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Filling a major gap in social policy literature, this book looks at the history of debates over the poverty cycle and their relationship with current initiatives on social exclusion. The book uses Sir Keith Joseph's famous "cycle of deprivation" speech in 1972 as a backdrop to explore British New Labour's approach to child poverty: initiatives such as Sure Start, the influence of research on intergenerational continuities, and its new stance on social exclusion. Making extensive use of archival sources, private papers, contemporary published documents, and oral interviews with retired civil servants and social scientists, John Welshman provides the only booklength treatment of this important but neglected strand of social policy history.
The Government has set itself the challenging target of halving the number of children living in poverty by 2010-11 and eradicating child poverty by 2020. With 2010 fast approaching, Ministers are still committed to the targets, and the Committee wanted to ascertain whether DWP has the right measures in place to meet its objectives. Significant progress has been made, but the target remains challenging: there are still 2.8 million children living in poverty and the most recent data shows a slight increase in this number. The Committee is convinced of the damaging effect of poverty on a child's self-esteem and expectations, and also its effects in contributing to social exclusion. Children gr...
Scoundrels and Shirkers examines the deep relationship between capitalism and poverty in England since the 12th century. It exposes the dynamics of capitalism, from its origins in the long transition from feudalism to its current crisis under neoliberal capitalism, in producing poverty. The book, unique in the historical breadth of its focus, shows conclusively that poverty is an inevitable consequence of capitalism. In the search for profits and control of society’s economic surplus, capitalism expands, adapts and innovates, producing not only commodities and wealth but also, and necessarily, poverty. With the partial but important exception of the 1945–51 period, and to a lesser extent the time between 1906 and 1914, there has never been a serious attempt to solve poverty. Efforts have always been to manage and control the poor to prevent them from starving or rebelling; to punish and blame them for being poor; and to force them into poverty-level jobs. Any real solution would require the logic of capitalism to be deeply disrupted. While possible in theory, such a change will require massive social movements.
Incorporating HC 168-i to x, session 2006-07
The welfare state in all its many forms has had a profound role in many countries around the world since at least the Second World War. The Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State explores the classical issues around the welfare state, but also investigates its key concepts, along with how these can be used and analysed. This book provides expert analysis of the core issues related to the welfare state, including regional depictions of welfare states around the globe. The book combines essays on methodologies, core concepts and central policy areas to produce a comprehensive picture of what 'the welfare state' means around the world. In the midst of the credit crunch, this book addresses some of the many questions about the welfare state. This book is suitable for students and scholars throughout the social sciences, particularly in sociology, social policy, public policy, international relations, politics, and gender studies.
This comprehensive and instructive study examines the relative success or failure of government policies in preventing and alleviating unemployment. Choosing two contrasting cases—West Germany and the United States—Thomas Janoski probes the causes and consequences of two very different orientations toward labor market policy. In West Germany, labor, employers, and government cooperate in the running of a powerful and effective employment service. In the United States, by contrast, one finds little state involvement, organizational confusion, a long history of poor funding, and legislative resistance to intervention in the labor market. In the author's mind, these inadequate policies have...
Taking nine European countries as case studies, the contributions to this volume analyze the ways that citizenship has changed in key areas such as social security, labor market policies and social services.
This is the comprehensively-revised second edition of a volume that was welcomed at its first appearance as 'the most authoritative survey and critique of the welfare state yet published'. Its fifty-one chapters have been written by acknowledged experts in the field from across Europe, Australia, and North America. Some chapters are brand new; all have been systematically revised, and they are right up to date. The first seven sections of the book cover the themes of Ethics, History, Approaches, Inputs and Actors, Policies, Policy Outcomes, and Worlds of Welfare. A final chapter is devoted to the future of welfare and well-being under the imperatives of climate change. Every chapter is writt...
In 1970 social workers were in great demand and their numbers were growing. At the same time questions were asked on both sides of the Atlantic about the methods they employed, their objectives and the effectiveness of their efforts. Previous studies undertaken in the United States to test the effectiveness of social casework had led to intense controversy between researchers and practitioners. Originally published in 1970, the field experiment described in this book was the first British attempt to assess the effectiveness of social work. A team led by a social worker, including a physician and a statistician, assessed the social and medical conditions of 300 aged applicants to a local auth...