Introducing Social Policy

Cliff Alcock, Guy Daly, Edwin Griggs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317864554
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Prestazione di assistenza sanitaria

The completely revised second edition of this highly respected textbook provides a comprehensive yet digestible and accessible introduction to the theoretical foundations, development and crucial areas of contemporary concern in social policy and welfare. Fully up to date, it provides a concise but thorough overview of the context for the provision of social welfare in contemporary Britain and beyond. Providing an integrated framework to highlight the relationships between theory, policy and practice, Introducing Social Policy examines social policy from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It therefore encourages a broad understanding of the importance of the subject within social policy itself, as well in social work, healthcare, education and beyond.

Chapter 1

Introduction — what is social policy?

Social policy as an academic field of study is one of those curious items, rather like an elephant, which we recognise when we see it but which is notoriously difficult to describe. It is, at one and the same time, the theoretical pursuit of norms about how we think society ‘ought’ to behave, but also the practical application and implementation of those policies that we consider to be ‘social’. We could, of course, argue that all areas of policy inherently have implications for the well-being of society. Consider, for instance, the debate in the years since the onset of the Iraq War in 2003 and the realisation of the budgetary and political implications both for the armed forces and for those industries involved in their supply. Yet we do not automatically consider either defence or armed forces policy to be within the remit of ‘social policy’. What, then, is social policy?

Social policy is the study of the social services and the welfare state. The field of study has grown over time, and it stretches rather more widely than at might first appear, but the social services are where the subject began, and they are still at the core of what the subject is about. The social services are mainly understood to include social security, housing, health, social work and education — the ‘Big Five’ — along with others which are like social services, including employment, prisons, legal services or drains. (Spicker, 1995)

The term social policy is not only used to refer to an academic discipline and its study, however, it is also used to refer to social action in the real world. Social policy is the term used to describe actions aimed at promoting well being; it is also the term used to denote the academic study of such actions. (Alcock, 1997)

The two quotations above provide us with fairly standard definitions of the term ‘social policy’. Both suggest that, as an area of study, it is concerned with the welfare or well-being of society and its members. Furthermore, as an area of study, social policy is closely concerned with the activities of the ‘welfare state’, that is the range of government policies and social services used to enhance the welfare of citizens within a country. Some writers (Spicker, 1995; Hill, 2003) suggest that social policy is intimately concerned with the activities of the ‘Big Five’ which make up the classic welfare state. This classic welfare state (though the Big Five may not be universally agreed) will normally comprise policies of income maintenance and social security, health policy and services, the personal social services, education and training policy, and employment policy and housing policy. Some writers might consider that policies concerned with employment rightly belong to the field of economics and economic policy rather than social policy; similarly policies of criminal justice enjoy a transience between social policy and legal studies. Such an apparent confusion, however, does provide us with an insight into the difficulties in defining social policy. We can suggest that all government policy has a social element, but that is not to suggest that all government policy is social policy. We may also note here the multi-disciplinary nature of social policy: it is an academic subject which draws upon the academic techniques and skills of many other disciplines — sociology, economics, politics and policy making and history. This itself remains an unresolved debate among social policy academics between those who regard social policy as a ‘field of study’ which draws heavily upon other academic disciplines, and those who regard social policy as an academic discipline in its own right, drawing together those other academic elements (see the chapters by Alcock and Erskine in Alcock, Erskine and May, 1997).

… although it is on the one hand, an academic discipline — to be studied and developed in its own right — it is also an inter-disciplinary field — drawing on and developing links with other cognate disciplines at every stage and overlapping at times with these in terms of both empirical foci and methods of analysis … the boundaries between social policy and other social science disciplines are porous and shifting …. (Alcock, 1997)

While social policy cannot claim to be a science, it draws its legitimacy as a subject on its ability to draw upon the methods of a number of social sciences and apply these in a rigorous and disciplined way to understand the field in which we are interested…. social policy involves understanding a range of philosophical and political perspectives. (Erskine, 1997)

The scope of social policy

Although debates such as those indicated above may prove interesting to those academics employed within social policy departments, they do not necessarily hold the same interest for students of social policy. Instead, students of social policy may be (rightly) more concerned with the study of social phenomena, such as poverty, inequality and social justice, and policies that attempt to address such phenomena. Implicitly and following such a definition, the student of social policy is concerned to discover whether such policies may be said to be effective — that is whether the policies achieve the aims they set out to pursue and crucially whether social welfare can be said to have been improved as a result of the introduction of one or other policy. Here we can borrow, from policy studies, the notion of a cyclical policy process (Figure 1.1).

Although this might be described as a simplistic model of policy making, it does, nonetheless, provide us with a useful frame of reference for thinking about social policy (for a detailed exposition of policy making and its study, see Hill, 1997). Social policy, then, is not simply the study of society and its problems, but is intimately concerned with how to address and ameliorate social problems and with the analysis of the success or failure of policies designed to improve welfare and well-being. Implicitly, too, the study of social policy is concerned with the creation and appropriateness of structures and institutions designed to implement social policies.

Figure 1.1 The policy cycle

Here we have introduced the term ‘welfare’ to our notion of social policy, and often the terms social policy and welfare, or welfare state, will be used interchangeably in texts about the subject (Ginsburg, 1992). This interchangeability has been and can continue to be the source of confusion, as we may be tempted to regard the activities of the welfare state as coterminous with social policy. Indeed for many years, under the guise of social administration, the distinction between welfare and the welfare state was not clear, and may still today be blurred. Yet social administration determined the content and direction of social policy and framed its debate for much of the post-war period.

The discipline of social policy is relatively new, … [T]he first department of social policy opened at the London School of Economics in 1950 headed by Richard Titmuss. This department … [was] primarily concerned with the training of welfare professionals during a period of expansion in the welfare state … The scope of the discipline in these early years was therefore strongly influenced by the institutional structures of the welfare state. Academic concern thus focused on the role of the state as the primary provider of welfare. (Ackers and Abbott, 1996)

Social policy was, by this definition, what the welfare state did, and no longer was it simply possible for the state to act; it became regarded as the ‘natural’ provider of welfare, apparently at the exclusion of others. During the 1960s and 1970s this view of social administration as social policy became somewhat discredited and since then a more holistic approach to social policy has developed. (For a more detailed discussion and appraisal of the transition from social administration to social policy, see Mishra, 1981.)

Broadly speaking, the study of social policy is the study of the role of the state in relation to the welfare of its citizens. This leads immediately to two questions. First, since the welfare of citizens is affected by their own actions and by the actions of others, including those of collective organisations of different kinds, what is it about the role of the state in relation to welfare that is different? Secondly, what are the kinds of actions that have an impact on welfare? (Hill, 1995).

The structure of the book

This volume is intended to be an introduction for students having their first experience of social policy, whether as undergraduates of social policy, or taking relevant A-levels, BTEC courses or access students. It is written on the assumption that students have little or no prior knowledge or experience of social policy but may have encountered social policy in other contexts. The text aims to provide an up-to-date yet accessible overview of the development of and the context for the provision of social welfare in the contemporary United Kingdom. Chapters are included that discuss the historical, ideological and political context within which social policy has developed and the changing contemporary context within which social policy is developing today.

The book is divided into four substantive parts. Part I explores the historical development of social policy through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with one chapter (Chapter 2) devoted to the development of welfare services following the introduction of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, and a second chapter (Chapter 3) charting the changes from the Liberal welfare reforms through to the widespread adoption of the welfare principles laid down in the Beveridge Report in 1942. The distinction between the two centuries is somewhat arbitrary, but the chapters seek to explore the ideas and principles laid down during those years that we might say still guide the implementation and delivery of social policy in twenty-first-century Britain.^*

Part II examines the policy and political context within which social policy is made. It begins by examining the changes to the political environment that the welfare state has experienced in the last three decades. The first chapter (Chapter 4) of this part considers the so-called ‘crisis of welfare states’ that heralded the end of the Beveridgean consensus in British politics generally but in social welfare in particular. The other chapters of this part consider, first, the policy-making process (Chapter 5), that is how policies come into being and are implemented. This is followed by a chapter on how the governance of welfare has changed since the establishment of the post-war welfare state (Chapter 6), followed by one that explores the changes that have occurred in the provision of welfare with the advent of devolutionary arrangements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over the last 10 years (Chapter 7). This section closes with a chapter (Chapter 8) that considers the financial environment of social policy making, that is, how we prioritise and allocate resources to welfare services and the mechanisms by which resources are collected and distributed.

Part III explores the ways in which different ideologies are used to explain social policy and how such theoretical concepts are necessary for an understanding of social policy. The first chapter (Chapter 9) considers the ways in which social policies can be appraised and evaluated. This is done by examining the principles underlying social policies, looking at such concepts and principles as need, justice, freedom, equality and citizenship, and the theories within which these concepts are employed. This is followed by Chapter 10 which examines the development of ideas about the state, society and social policy in Britain. In addition to this, the chapter also assesses various critical perspectives on the welfare state. Lastly, the chapter examines the ideas and values of Thatcherism and New Labour, the key driving forces behind the changes to social policy and welfare over the last 30 years. The final chapter (Chapter 11) in this section considers the place of research in understanding social policy and welfare, not least by providing an overview of the processes involved in researching social policy.

Part IV looks at the ‘policy areas’ that form the backbone of the British welfare state and have traditionally been considered the very essence of social policy thinking and analysis. Therefore we have chapters considering developments in social welfare: health, social care, housing, education, employment and pensions. These chapters tend to present a brief historical overview of developments before and since the publication of the Beveridge Report and then to outline the development of our modern ‘welfare services’. We also include in this part, however, chapters examining less traditional areas, including the development of ‘family’ policy, social divisions, the role of the criminal justice system and environmental policy which, although not typically regarded as social policy, have a considerable impact on social welfare. Although we do not go so far as to construct these as part of the so-called ‘new’ social policy (see Cahill, 1994), we do believe such areas are valid and worthy areas of social policy analysis. The book concludes with a final chapter on international social policy (Chapter 22), not least via the impact of both the pressures of globalisation and the development of a social policy agenda within the European Union.

The structure of the book is intended to provide the reader with a flexible and accessible introduction to social policy making in modern Britain. It is hoped that readers and students of social policy will be able to approach the text in a lin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Authors and Contributors
• Guided tour
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction — what is social policy?
• Part I Historical development of welfare
• Chapter 2 Welfare before the state
• Chapter 3 The welfare state years: consensus and conflict
• Concluding comment to Part I
• Part II Contemporary welfare
• Chapter 4 A ‘crisis' of the welfare state
• Chapter 5 Making policy
• Chapter 6 The governance of social policy
• Chapter 7 Welfare within a fragmented state — devolved social policy
• Chapter 8 Paying for welfare
• Concluding comment to Part II
• Part III Theorising and researching welfare
• Introduction to Part III
• Chapter 9 Political theory, the state and welfare
• Chapter 10 Ideology, the state and welfare in Britain
• Chapter 11 Doing social research
• Part IV Welfare themes
• Introduction to Part IV
• Chapter 12 Health policy
• Chapter 13 Social care
• Chapter 14 Housing policy
• Chapter 15 Education
• Chapter 16 Work and employment policy
• Chapter 17 Pensions policy
• Chapter 18 Family policy
• Chapter 19 Social divisions and equal opportunities policies
• Chapter 20 Crime and criminal justice
• Chapter 21 The living environment
• Chapter 22 International social policy: globalisation and the European Union
• References
• Glossary of terms
• Index