Dying and Bereavement, Spirituality and Social Work in a Market Economy of Welfare

Correspondence to Margaret Lloyd, School of Social Work, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL Summary This paper examines the contribution of social work practiceto the care of people who are dying or bereaved. It considerscurrent challenges to traditional practice arising from societaland organizational change, reaffirming the importance of thesocial work role but arguing that, in order to face those challenges,social workers must broaden their perspective to incorporatea spiritual dimension. The paper draws on a research study conductedby the author.     

Activation,Public Employment Services and their Clients: The Role of Social Class in a Continental Welfare State

This article fills a gap in the existing literature by investigating how public employment service (PES) staff actually deal with their clients under a continental regime of activation. The results reported here are based on interviews both with PES staff and their unemployed clients in Germany. We argue that due to its Bismarckian origins as an insurance‐based system of ‘unemployment protection’, Germany's system of unemployment compensation is attractive not only for the marginalized, but also for core workers. As a result, PES staff deal with clients from very heterogeneous class backgrounds. We demonstrate that social class is a significant factor in client outcomes, and that earlier research has perhaps overemphasized the role of frontline staff as ‘street‐level bureaucrats’. While staff do have considerable power, the result of the encounters between the administration and clients also depends on the capabilities of the clients, which, in turn, are strongly related to social class.     

Social Exclusion, Inequality and Social Work

This paper sets out the environment of inequality in which social work and the poor have recently operated. It explores pragmatic and idealist arguments concerning whether or not the poor need social work. Finally, policy solutions developed in consultation with social service users and carers are suggested in relation to poverty and social exclusion. Social exclusion can be linked to relative poverty as exclusion from economic and social norms. However, there is a wider brief in our own government’s publications and those of Europe, of examining how people are excluded from actions and policies of agencies who are there to support them. This paper will retain the concepts of poverty as lack of material income, and inequality as the gap between the rich and the poor, while being aware of the policy implications for social service users and carers of the more comprehensive process of being shut out partially or fully from social, economic, political and cultural systems. The debates around social work, social exclusion and inequality that follow establish: that some of the poor do need social work; that the poverty of social service users is related to policies that have restructured welfare in Britain; that the reason for individuals approaching or being referred to social services are complex but are likely to include financial deprivation as a key contributory factor; that if the poor do need social work, advocacy is essential rather than social work being seen as concerned only with social control—taking children into care, mentally ill people into hospitals, and advising the DSS on the suitability of claimants for benefits. Finally, the discussion turns to new policy agendas on social exclusion instigated by the Labour government. What positive difference can such policies make for social service users, their carers and social workers?.     

经济调查在完善最低生活保障制度中的作用

在党的十六大决议和第十届全国人民代表大会上通过的朱镕基总理所作的政府工作报告中,有关社会保障的部分决议和报告都同时强调要进一步完善城市最低生活保障制度,“在有条件的地方探索建立农村最低生活保障制度”。然而,要实现这一目标,有必要从根本上检点和     

Social Work,Social Welfare,and Research:

No abstract available for this article.     

Poverty, Social Exclusion and Social Policy in the Czech Republic

This article analyses the pattern of poverty and social exclusion in the Czech Republic and the impact of social policy on this pattern. The analysis is mostly based on data from the Czech Survey on Social Conditions of Households (2001; 27,000 respondents); Eurostat data provide a benchmark for making international comparisons. The poverty rate in the Czech Republic is among the lowest in Europe. On the other hand, material deprivation, as well as concentration of poverty within specific population groups, is high, with the unemployed facing the highest risk of poverty. Social policy measures in effect reinforce this pattern: while the benefit system is highly redistributive and effectively eliminates income poverty among households of employed persons and among pensioners, incomes of persons outside paid employment are protected less effectively. Labour market policy measures are insufficient in scope and inadequate in targeting groups which are facing the highest risk of labour market exclusion and poverty. We argue that although this practice is effective at present, it is not sustainable in the long term.     

Networks for Welfare Provision: Getting a Grip on Processes of Social Exclusion by Evaluating Network Effectiveness

It has been repeatedly stated that the topic of network effectiveness has often been neglected. This has led to a situation of ‘network euphoria’ amongst practitioners and policymakers with regard to the creation of networks as a means to (re‐)organize welfare provision. Starting from a case study of networks for welfare provision in two Belgian cities, this article focuses on the effectiveness of service delivering networks at the client level, which is understood as the contribution of the network in improving the conditions of life of those being served or targeted by the network. Therefore, we focused on the collective efforts via these networks (e.g. by creating a night shelter or by conducting case consultations) to look after a population of homeless people who face multiple problems and are not able yet to benefit from welfare provision. Our findings revealed that these networks were able to realize a ‘collaborative advantage’ by filling in service gaps and by overcoming fragmentation of care. Nevertheless, these networks equally maintained criteria that restricted the accessibility or usefulness of welfare services provided to homeless people. In the concluding section, we highlight some of the factors that could help us to explain our findings and highlight the tension between the effectiveness of networks at the client level and the effectiveness at the organizational level.     

Probation and Social Exclusion

The paper begins with a brief discussion of the value of the term "social exclusion", before drawing on quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interview) evidence to suggest that young people on the caseload of the probation service are, in general, excluded from the full range of social goods. The basis of this exclusion is not only in poverty and unemployment, but in social and personal insecurity, lack of access to the benefits of education and training, and housing and health problems. It is argued that despite their exclusion these young people have predominantly conventional hopes and aspirations, and that there is therefore no reason to believe that a programme for their social inclusion and reintegration would be doomed to fail. The paper then reviews some aspects of present practice in probation which may tend to increase rather than reduce the exclusionary pressure on those with whom the service works, by stigmatizing and marginalizing them through a narrow focus on their offending. It concludes by suggesting strategies for more inclusionary and integrative practice in the areas of anti-custodialism, restorative justice and reintegrative shaming, community safety, and help with access to education, training and health services. The paper considers what local inter-agency structures are needed to support intensive work on offending, and sketches some characteristics of a probation service committed to social inclusion.     

Informal Welfare, Social Work and the Sociology of Welfare

Summary This article seeks to inject some important but neglected considerationsinto discussions about the nature of informal welfare and thenotice social workers should take of it. Following a sketchof how both sociology and social policy have regarded informalwelfare, it is argued that a sociology of welfare which is sensitiveto the definitions held by participants indicates that socialworkers would be wise to seek to ‘tap’ informalwelfare very cautiously. It is also argued that such sociologyneeds to be accorded a more prominent place in social work trainingcourses.     

Altruism,Social Responsibility,and Government Support For Social Welfare

The study concerns altruistic behaviour in Hong Kong and its relation to social responsibility and support of government responsibility for social welfare. The findings indicated that the community as a whole is likely to engage in altruistic acts. The responses reflect a sense of social responsibility as the most important factor contributing to the explanation of altruism. Independent of other characteristics, those respondents who were more socially responsible were more altruistic. These findings suggest that the people's willingness to help others is largely independent of concern about the interests of society as a priority of responsibility. The general finding is that people are more concerned with individual or familial interests and would sacrifice the interests of society in situations where the two are in conflict.     

Children's Welfare, Surrogacy and Social Work

Correspondence to Eric Blyth, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, University of Hudders-field, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH Summary Although surrogacy appears to have been practised throughouthistory across a diverse range of cultural groups it has onlyrecently emerged as a significant social problem, posing legal,ethical, social and psychological dilemmas. Developments inmedical technology, legislative change and shifts in professionalpractices have combined to make surrogacy potentially a moreacceptable form of family creation for more infertile and involuntarychildless people. Hitherto social work involvement in surrogacy has been marginal.However a more explicit focus on the welfare of the child, togetherwith the likely increase in prevalence in surrogacy, imply amore central role in future for social work. The commitmentof the Government and the newly-created Human Fertilizationand Embryology Authority to keeping surrogacy under review isexpected to result in further policy developments. In the meantimethis paper begins the process of identifying those areas ofsurrogacy practice in which social work intervention could beeffectively and appropriately focused and considers the implicationsof these for both social work agencies and practitioners.     

Welfare, Society and the Social Worker

Summary This article attempts to locate some common stereotyped transactionsbetween social workers and their clients as elements in theproduction of distinctive welfare identities. By comparing thisprocess to that of a rite of passage, the client is found tobe like a ritual subject frozen in the moment of transitionbetween social categories and thereby denied a place in society.An opposition is accordingly presumed to exist between Welfareand Society. The matrix of stereotyped expectations which derivesfrom this opposition is shown often to intrude on the relationshipbetween social worker and client, constituting a pressure toresolve the tensions produced by anomaly through the impositionof a welfare identity on the client. In this respect, the specialvulnerability of marginal groups is noted and a brief discussionthen follows of the characteristic qualities of ascribed welfareidentity. Through Welfare, Society is found to displace imaginativelyits sense of entropy beyond the moral community. But the essentiallink between Welfare and Society remains and increasing socialdisorder brings the paradoxical feature of this strategy tothe fore. The preservation of the social order requires increasingconcentrations of entropy to be symbolically located in Welfareand as a result Welfare comes to take on the aspect of a threateningand subversive entity. In conclusion, it is suggested that behindthe apparent ‘crisis’ in social work lies a crisisin the management of social entropy.     

Child Abuse, Social Anxiety and Welfare

Summary This article attempts to locate the ‘moral panic’concerning child abuse within the context of broader changesin the material conditions and ideological forces in Britainin the early 1970s. It argues that the development of a senseof social anxiety amongst certain sections of the populationand the appeal of the New Right were crucial in the processof establishing the problem as the major issue for social workers.As a consequence social workers have been constrained into amore punitive and interventive relationship with children andfamilies, particularly the poor. The analysis illustrates thatthe way social workers experience role conflict and tensionin this area of their work reflects much wider historical andcultural confusions and contradictions.     

Reconceptualising Social Exclusion: A Critical Response to the Neoliberal Welfare Reform Agenda and the Underclass Thesis

The application of free‐market principles to welfare reform in western industrialised nations is underpinned by contentious assumptions about human behaviour. In the postwar era, welfare policies largely considered disadvantage and exclusion as structural problems of the economy and society generally; disadvantaged individuals were considered ‘victims’ of their environment. More recently, conservative contributors have re‐emphasised disadvantage and exclusion as largely due to behavioural problems of the ‘undeserving poor’, manifest in what is believed to be an ‘underclass’. Critics of the current welfare reform agenda have voiced their concerns about the individualist assumptions that underpin it but their response to date is insufficient because they have generally neglected human agency and have failed to acknowledge individuals as capable actors. While there has been a revival of interest in human agency, greater recognition of agency in debates about welfare is required to mount a credible critique of the conservative assumptions about human behaviour in order to develop a more sensitive theory of the activities of the poor. One of the ways in which this may be achieved is by reconceptualising the concept of social exclusion and highlighting a ‘strong’ rather than a ‘weak’ version.     

制度排斥、社会距离与农民工社会融入——基于广东省东莞市的分析

本文利用一项广东省东莞市流动人口调查数据分析发现,有广东省户籍、有子女在东莞工作或上学、来东莞市时间长、对工作及住房条件满意度高者,社会融入状况较好;当前相对严格的户籍准入制度仍然是农民工社会融入的最主要体制性障碍;长期的制度排斥产生了不良的心理后果,较为普遍的自信心缺失也阻碍了农民工社会融入.     

Tough Love: Social Work, Social Exclusion and the Third Way

Summary This article argues that New Labour's priorities for socialinclusion through employment, and for strenthening civil society,have relegated public-sector social work to a limited role inassessing and managing risks. However, as failures in the government'stop-down, regulatory approach emerge, there will be new opportunitiesfor a broader-based version of the profession to contributeto a more progressive programme.     

Framing the Other: Criminality, Social Exclusion and Social Engineering in Developing Singapore

This paper examines the issue of criminality as it is expressed in social policy in Singapore. This small South-east Asian country is characterized by great social and ethnic diversity, high rates of economic growth, but low crime rates. The relationship between these is pursued by examining the authoritarian political system and the social policies that have arisen from this to socialize and discipline the ethnically disparate and class-divided population. A brief survey of the social structure of Singapore, the role of colonialism in shaping the legal system, the legal measures introduced during the pre-independent anti-colonial and anti-communist struggles and the adoption of many of these by the new government of independent Singapore as weapons of social control introduces the paper. This is followed by an examination of the single-minded pursuit of developmentalism and security in the post-independent period and of the emergence of crime in political discourse as the paradigm of social disorder and self-exclusion from the developmental state, and the relationship of these to the dominant political problem of the management of ethnicity and social differences expressed as concern with classification, a commitment to socio-biology and the constant attempts to define a field of "Asian values" based on a local reading of Confucianism as the basis of social cohesion. The essay concludes with a discussion of the relationship between Singaporean images of social order and the pursuit of a distinctive form of positivist modernism and the question of whether a "Singapore model" is applicable elsewhere in the world.     

Social Policy in a Cold Climate: Health and Social Welfare in Russia

The Russian Federation faces multiple challenges for its health and welfare systems and for the development of social policy responses. This article provides a review of some of the key challenges for social policy in Russia and assesses the adequacy of the responses to date. The author surveys recent developments in health and social welfare and makes recommendations on priorities for Russia's policy‐makers and international funders. A range of public health challenges including drug and alcohol misuse, health in prisons and mental health is discussed; HIV/AIDS is singled out for particular attention. While Russia is increasingly attracting the attention of social scientists in the West, there is uncertainty about models and concepts suitable for the analysis of this complex society. Although empirical trends are largely discussed in this article, it is argued that theoretical development is required and some suggestions are made about concepts of the ‘middle range’ to assist in future analyses. Intermediate theories, such as those relating to the management of personal welfare, and development of resilience in a formerly collectivized context, are identified as having explanatory potential for this task.     

Poverty, Social Exclusion and the Politics of Disability: Care as a Social Good and the Expenditure of Social Capital in Chuadanga, Bangladesh

People labelled with disabilities in Chuadanga, Bangladesh, are denied equitable access to social networks and formal services. In terms both of funding future formal service programmes and of designing community‐based outreach programmes, this lack of access is not a simple reflection of one's impairment but a facet of the social exclusion and stigma that is culturally ascribed to disability in Chuadanga. We utilize a social model to focus on the cultural processes initiated by the onset of illness or impairment. Our participants are drawn from four types of diagnosed disability: blindness, orthopaedic impairment, hearing impairment and mental disorder. Although this inquiry is in line with Daly's focus on how future spending on formal services to promote care and equity in Europe can be helped by searching out information that is often ignored, the particular focus of this study is Chuadanga and the research questions incorporate a disability studies perspective. The authors consider care as a social good and an expenditure of social capital, in reviewing findings from a recent empirical study of disability and employment in the Bangladesh district of Chuadanga. Regardless of disability, poverty can be a morally and socially devastating ordeal. However, the authors conclude that the added loss of social solidarity and equitable access, due to the social exclusion and stigma of disability for the families concerned, make it statistically far less likely that they will access formal services or be able to escape poverty.