents to these risks, and argues that spanking adversely affects not only the children who are subjected to it but society as a whole.

This groundbreaking book, now available in paperback with a substantive new introduction and new concluding chapter, is essential reading for parents as well as teachers, lawyers, and judges. Professionals in fields such as social work, child protection, delinquency and criminology, psychology, and politics will find it of critical importance.

The present volume contains the proceedings of the workshop "Transformation of th Social Security: Pensions in Central-Eastern Europe," held on March 27-28, 1998 in Berlin. The workshop was realised in the context of the multi-disciplinary research programme "The Transformation of Economic Systems and the Reform of Societies in Central and Eastern Europe," currently conducted at Frankfurt Institute for Transformation Studies, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder). The programme, involving economists, cultural and political scientists, sociologists and jurists, is funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The editors would like to express their appreciation for this invaluable source of financial support. Moreover, special thanks are due to two people who, in spite of a tight schedule, have done their best to improve the readability and appearance of this book: Melany Jacobs made skilful linguistic improvements to the original manuscripts, while Andreas Paul took great care over the final layout. Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1X Introduction: Transforming Social Security - Pensions in Central-Eastern Europe Katharina MOiler, Andreas Ry/l and Hans-JOrgen Wagener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 I. Transition and Social Security in Central-Eastern Europe Social Security - A Second Phase Transformation Phenomenon? Hans-JOrgen Wagener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Transformation of Social Security in Central and Eastern Europe Krzysztof Hagemejer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 II. Issues and Role Models in the Pension Reform Debate The Controversy Between the Pay-As-You-Go System and the Fully-Funded System in Old-Age Security Hermann Ribhegge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The Political Feasibility of Pension Reform in the Light of Demographic Change Friedrich Breyer and Klaus Stolte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How much does the condition of our housing affect our health? This timely new study looks in detail at the impact poor housing has on health, using data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS). It provides important information to inform the current debate on Our Healthier Nation and to strengthen arguments for health, housing and social care agencies to work together. It focuses on three main areas: if, and when, housing deprivation impacts on overall health; the link between overcrowding and respiratory and infectious disease; housing deprivation and health in the context of other possible influences on health. The study uses the innovative approach of creating indices for both the severity of ill-health and housing deprivation. These indices are incorporated into an analysis of the impact over time of housing deprivation upon health. The authors conclude that housing plays a significant role in health outcomes and hence provides support for the argument that addressing housing deprivation should be central to thinking about health improvement. Home Sweet Home? is essential reading for researchers and students in housing, public health, urban renewal, and social policy as well as professionals working in these areas.

With numerous selections designed to reinforce the goal of empowering clients to take charge of their lives, this revised and updated second edition of "The Black Family" serves a two-fold purpose. It extends the small but growing body of strength-oriented literature to include African-American families and it serves as a natural extension of current texts on African-American families to provide social workers and the education community with a broader framework for understanding the needs of Black families. Offering both a research orientation and a practice perspective, this book should appeal to social work educators and practitioners involved in family services, health and mental health settings, and child and public welfare.

"This latest installment in the Pension Research Council series brings together a wealth of information for those concerned with public policy options. . . .The book is substantive. . . . It provides data, estimates, models, and a framework to help readers think about the underlying problems in the system."--"Industrial and Labor Relations Review" The United States social security system is the nation's largest social insurance program. As such, it has a far-reaching impact throughout the economy, influencing not only old-age economic security but also many behaviors, including corporate employment policy, retirement patterns, and personal saving. In the past, the system's universal coverage and generous benefits ensured popular support to a degree enjoyed by no other form of "big government" social spending. Yet over two-thirds of all Americans today believe that the social security system will face bankruptcy by the time they retire. The question of social security reform--how to reform the system or whether the system needs reform at all--is the subject of heated debate at all levels of government, in the media, and among workers, pensioners, and employers. "Prospects for Social Security Reform" informs the debate by exploring why the system is at a crossroads today and what to do about it. Contributors detail the size and nature of the problem, explain views of key "stakeholders" regarding reform options, and report new evidence on how reform might affect the economy. Research findings and public opinion polls are analyzed, as are lessons from other countries experimenting with new ways to deliver old-age benefit promises. No other volume includes as diverse and expert a set of perspectives on reform and privatization as those gathered here from economists, actuaries, employers, investment managers, and representatives of organized labor. Among its chapters is the path-breaking study "Social Security Money's Worth," the 1999 winner of the TIAA-CREF's Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security. Olivia S. Mitchell is Executive Director of the Pension Research Council and Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Robert J. Myers is a Special Consultant to the Social Security Division of William M. Mercer, Inc. and former Chief Actuary of the Social Security System. Howard Young is a former Special Consultant to the President of the United Auto Workers Union and former Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan.

This innovative and timely book examines the nature and meaning of 'empowerment' in child welfare and protection, using the family group conference (FGC) approach to decision making as an example. In response to the growing clamour for 'evidence-based practice', the book addresses the central question of how the idea of empowerment can be operationalised and evaluated. One of the aims of FGCs is to empower children and their families by enabling them more effectively to participate in the decision-making process and by affording them greater control over the outcomes of that process. Empowering practice? critically assesses the available evidence on the empowerment potential of FGCs and examines the implications of the approach for professionals, their agencies and the children and families involved. Empowering practice? is essential reading for academics and professionals working in a wide range of health, education and social care areas.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow directs his attention here to one of today's most controversial social issues: how to get people off welfare and into jobs. With characteristic eloquence, wit, and rigor, Solow condemns the welfare reforms recently passed by Congress and President Clinton for confronting welfare recipients with an unworkable choice--finding work in the current labor market or losing benefits. He argues that the only practical and fair way to move recipients to work is, in contrast, through an ambitious plan to guarantee that every able-bodied citizen has access to a job.

Solow contends that the demand implicit in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act for welfare recipients to find work in the existing labor market has two crucial flaws. First, the labor market would not easily make room for a huge influx of unskilled, inexperienced workers. Second, the normal market adjustment to that influx would drive down earnings for those already in low-wage jobs. Solow concludes that it is legitimate to want welfare recipients to work, but not to want them to live at a miserable standard or to benefit at the expense of the working poor, especially since children are often the first to suffer. Instead, he writes, we should create new demand for unskilled labor through public-service employment and incentives to the private sector--in effect, fair "workfare." Solow presents widely ignored evidence that recipients themselves would welcome the chance to work. But he also points out that practical, morally defensible workfare would be extremely expensive--a problem that politicians who support the idea blithely fail to admit. Throughout, Solow places debate over welfare reform in the context of a struggle to balance competing social values, in particular self-reliance and altruism.

The book originated in Solow's 1997 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University. It includes reactions from the distinguished scholars Gertrude Himmelfarb, Anthony Lewis, Glenn Loury, and John Roemer, who expand on and take issue with Solow's arguments. "Work and Welfare" is a powerful contribution to debate about welfare reform and a penetrating look at the values that shape its course.

As social security comes of age in an uncertain climate, Americans find news reports and 'official' projections disturbing in ways they do not fully understand - but dare not ignore. The challenges that beset social security, however, are not just actuarial or fiscal in nature. The choices before us require a confrontation with the political and philosophical underpinnings of the American experiment. Fifty years ago, Franklin Roosevelt envisioned social security to be the cornerstone 'for the kind of protection America wants' from the financial troubles people faced due to old age and family tragedies. By fulfilling its initial promise, social security has evolved into the nation's largest, costliest, and most successful domestic institution. But the optimistic assumptions that inspired its incremental expansion have dissipated in the face of demographic, political, economic, and cultural shifts in American society. Despite past successes, social security no longer enjoys solid support. Critics predict further trouble in coming decades. Social Security: Visions and Revisions encourages lawmakers, academic experts, and general readers alike to think more broadly and boldly about social security and its relation to public assistance and other income-maintenance and health-care programs. Pulling together information and insights previously scattered and fragmentary, this book draws lessons from the past that free us of outdated assumptions and unexamined shibboleths. The re-vision of social security that Achenbaum advocates - one that highlights intergenerational features and underscores the provision of a socially acceptable, universal minimum standard of living - should become the basisof all discussions of government's responsibility to promote 'the general welfare' in our aging society.

Seniors housing improves the quality of life for an increasingly significant segment of the population. The number of people in the United States over sixty-five years of age is projected to double in the next thirty years, and the number of people aged eighty-five and over - the ones most in need of seniors housing - is projected to increase three-fold. The business implications of this demographic change are significant. This volume provides an introduction to seniors housing, and an industry analysis, with the ultimate goal of expediting needed investment. It provides information for industry analysts on product lines, complementary products, and substitute products. In addition, it examines buyers and their behavior; the growth potential of the industry; the growth patterns and determinants of growth; the economics of the different product types; and the market analysis techniques. Finally, an article on health care REITs and health care stocks investigates the performance of the larger players in the industry.

Women in the American Welfare Trap Catherine Kingfisher In the United States, a majority of the poor and those who work with the poor are women. Recipients of public assistance and the welfare workers who serve them are both trapped at the bottom of the American welfare system. How do they perceive their place in society? How do they assess their self-worth in the hierarchy of a bureaucratic system? In this ethnographic study of a welfare office and two welfare rights groups, Catherine Pelissier Kingfisher addresses these issues in a thought-provoking analysis, based on the women's conversations with each other. "Women in the American Welfare Trap" addresses a range of significant issues: policy formation and implementation, the role of men in women's economic lives, low-income women's beliefs and aspirations, and the possibilities for women cooperatively working to change the welfare system. Indeed, Kingfisher demonstrates that women who are often viewed as victims without control actively work within the confines of the system to exert their autonomy. 1996 224 pages ISBN 978-0-8122-1515-1 Paper $28.95s 19.00 World Rights Public Policy

This book explores the European welfare model, arguing that the rollout of European policies for welfare services has led to increased marketization. The author argues that the rise of profit-making in utilities, transport, child and health care is exacerbating rather than reducing inequalities among citizens, demonstrating how the marketization of European welfare has taken place over successive rounds of policymaking for European integration. These rounds have motivated national level public services reform, as well as contestation over these measures from civil society groups. The study traces the developments of policymaking at EU level since the late 1980s, offers in-depth studies of contentious debates which have sealed the fate of welfare services at the turn of the century, and offers insights on the problems involved with prolonged austerity in Europe. This book therefore shows how European integration is provoking a democratic challenge to what kind of Europe citizens want.

American welfare policies and programs frustrate both conservative and liberal advocates who fail to realize that American welfare policy cannot be any more than, or any less than, the distinctly American framework in which it operates. "Moral Authority, Ideology, and the Future of American Social Welfare "departs from standard presentations of social welfare by dealing directly with the ideologies that have shaped the American experience and illustrates how the values these ideologies generate define the framework of American social welfare through existing economic, governmental, and social structures. By reviewing the ideological frameworks that have shaped the American experience, Andrew Dobelstein explains that we have tried to do much more with American social welfare policy than is possible in the present American system and that prudence suggests a reformation of American social welfare policy--which is not to do less but to do what we are capable of doing in a more effective way. This book suggests how welfare can be re-formed by taking the American ideological context as a road map for which welfare changes are possible and which are not, laying out a framework for welfare as America enters the twenty-first century.

In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the American political process, this book explores why the debate on welfare policy has shifted to the conservatives' vantage point. The author discusses how political rhetoric shapes the welfare debate, and considers topics such as how welfare became a programme fraught with problems and abuses, and why and when welfare was the answer to a problem and when it became the problem. She reviews the response to caring for the less fortunate and examines welfare policy from the federal to the state level. A chapter is devoted to the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill and its impact on the states in 1997.

This work is a theoretically informed political history of the development of the U.S. Social Security system over more than five decades. When initiated in 1935, Social Security was a noteworthy experiment in social policy, and its endurance, inviolability, and taken-for-granted nature are evidence of its success. In this volume, the author analyzes key turning points in its history in order to provide an understanding of the various forces that led to this success. This book addresses several key questions: What were the important legislative turning points? What individuals or organizations were active in the social and political debates surrounding these turning points? Why were some of these organizational actors more successful than others in influencing policy outcomes, and what were the opportunities or constraints these organizations faced? A second major concern of the book is to explore the often contradictory interpretations of the relationship between the development of Social Security and the role of the state. The author's interpretation knits together insights from major sociological theories to fashion a dynamic explanation of the development of Social Security, one that acknowledges the economic, political, and cultural context and takes into account the importance of specific organizational and social movement actors. This theoretical framework permits an examination of the ways in which various groups influence political change.

The ideal of equality constitutes a criterion for assessing current practice through attention to differences among individuals and groups. Inequality occurs when irrelevant differences are invoked in order to secure power or advantages over others. This book examines health care issues from an egalitarian perspective, focusing particularly on those that affect the lives of women and children. These are some of the most hotly debated, controversial, yet genuinely humanitarian issues of our time. They include gender stereotypes in medicine and in adolescent socialization, fertility curtailment and enhancement, coercive treatment during pregnancy, fetal tissue transplantation, decisions regarding newborns, decision-making by minors, the feminization of poverty and its impact on women's and children's health, and the meaning and role of "family" in health care decisions. The book describes a case-based or "feminine" model of reasoning as appropriate to the health care setting, but also as a possible rationale for exploitation of women. Different versions of feminism are clearly explained and specifically related to care-based reasoning. To overcome the pitfalls of paternalism and excessive stress on patient autonomy, a concept of "parentalism" is defended. An egalitarian perspective, the author claims, involves use of one's power to empower others. Because of the timeliness of the topics discussed, and the depth of detail, this book will be necessary reading for all bioethicists, health-care analysts and policy-makers, and women's studies researchers.

This volume discusses some economic aspects of immigration with special refer ence to the case of Germany. Immigration has become a major issue in Germany. Germany still does not have an official immigration policy in spite of the fact that more than 8 percent of the residents are non-citizens and that Germany . s immigration figures almost have reached the US figures. The foreign Iabor supply strongly influences the German Iabor market. The bulk of foreign workers is employed in certain industries. In some industries (mining, steel) 20 and more percent of the employees are foreign workers. Most foreign workers are blue collar workers with low wages. The Iabor demand for immigrants has declined in the last 15 years while the foreign population and Iabor supply has increased. As a consequence, foreigners experience higher unemployment rates than Germans. The fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the communist regimes in East Europe further increased the blue collar Iabor supply and strengthened the competition for foreign workers on the German Iabor market."