Suchergebnisse

In post-devolution Scotland, New Labour added to the role of 'culture' by introducing ideas of social inclusion to policies concerning cultural services. Ten years later, with the Scottish National Party (SNP) minority government in the Scottish Parliament, do policy makers think social inclusion still has a role within cultural services? This article shows that policy makers' understandings of 'culture' and social inclusion are vague, general and complex. This has encouraged policy makers to think of cultural services as resources to fulfil wider economic and social objectives. At the same time, cultural services are placed at an individual level, with cultural services seen as 'generators of wellbeing', rather than agents of social change. Social inclusion and cultural meanings are linked to individualistic causes of poverty and related to the SNP's economic focus in Scotland. This complexity impacts on the interpretation and implementation of policy and has resulted in the cultural agenda being seen as less of a priority within the new SNP administration.

This article examines the findings of an exploratory case study based on local authority museums in the Scottish Borders to assess the impact of social inclusion policies from the Scottish Parliament. Taken from museum curators' perspectives, the findings suggest that social inclusion policies have not filtered through the system to reach the curators due to unclear government policy and confusion regarding terminology, strategy and guidelines. Curators found it difficult to engage with social inclusion discourse, despite employing socially inclusive actions in everyday practice. The relationship between the local community and museum was seen to be unique and multi-layered, with a perceived dimension of community ownership, which has implications for social policy on central, local and individual levels.

The following section provides a guide to sources on Scottish devolution. This includes key references from the larger UK-wide literature on devolution, which offer comparative analysis between Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. Regarding devolution sources, the literature available can go out of date very quickly but the list below aims to provide both the most up-to-date useful sources and earlier readings that are still relevant and offer a comprehensive look at Scottish devolution within a social policy context.

"The Role of Today's Museum provides a thorough investigation of what museums do and why. Arguing that museums are multi-functional institutions, the book examines the consequences of this for the services that museums provide, the publics to whom they are provided and the providers themselves. Adopting a wide perspective on understandings of the roles of museums and considering the different environments within which museums operate, Gray and McCall provide a new perspective on how transformations, as well as the gaps between intended policies and the actual work that is undertaken within museums, can be both identified and understood. By differentiating between social, economic and political visions and expectations of museums, the analysis in this book allows for a fuller understanding of what these organisations do and provide for their societies and the struggles and negotiations that surround their existence. The Role of Today's Museum takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to studying museums and museum policy. As a result, the book will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums, cultural policy, social policy, cultural sociology, public policy and cultural and political economy. Highlighting the gaps that exist between policy ideals and museum practices, the book also provides valuable insights to policymakers and practitioners"--

AbstractPartnership working in the welfare state has moved from the margins to the mainstream in terms of achieving policy objectives. Drawing on interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical developments in the field, this article presents a framework for analyzing welfare partnerships that give precedence to the issues of trust and interdependence. This article presents findings from a study of local authority museum services in Scotland, England and Wales to test this framework. A series of case studies revealed that partnerships have been driven by a number of factors including policy, power, funding and people. Partnerships could gain services credibility, but trust and interdependence were compromised by conflictual and unequal relationships. Partnerships were often short term, lacked ongoing maintenance plans and limited by their type of funding. The article proposes that further analysis of the level of individual agency at ground level be considered when thinking about partnerships in the cultural sector.

This issue of Social Inclusion explores the interconnected, but multi-faceted concepts of home, housing and communities as fundamental tenets of an inclusive society. Our editorial introduces our motivation for this topic, outlines the contributions to the collection and highlights some crosscutting themes, which emerge from the articles. The research presented was largely completed in advance of the full impact of the 2020 global coronavirus pandemic. In concluding the editorial, we reflect on the equal centrality of home, housing and communities to surviving the pandemic and ensuing economic crisis and encourage greater commitment to home and housing as a human right to mitigate social and economic inequality and underpin sustainable, inclusive settlements for the future.

This SJM includes articles that focus the interrelationships between different dimensions of poverty and criminal justice, not least with patterns of offending, convictions and victimisation. This is of course a hotly contested and long debated area of social inquiry and goes to the heart of competing approaches and perspectives as well as to conflicting political values. As others have highlighted in this issue, ongoing welfare 'reforms' and the impact of various 'austerity' measures as implemented by the current and previous UK Governments, has had hugely negative impacts on the numbers in or close to poverty in the UK today, and in the proportion of the population who are experiencing, in some form of another, social and economic insecurities and increasing vulnerability and precariousness.

This article explores older owner occupiers in lower value properties who, having acquired their home through the Right to Buy (RTB) in the 1980s, are now experiencing housing-related challenges in older age. This article outlines the views and perceptions of older owner occupiers, social landlords, voluntary groups and housing organisations to explore the legacy of the RTB. Current and future policy challenges in the area include the differentiation of home owners, difficulties of selling property with low equity in older age and the relationship between health and housing. This article calls to widen the analysis of the long-term impact of the RTB to owner occupiers in lower value properties and notes that 'ageing in place' goes beyond looking at people's current house to the linked housing choices available to them. We recommend that policy support be extended to older home owners to increase housing choice in older age.

Policy makers across the political spectrum have extolled the virtues of volunteering in achieving social policy aims. Yet little is known about the role that volunteering plays in addressing one of the significant challenges of an ageing population: the provision of care and support to people with dementia. We combine organisational survey data, secondary social survey data, and in-depth interviews with people with dementia, family carers and volunteers in order to better understand the context, role and challenges in which volunteers support people with dementia. Social policies connecting volunteering and dementia care in homes and communities often remain separate and disconnected and our paper draws on the concept of policy 'assemblages' to suggest that dementia care is a dynamic mixture of formal and informal volunteering activities that bridge and blur traditional policy boundaries. Linking home and community environments is a key motivation, benefit and outcome for volunteers, carers and those living with dementia. The paper calls to widen the definition and investigation of volunteering in social policy to include and support informal volunteering activity.

This article presents findings from the Housing and Ageing programme conducted in 2018 that investigated how the housing sector can effectively plan for an ageing population. The project took a transdisciplinary approach to focus on new, critical insights into the process of decision making concerning housing and ageing across Scotland, England and Wales. A "Serious Game" methodology was developed that explored over 200 policy maker, practitioner and service user perspectives. This was used as a framework to capture priorities, decisions, negotiations and processes that indicate how a 'sense of place' and "place belonging" can influence the development of suitable housing for older people. Key housing provision challenges identified were tackling inequality, preserving autonomy, in(ter)dependence, empowerment and accessibility. Such challenges need consideration when strategically planning for the future. The findings recommend placing housing at the heart of service integration to support the co-production of decisions that emphasise the importance of working together across boundaries within social policy, service and stakeholder groups. A place-based approach can support the perception that we are all stakeholders in ageing.

Experts review the leading social policy scholarship from the past year in this comprehensive volume. Published in association with the Social Policy Association, the latest volume in this long-running series addresses current issues and critical debates throughout the international social policy field with a particular focus on employment policy, housing policy and climate justice. Contributors also explore key developments including researching during the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants' access to social benefits in Germany, the right(s) to healthcare in Italy, American and European homelessness policies and much more. This annual review is essential reading for students and academics in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines