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Welfare Provision (welfare + provision)
Selected AbstractsNew labour and reform of the English NHS: user views and attitudesHEALTH EXPECTATIONS, Issue 2 2010Andrew Wallace PhD Abstract Background, The British National Health Service has undergone significant restructuring in recent years. In England this has taken a distinctive direction where the New Labour Government has embraced and intensified the influence of market principles towards its vision of a ,modernized' NHS. This has entailed the introduction of competition and incentives for providers of NHS care and the expansion of choice for patients. Objectives, To explore how users of the NHS perceive and respond to the market reforms being implemented within the NHS. In addition, to examine the normative values held by NHS users in relation to welfare provision in the UK. Design and setting, Qualitative interviews using a quota sample of 48 recent NHS users in South East England recruited from three local health economies. Results, Some NHS users are exhibiting an ambivalent or anxious response to aspects of market reform such as patient choice, the use of targets and markets and the increasing presence of the private sector within the state healthcare sector. This has resulted in a sense that current reforms, are distracting or preventing NHS staff from delivering quality of care and fail to embody the relationships of care that are felt to sustain the NHS as a progressive public institution. Conclusion, The best way of delivering such values for patients is perceived to involve empowering frontline staffs who are deemed to embody the same values as service users, thus problematizing the current assumptions of reform frameworks that market-style incentives will necessarily gain public consent and support. [source] Trust, risk and control within an indigenous,non-indigenous social service partnershipINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 3 2007Peter Walker Partnerships between organisations are seen as one of the building blocks of the ,third way' approach to welfare provision in both Europe and New Zealand. While there is much discussion on building social capital and partnership working, such partnerships are usually perceived as being between government and community or private organisations. There is a gap in the literature in two specific areas: partnerships formed between two community-based social service organisations and partnerships formed between indigenous, or immigrant peoples, and non-indigenous organisations. This article explores such a partnership , that between the Ngai Tahu Maori Law Centre (an indigenous organisation) and the Dunedin Community Law Centre (a non-indigenous organisation). The article analyses this relationship and strategies employed by both organisations to develop trust, diminish risk and equalise control. Lastly, the article suggests that the model of interaction articulated here could be promulgated to other sites within the social services in New Zealand and the Americas, and within the European context. [source] Health visitors' understandings of domestic violenceJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 2 2003Sue Peckover BSc MMedSci PhD RGN RHV Background. Feminist work has made visible the extent and nature of domestic violence and the problems women face in having their experiences recognized by health and welfare professionals. Research has demonstrated that many health care professionals, including nurses, midwives and health visitors have little working knowledge about this issue. This impacts on their ability to recognize and respond to domestic violence within their practice. Aim. This paper is based upon a study of British health visitors, which explored their practice in relation to domestic violence. Drawing upon empirical data from interviews with health visitors, it explores their understandings of the extent and nature of domestic violence in the context of their work. Methods. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 24 health visitors selected by convenience and purposive sampling. Data collection took place during 1997,1998. The research draws on the theoretical perspectives of feminist poststructuralism. Findings. The findings demonstrate considerable differences between health visitors in their understandings of the extent of domestic violence in their caseloads and their recognition of different types of abuse experienced by women. There were also differences between participants in their willingness to name situations other than physical violence as abusive, as well as the extent to which they recognized domestic violence within different social groups. Conclusions. A feminist perspective provides critical insight into the professional knowledge base in relation to domestic violence, demonstrating the need for health visitors to develop their understandings further in order to respond appropriately to women and children experiencing domestic violence. This is discussed in the context of ongoing struggles for professional identity within an ever-changing arena of health and welfare provision. [source] Civil Society or the State?: Recent Approaches to the History of Voluntary WelfareJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Alan Kidd Since the 1970s a drift away from state corporatist solutions to social welfare problems has had its parallel in an academic rediscovery of the voluntary sector. Revived confidence in non,statutory approaches often assumes two things. Firstly, that voluntary action is a vital component in civil society and that civil society itself is an attribute of liberal democracy. These ideas are central to the perceived ,crisis of the welfare state'. They are also related to debates about political culture and the future of democracy with the institutions of civil society cast positively as ,schools of citizenship'. Secondly, it is frequently assumed that there is an opposition in principle between the voluntary and the statutory and in some quarters an assumption (reversing an earlier presumption about the rationality of state welfare) that voluntary action is the superior mechanism (at least morally). The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I want to reflect on the revival of interest in the role of the institutions of civil society in the history of welfare provision. Second, I will survey some recent approaches to voluntary action and ,civil society'. Third, in the process of this survey I discuss the relevance of these approaches to the study of past states of welfare. [source] SOCIAL CAPITAL & FAITH-BASED ORGANISATIONSTHE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 6 2007CHRISTINE HEPWORTH This year is the twentieth anniversary of the germinal report ,Faith in the City' which first drew attention to the concerns of religious agencies whose remit is to tackle growing multiple deprivation in the UK. Since then, the role of faith-based organisations (FBOs) as mediators of welfare provision, urban regeneration and community development has attracted little attention from sociologists despite claims that such roles are becoming increasingly important. Successive UK governments have highlighted the potential of religious congregations in enhancing social capital and promoting social cohesion. The seminal work of Greg Smith (University of East London) emphasises this theme while other sociological literature in this area (mainly American, e.g., Putnam) argues that FBOs in the community provide a degree of social support and relationship structures that accumulate as social capital resources. This discussion paper is an attempt to open up the debate on the ways in which FBOs can develop and enhance the social capital value of local community groups. [source] Workfare,Warfare: Neoliberalism, "Active" Welfare and the New American Way of WarANTIPODE, Issue 5 2009Julie MacLeavy Abstract:, In recent decades, welfare reform in the USA has increasingly been based on a political imperative to reduce the number of people on welfare. This has in large part taken place through the establishment of a "workfare" state, in which the receipt of state benefits requires a paid labor input. Designed to reduce expenditure on civil social services, welfare-to-work programs have been introduced. At the same time, the restructuring of US defense provision has seen the "military,industrial complex" emerge as a key beneficiary of state expenditure. Both of these trends can be characterized, this paper argues, as manifestations of neoliberal thinking,whether in the form of the "workfarism" that is undertaken to bolster the US economy, or the "defense transformation" that has been intended to enhance US war-making capacity. While these two aspects have been analyzed in detail independently, the aim of this paper is to probe the similarities, connections and overlaps between the workfare state and the recent American emphasis on high-technology warfare,the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs",and "defense transformation". There are, the paper argues, strong homologies to be drawn between the restructuring of the American defense and welfare infrastructures. Furthermore there are also instances where warfare and welfare are being melded together into a hybrid form "workfare,warfare", in which military service is increasingly positioned as a means of gaining welfare and, conversely, traditionally military industries are becoming involved in the area of welfare provision. The result, it is argued, is an emergent form of workfare,warfare state in the USA. [source] History of the Care of Displaced Children in KoreaASIAN SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2008Jung-Woo Kim The present article explores the current nature and history of welfare provision for displaced children in Korea. It examines the early examples of care and the perspectives on the issue from scholars, lawmakers, religion and society as a whole. This provides an understanding of the background and, especially, the cultural roots of existing care. A history of what may be considered the first modern displaced child welfare provision is also given with analysis of how Christian and local approaches and perceptions integrated. This was to form the basis for present-day transitional displaced child welfare in Korea. For this reason, the article examines the provision in a paradigm which looks at the provision as responses to Western influences. Features of congregate care, domestic/international adoptions, foster care and youth-headed households are examined. The authors conclude that global forces will continue to be influential and recommends that religious institutions which have thus far provided crucial contributions to the foundation of care should continue to play key roles with the government's facilitation. The need for wide participation from society and coordination from the government to manage systems, develop strategies and build consensus is highlighted. [source] Financialisation, Financial Literacy and Asset-Based WelfareBRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2009Alan Finlayson This article examines New Labour's policies of asset-based welfare in the broader context of financialisation. It argues that these are indicative of a mode of government concerned to alter individual outlooks and aspirations, and that asset-based welfare, as developed by New Labour, is primarily a strategy for enhancing financial literacy. Exploring and identifying the general contours of New Labour's reform of welfare provision (particularly the rise of conditionality and personalisation), the article presents a case study of the Child Trust Fund, its development and marketing. The article closes with reflections on the fate of such policies after the sub-prime mortgage crisis. [source] Neo-Liberalism as Creative DestructionGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2006David Harvey Abstract Neoliberalization has swept across the world like a vast tidal wave of institutional reform and discursive adjustment, entailing much destruction, not only of prior institutional frameworks and powers, but also of divisions of labor, social relations, welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life, attachments to the land, habits of the heart, ways of thought, and the like. To turn the neoliberal rhetoric against itself, we may reasonably ask: in whose particular interests is it that the state take a neoliberal stance and in what ways have these particular interests used neoliberalism to benefit themselves rather than, as is claimed, everyone, everywhere? Neoliberalism has spawned a swath of oppositional movements. The more clearly oppositional movements recognize that their central objective must be to confront the class power that has been so effectively restored under neoliberalization, the more they will likely themselves cohere. [source] The European Union and the Securitization of MigrationJCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 5 2000Jef Huysmans This article deals with the question of how migration has developed into a security issue in western Europe and how the European integration process is implicated in it. Since the 1980s, the political construction of migration increasingly referred to the destabilizing effects of migration on domestic integration and to the dangers for public order it implied. The spillover of the internal market into a European internal security question mirrors these domestic developments at the European level. The Third Pillar on Justice and Home Affairs, the Schengen Agreements, and the Dublin Convention most visibly indicate that the European integration process is implicated in the development of a restrictive migration policy and the social construction of migration into a security question. However, the political process of connecting migration to criminal and terrorist abuses of the internal market does not take place in isolation. It is related to a wider politicization in which immigrants and asylum-seekers are portrayed as a challenge to the protection of national identity and welfare provisions. Moreover, supporting the political construction of migration as a security issue impinges on and is embedded in the politics of belonging in western Europe. It is an integral part of the wider technocratic and political process in which professional agencies , such as the police and customs , and political agents , such as social movements and political parties , debate and decide the criteria for legitimate membership of west European societies. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||