Suchergebnisse

Highly topical and written by one of the leading academic authorities in the field, Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms builds on the analysis of bestselling 'New Labour, New Welfare State?' (The Policy Press, 1999) to examine the Government's welfare policies to the end of its first term. It moves beyond a descriptive account to provide an evaluative perspective on New Labour's welfare reforms

This book, the third in Martin Powell's New Labour trilogy, analyses the legacy of Tony Blair's government for social policy, focusing on the extent to which it has changed the UK welfare state.

Highly topical and written by one of the leading academic authorities in the field, Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms builds on the analysis of bestselling 'New Labour, New Welfare State?' (The Policy Press, 1999) to examine the Government's welfare policies to the end of its first term. It moves beyond a descriptive account to provide an evaluative perspective on New Labour's welfare reforms.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the social policy of New Labour. It examines differences between current policy areas and provides topical information on the debate on the future of the welfare state.

PurposeMany governments stress the importance of "learning from abroad". An analysis of official documents over a period of some 20 years examines learning from abroad in the case of funding long-term care in England through the lens of prospective policy transfer.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses the eight "official" documents in England that examined funding LTC from 1999 to 2019. It uses interpretive content analysis in a deductive approach that focuses on both manifest and latent content.FindingsOnly four of the eight documents gave more than a token level of attention to other nations, and of the remaining four, none fully satisfied the criteria or followed the recommendations of prospective policy transfer. Moreover, a rather limited pool of lessons from other nations is examined. Much of the material is rather descriptive, with limited explicit attention towards goals, problems, settings and policy performance, and a clear recommendation explicitly associated with a clear lesson or policy recommendation is rare.Originality/valueThis is the first analysis of the eight official documents that have discussed funding long-term care in England.

AbstractIt has been claimed that there are few constructs that are as ubiquitous across the social sciences as that of frame or framing, which can be found in many academic disciplines and fields. However, there are very few studies of framing in Social Policy. It seems valuable to explore framing with respect to one of the most important and best known documents in British social policy. The Beveridge Report of 1942 is often regarded as the 'blueprint' of the British welfare state, which still casts a long shadow over social policy today. This study examines the Beveridge Report using the most cited definition of framing, which involves four elements of problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation. It can be argued the Beveridge Report constitutes a 'strong frame' as it communicates all of these four elements.

PurposeThis paper revisits the claim of Vinten (1993) in this journal that whistleblowing is achieving prominence as a question of social policy.Design/methodology/approachIt examines literature from social and health policy to focus on the importance of whistleblowing and the policies that may encourage whistleblowing. However, it finds little extant academic literature in social policy, and so it turns to examine documents on whistleblowing in the British National Health Service such as NHS Inquiries, Parliamentary Debates, Parliamentary Committee Reports and government documents.FindingsIt is found that whistleblowing has not achieved prominence as a question of social policy in nearly 30 years since Vinten's argument. However, it argues that whistleblowing should be an issue for social policy as it is clear that whistleblowing can save lives.Practical implicationsIt supports the growing Parliamentary agenda for legislative change for whistleblowers.Originality/valueThis is one of the first articles on whistleblowing in a Social Policy journal for nearly 30 years and provides an argument that the discipline should pay more attention to a topic that can save lives.

This article explores when the welfare state was established in Britain. First it examines the definitions of the welfare state, before turning to outline the methods and criteria used in exploring the establishment of welfare states. It then discusses the criteria that have been applied to the British case (expenditure; legislation; content; social citizenship; antithesis of the Poor Law) before critically analysing the arguments for different creation periods for the British welfare state (Old Poor Law; nineteenth century; Liberal reforms; inter-war period; 1945; later periods). It is concluded that while the strongest case and the greatest number of dimensions suggest 1945, in the words of T H Marshall: 'we may still be in doubt what was the exact combination of circumstances in Britain in the 1940's which evoked that cry of "Eureka !'

AbstractIf one of the key reasons for an inquiry is to learn lessons and prevent similar events from reoccurring, recommendations must be implementable and implemented, but it is clear that lessons have not been learned and recommendations not implemented. This paper compares the 'implementability' of recommendations from the three inquiries of Ely, Bristol and Mid Staffordshire to stress the importance of learning lessons. It examines two broad issues of 'who?' and 'what?'. First, some 80 per cent of the Ely recommendations were aimed at the institution, while 72 per cent of the Bristol and Mid Staffordshire recommendations were aimed at the system. Moreover, about 7 per cent of Ely's forty‐four recommendations have a clearly identified agent, compared to 15 per cent at Bristol and 41 per cent at Mid Staffordshire. Second, the policy tool of 'sermons' accounts for some 89 per cent of Ely recommendations, compared to 66 per cent at Bristol and 63 per cent at Mid Staffordshire. However, the earlier sermons did not appear to prevent the events at Mid Staffordshire occurring. Pulling these issues together, it can be suggested that, given the large number of potentially responsible agencies, recommendations should be 'active' with a clearly identified agent and that a clear policy tool or mechanism should be identified rather than rely on a vague tendency to sermonise.