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Workfare: Why Good Social Policy Ideas Go Bad, Maeve Quaid, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2002, pp. 244This book begins with the premise that workfare, properly administered, is good social policy. The author dismisses the moral
arguments surrounding this policy: i) that workfare distinguishes the
deserving from the undeserving; ii) that workfare is a form of slavery,
forcing the poor to work in order to survive; iii) that workfare creates
important responsibility for the recipient; iv) that workfare safeguards
welfare recipients' status as citizens able to fully participate in a
democratic society. These are controversial moral assertions about the
merits or demerits of workfare that the author refuses to address.
Instead, the author, as an expert in organizational behaviour and human
resource management, is interested in whether this policy meets the goals
it establishes. If workfare is to lead recipients to greater job prospects
then this is the measuring stick that should be used to assess the success
of workfare, argues Maeve Quaid.

While social welfare systems are often regarded as distinct from those provided by private organizations, it is here argued that, in the Canadian case, there has been a long history of interplay between these two sectors. This is illustrated through the example of the history of the Ontario Mothers Allowance (OMA), a policy in effect since the 1920s, designed to provide single, low-income women with supplemental resources. Early on, private welfare groups called for the institution of OMA & later volunteered within the agency. Further, when charity leaders were removed from assisting with this formal governing process, they indirectly assisted by monitoring OMA recipients through their own private programs. It is concluded that welfare reform must take account of such interplay between various institutions in order to provide effective alternatives to current approaches. J. MacDowell

Gossip has long been one of the most dismissed fotms of communication. Since the 1920s, nonetheless, some social scientists have attempted to understand gossip and its social utility. These scholars (be they anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, linguists, historians, or feminists) have argued that gossip plays a significant role in a number of both premodern and modern communities. However, despite a growing body of work that examines gossip in the private sphere, there has been almost no discussion of the role of gossip in public policy or, more specifically, in welfare state administration. This article will attempt to rectify that omission by providing evidence of how state administrators in one jurisdiction in two historical periods have utilized gossip to help determine which poor single mothers should receive welfare. I argue that this is not merely a custom of early administrators during the formative years of the welfare state but, rather, that the contemporary welfare state apparatus accommodates, and even encourages, the use of gossip in present-day welfare administration.