Family policy and a social incomes policy: The case of the single-parent allowance in France

From the outset, French family policy has vacillated between several objectives: defending the institution of the family, encouraging childbirth and reducing social inequalities. In the current context of social policy, certain family allowances take on the appearance of veritable social incomes policy measures. Children, in the same way as loss of employment or disablement, give rise to entitlement to social solidarity. This paper will examine the case of the single-parent allowance, introduced in France in 1976, and will place it in the context of "minimum social incomes", taken to mean those that afford a modicum of self-respect, rather than being mere subsistence incomes.     

Urbanization, caring for elderly people and the changing African family: The challenge to social policy

An inquiry into the role of social welfare in the development process in Africa must start by determining the position of the family in the face of all the social changes that are taking place. The role of the traditional African family may be broadly subdivided into its social role, its economic role and its role as an agent for the transmission and renewal of sociocultural values. Intraditional African societies, there is a complex interaction between the members of the family and the community. Social organization centres on the kinship group and the age group. The economic, political and sociocultural values of present-day Africa, with its sprawling urban centres and industrial zones, differ increasingly from its traditional values. In Africa, the concept of development has been greatly influenced by the colonial experience and Western modernization theory which posited that economic development and growth, mainly through industrialization, would automatically raise the living standards and meet the social needs of the population. Social welfare was viewed as a non-productive activity and therefore accorded a low priority in national development planning and resource allocation. In such a context, the scope of social policy is limited and cannot deal with the critical problems of mass poverty and deprivation afflicting the majority of African peoples, especially in rural areas. The family is disintegrating and social change has brought in its wake a host of new social problems which remedial social welfare services are not adequate to meet. Using Ghana as an example, this paper will critically examine these key issues and make recommendations for effective social policies and programmes that must be incorporated centrally into national development plans.     

Bringing social policy back in: a look at the Middle East and North Africa

This article examines the evolution of social policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during three periods: the post-colonial and oil-boom period, the post-oil period of structural adjustment, and the more recent oil-boom period. Drawing attention to key factors that shaped both social policy and the region's lack of competitiveness during the current global era, the authors argue for a new social development strategy that would put the region back on a growth path, while also recognizing citizen participation and rights.     

Privatization, provision, and targeting: Trends and policy implications for social security in the United States

This paper examines several important trends in the changing structure of social security in the United States and their impact on the elderly in different income groups. These trends involve the shifting public/private mix of retirement income, the declining replacement rates of public benefits, and reforms for targeting benefits by age. An analysis of these trends suggests that (a) social security will provide declining economic support for those most in need; (b) middle- and upper-income groups will have a diminished stake in social security, reducing the programme's political base of support; (c) increasing reliance on occupational pensions will heighten the need for greater public regulation of private schemes; (d) an unplanned two-tiered system of pensions will emerge, with the first tier consisting of a whittled-down version of social security to provide a predominant source of retirement income for low-income wage earners and the second tier consisting of private pensions for middle- and upper-income groups.     

From policy to practice: the implementation of a new framework for social work assessments of children and families

This paper describes a two‐year study conducted in 24 English councils to evaluate the implementation of the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families. The Framework promotes a holistic, multi‐agency approach towards the assessment of children in need. The study was carried out in two phases. Phase one explored how councils implemented the Framework and accompanying assessment records. Phase two used a variety of methods to assess the impact of the Framework on practice, including an audit of completed assessment records, postal questionnaires to practitioners and managers in social services and partner agencies, and a qualitative study of 52 cases which included interviews with parents, children over 10 and social workers. A time record was used to gather information on the time social workers spent on the various elements of the core assessment process. The study suggests that councils had to overcome a number of organizational and other barriers in order to implement the Framework. However, the Framework and supporting materials appear to have provided the foundations to improve the quality of social work recording and promote interagency working, and have strengthened the involvement of children and families in the assessment process.     

Cars,carbon, and Kyoto: Evaluating an emission charge and other policy instruments as incentives for a transition to hybrid cars in New Zealand

Abstract

Transition to hybrid petrol/electric vehicles (HEVs) is one means among many of reducing carbon emissions pursuant to the New Zealand emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. The potential financial incentive value of an emissions charge was evaluated by comparing purchase and running costs of an HEV with an equivalent petrol‐fuelled car. Had a carbon tax of $15/tonne CO₂ operated in January 2006, the net fuel efficiency saving on the basis of the emissions charge and the inbuilt fuel efficiency of the HEV amounted to $655.50 annually for an HEV. When compared with a $7000 purchase price differential in favour of petrol‐fuelled vehicles, it can be concluded the proposed carbon tax would not have provided a sufficient incentive to bring about any significant change in the distribution of HEVs across the market. Shifting the norm to a higher proportion of fuel‐efficient cars will therefore require other incentives and/or policy mechanisms. We explore alternative policy options for bringing about such a shift, including the option of a tradable vehicle emission permit system.     

Family policy and the under-3s: Money, services, and time in a policy package

The key components of social policy toward the elderly and disabled, and policies for families and their children, have featured what are by now widely employed income and service components. Now, as demographic and social change have motivated increasing numbers of countries to face the need for societal policies for children under the age of 3, exploration reveals the centrality of an additional policy dimension — time. A six-country study and earlier research targeted on this group finds that several major policy patterns are emerging, with individual country choices reflecting history, culture, religious traditions, political configurations, and resources. Referring to illustrative countries, the paper explicates these options: (a) supporting an at-home parent in "family work"; (b) backing a pattern of involvement of parents in both family and work; (c) offering parents of very young children the option of concentrating on family or work; (d) stressing programmes in support of the socialization and education of young children and their parents. It is suggested that social security institutions internationally contribute to these new developments through data collection, dissemination activities, and encouragement of discussion and research.     

Retraction: From urban‐first to urban–rural integration: discourse and the development of social assistant policy in China

Zhang HM (2011). From urban‐first to urban–rural integration: discourse and the development of social assistance policy in China. International Journal of Social Welfare[E‐pub ahead of print, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468‐2397.2011.00791.x]. The above article, published online on 7 April 2011 in Wiley Online Library ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ ) has been retracted by agreement between the author, the journal Editors, Sven Hessle and Neil Gilbert, and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to overlap between this article and material previously published elsewhere, including: Shi S‐J (2006). Left to Market and Family‐Again? Ideas and the Development of the Rural Pension Policy in China. Social Policy & Administration 40: 791–806. and Bleses P, Seeleib‐Kaiser M (2004). The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State. Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York, Palgrave Macmillan Press.     

Participant roles in preschool bullying: The impact of emotion regulation,social preference,and quality of the teacher–child relationship

The present work investigated whether emotion regulation and social preference were associated with participant roles in bullying as a function of the quality of the relationship with teachers. Participants were 332 children (172 boys), in the age of 42–76 months (M = 58.74; SD = 7.84). Peer nominations were employed to assess social preference and participant roles (bullying, victimization, defending the victim, and outsider behavior). Teachers completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist, which yields the dimensions of emotion regulation and lability/negativity, and the Student – Teacher Relationships Scale, to evaluate conflict and closeness with the teacher. Multilevel models highlighted that emotional lability was positively associated with bullying and outsider behavior, emotion regulation was positively related to bullying and defending behavior, and social preference was negatively associated with bullying and victimization and positively with defending behavior. Interactions indicated that lability and low social preference were associated with bullying, and emotion regulation with outsider behavior, in children with a conflictual relationship with the teacher whereas social preference was related to defending behavior in children with a close relationship with the teacher. Results are discussed highlighting the importance of the quality of teacher–child relationship and the relevance of intervention programs aimed at promoting social wellbeing in preschool.     

Administrative into social control: The aliens police and foreign female servants in the Netherlands, 1918-40

This article has made it clear that the social control the Leiden aliens police were able to exert from 1918 onwards, both on aliens and Dutch citizens, was enabled by a combination of increased monitoring as well as the administrative power that went with it. More concretely, it was a logical consequence of the revolution in the migration regime that took place throughout the western world around the time of World War I. This case nuances the quite bleak picture of the attitude of the aliens police towards foreign female servants. Thus, it is argued that servants were not play-things in the hands of the local police, although their legal as well as discretionary powers were considerable. The combination of age, gender and social position made them a special category in the eyes of the police. Because they were young and female the police regarded them, on the one hand, as vulnerable. When this image dominated, policemen showed paternalistic behaviour and sometimes acted as surrogate parents. Their attitude is well captured by the concepts of 'bureaucratic paternalism' and 'caring power'. On the other hand, domestic servants could also be considered as a moral threat. Most of them having come from working-class backgrounds, they easily fitted the image of women of loose moral standing who could endanger the public morale of the Netherlands. This ambivalent image of foreign domestic servants explains the corresponding variation in the treatment of complaints.     

Aiming to keep poor Mexican families at the breadline (but no higher): The effects of minimum wage,tax, and social policy changes between 1994 and 2012

Welfare policy in Mexico has been transformed in recent decades. During the years of the import‐substitution industrialization economic strategy and the hegemonic party political regime, social policy was based on social insurance programs of limited coverage to urban formal sector workers and their families. In the mid‐1990s, an unprecedented expansion of social protection through social assistance programs was triggered, along with social insurance reform. This article assesses the effects at the household level of social policy changes, in combination with changes in taxes and the minimum wage, which also impact the welfare of the population. The research applies “model families” to establish effects of social, tax, and minimum wage policy changes across population groups, and their combined potential to combat poverty. Findings show that although taxation and social policy changes increased redistribution towards poor families, their capacity to lift and keep them above poverty thresholds was limited by the drop in the real value of the minimum wage and by strict targeting mechanisms, which exclude families that do not meet eligibility criteria but still fall below poverty lines. Social policy expansion merely subsidized the drop in real minimum wage, and poor families at best remained at similar income levels. Hence, the logic of the design of welfare policy changes can be characterized as aiming to keep poor families on the breadline, but no higher.     

知识、策略及权力关系再生产对鲁西南某景区开发引起的社会冲突的分析

对中国农村社会冲突的研究以实证研究居多。这些研究多集中在以下几个方面:一是农村社区内的人际关系;二是村庄与乡镇间的冲突;三是干群冲突;四是村庄“两委”(村民委员会和党支委)间的冲突;五是乡规民约与国家法律的冲突。此外,也有少数学者研究农村社会的文化冲突。但上述研究侧重于冲突的发展及冲突的解决,对冲突产生的原因以及冲突过程所隐含的权力关系均不够关注。张静和孙立平等人突破传统的研究视角,从国家与社会关系的角度重新审视了农村的社区冲突。张静(2000,2002)认为,“国家政权建设”在中国没有完成,因此,既没有构成强大的约束…     

The impact of prison hospice: collaboration among social workers and other professionals in a criminal justice setting that promotes care for the dying

This study reports on a qualitative national telephone survey with coordinators of 14 prison hospice programs in 11 states. The rationale behind the survey was to learn about interdisciplinary collaboration between social work and criminal justice, using prison hospice as an exemplar of this collaboration. In addition to learning that all prison hospices in the study operate using an interdisciplinary team model and that most report high quality collaboration on the hospice team, the following additional five themes emerged: administrators and wardens are very supportive while correctional staff provides mixed support to team and program; greater collaboration with those outside prison hospice is critical; collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on dying prisoners; collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on prisoner volunteers; and, collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on the entire culture of the prison.     

Correcting misconceptions about the development of social work in China: a response to Hutchings and Taylor

Hutchings and Taylor, in their article entitled ‘Defining the profession? Exploring an international definition of social work in the China context’[International Journal of Social Welfare 16: 381–389], no doubt had good intentions in offering their account of the development of social work in China, as the opening and concluding sections of the article show. Within the text, however, their critique of contemporary social work in China is, in my opinion, unfair in relation to, among other things, (i) the undemocratic nature of the Chinese political system, which they say hinders the development of social work in China; (ii) the ideology of the Communist Party, the government, and traditional Chinese culture, which they say are at odds with Western social work's value system and methodology; thus concluding that (iii) it is doubtful whether social work development in China could integrate with that of the international community. In this response, I comment on (i) the information base of the authors; (ii) the disconnection between their conceptualisation and historical facts; and (iii) their use of the international definition of social work.     

彼此相倚:解决物业冲突的有效途径——以C市业主与物业冲突为例

社会心理学家巴克的非对称性相倚和彼此相倚理论是解释业主和物业冲突与合作的有效理论.由于信息、权力、收费服务和对利益理解等的不对称,使非对称性相倚成为业主与物业冲突的主要根源;而通过成立业主委员会,加快推进物业管理的社会化、市场化和专业化,明确双方定位、利益共享等彼此相倚,则是解决业主与物业冲突的有效途径.     

Reconceptualizing the generation in a digital(izing) modernity: digital media,social networking sites,and the flattening of generations

As digitalization binds society to an apparently perpetual acceleration, questions about the nature of time and speed have gained new urgency in the social sciences. Yet, theorizations of these issues have neglected their implications for social life and generations. Linking these lacunae, this article articulates how digital media and social networking sites (SNS) shape social life through cultural transformations in the generation. This article rationalizes predominant patterns of SNS user behaviors in the context of social theoretical and philosophical frameworks informed by Mannheim, Simmel, Adorno, Benjamin, Arendt, social presence, action, and acceleration theories to offer a relational reconceptualization of the generation as a set of social relations and processes for visualizing changing conceptions of time and speed in a digital (izing) modernity. This article introduces the concept of general and local generationing processes to articulate the processual nature of the generation and to assert that trends in SNS use and content production are underwritten by grammatical logics that collectively “flatten” separate traditional generations to form a cross-demographic and cross-temporal digital generation.