Suchergebnisse

With chapters authored by teams of established scholars, this edited collection looks at policy practice with specific populations and practice arenas, from domestic and international perspectives. Aligned with social work accreditation standards (EPAS), this book provides a solid foundation in policy analysis and advocacy—key features of policy practice.

This article traces the development of the European social policy from its minimalist role provided for in the Treaties of Rome, through the neoliberal orientation, especially in the financial crisis of 2008, to the trend towards a socio-investment perspective in response to the crisis caused by the Kovid19 pandemic. Current EU social policy applies a new approach that emphasizes the need to invest in education and training and the provision of quality social services throughout the life course of people - from early childhood to old age. It relies on the mutual enrichment of national and supranational forms of social protection.

The ways information about national education policies is exchanged and interpreted is a field of comparative education that is under-developed. What discussion and analysis there is seems to ignore the insights and models prevalent in other domains. We looked to fields like political science, and economic and social development for concepts to strengthen the analysis of education policy mobility between nations. We found an abundance of metaphors most of which fail to capture key elements of policy diffusion including the notion that ideas change as they cross cultural boundaries. We observe that policy transfer can be purposefully initiated by the host as well as a product of coercion or external incentives. Our principal conclusions are that common framings of traveling education policies are linear, one-directional and marked by an air of beneficence. They overlook the importance of context and the actions of sovereign nations in policy formation.

This article takes the increased interest in the relation between culture and social policy as a starting point, and discusses how this increasing attention can be understood as the result of contextual factors such as economic, social and academic trends. It discusses these matters and at the same time reviews briefly some of the main findings of studies that contain a cultural perspective in analysing social policy. A second issue concerns the specific character of cultural perspectives in such analyses. Thus far, most studies in the field have been guided by a notion of culture as consisting of the values, norms and beliefs of welfare state actors. Recently, this notion has been questioned by advocates of the so‐called 'cultural turn', who suggest that a radical change in the cultural analysis of social policy is required. The article concludes with a discussion of their claims.