The Hutubi Model: what have we learned?

Created to address some of the limitations in China's rural retirement insurance policy, the Hutubi Model represents an innovative approach to asset building. A key feature of the model, the Hutubi loan programme, operated in Hutubi County, Xinjiang, China, from 1998 to 2010. It allowed farmers in Hutubi to borrow against their rural retirement accounts, taking loans for investment in farming and other priorities. This study examines the institutional incentives and structures that enabled the programme to help farmers build assets. We also discuss the programme's implications for the development of asset-based social policy in rural China and consider recent policy developments there. Among these is a new rural retirement social insurance programme.     

Europeanization of Social Inclusion Policy in Macedonia – Trends,Challenges and Potential Benefits

The article explores policies, trends and challenges related to social inclusion in Macedonia, and assesses the contribution of EU strategic frameworks and instruments towards the country's greater inclusive growth. In this respect, the article starts by exploring existing instruments for pre‐accession (IPAs) which are relevant for the achievement of the EU 2020 goals. Then the article offers a country analysis related to issues such as poverty, material deprivation, as well as exclusion from the labour market, accompanied by an overview of policies and measures undertaken by the current government in the respective domains. Unfavourable socio‐economic trends, such as undeclared work, jobless growth, high unemployment and poverty rates, present serious challenges to the creation of an effective social inclusion policy. On the other hand, the ‘delayed’ negotiation process with the EU, which in social policy results in a lack of Joint Inclusion Memorandum (JIM) and Joint Assessment Paper (JAP) processes even after seven years of candidate status, slows down the adoption of more strategic policy approach towards sensitive issues, such as social inclusion and anti‐discrimination. The main aim of the article is to assess whether there is a significant difference between current social inclusion policies, measures, indicators and trends with the similar EU standards and practices. In addition, the article explores the potential benefits of the process of Europeanization for Macedonian social inclusion policy.     

Social impacts of the Global Financial Crisis on China and its policy initiatives

The Global Financial Crisis has brought eminent, negative economic and social impacts on China since late 2008, including a considerable decline in GDP growth and a rapid rise in unemployment. Drawing on the published literature and official statistical data, this paper examines the social consequences of the Global Financial Crisis in China, explores various policy initiatives taken by the Chinese government and assesses the effectiveness of these policy initiatives. It argues that the Global Financial Crisis has led to high levels of enterprise bankruptcy and job losses in China. Rural migrant workers and new university graduates are the two social groups most adversely affected. The economic stimulus package and expanded social programmes tend to be short term and economic oriented. Whether the policy initiatives have been effective in mitigating the social impacts of this crisis and correcting the structural imbalance of China's economy is unclear. The paper concludes by suggesting that a new policy approach should be taken to timely and effectively address the negative social impacts of the Global Financial Crisis on China, in particular by providing a more inclusive and comprehensive social safety net, prioritizing employment generation, and addressing housing deficits.     

The Assets Agenda and Social Policy

The assets agenda or asset-based welfare has provoked much interest in recent times. This approach insists that the stock of assets that a person owns is an important element of well-being. The assets agenda is not a unified body of thought. However, there is a common failure to distinguish between these different parts, and this clouds rather than clarifies debates. This article seeks to add analytical clarity to current debates about asset-based welfare. I distinguish between social policy and citizenship, and consider their implications for social policy. This discussion is important because analytical clarity is a precondition for a balanced assessment of asset-based welfare.     

Ending poverty in Mongolia: From socialism to social development

While recent literature on social welfare has included Asian countries, less is known about low‐income and former socialist countries in Central Asia. This article combines a documentary‐historical method with a value‐critical approach to analyze Mongolia's social policy response to poverty. Mongolia is unique in Asia because it transformed from nomadic pastoralism to socialism without a phase of capitalist industrial development. The case study found that Mongolia lost social welfare when it transitioned from socialism, a statist model, to market liberalism and multiparty democracy. In the 21st century, Mongolia has been aspiring to promote social development by redirecting mining revenues to a human development fund. Mongolia is potentially an exemplar of social development strategies affirmed at the United Nations Conference for Social Development (Rio+20) regarding a green economy for inclusive growth and poverty elimination. Future social welfare research should consider the importance of sustainability. Key Practitioner Message: ● Global standards for tracking poverty alleviation will be integrated with sustainability measures beginning in 2015; ● Mongolia hopes to foster social development and sustainable livelihoods by reinvesting revenues from mining into human capital and health care; ● To sustain future generations, social policy needs to consider the relationship between natural capital, social capital, and financial capital.     

Lessons Unlearned—Planning Disaster and Community Anomie

This article critically reviews the Hong Kong Government's ‘new town’ policy. It argues that the case of Tin Shui Wai illustrates the ‘planning disasters’ where casualties are resulted from poor government planning; a lesson that should have been learned from its predecessor, Tuen Mun, in the early 1980s. The analysis shows how rigid bureaucratic administration led to inadequate community facilities and services; the physical remoteness and the homogeneity of the populations stalled economic development; and large numbers of new immigrants, ethnic minorities, and people of low socioeconomic status concentrated in a virtually deserted community that was characterized by various social problems. The article concludes with the recommendation to make community development efforts to nurture social capital in anomic communities.     

Housing policy and asset building: exploring the role of home ownership in East Asian social policy

Western societies promote home ownership in the belief that it provides a means to build up individual welfare and security, potentially offsetting the inadequacy of social security to meet needs in retirement. Some East Asian economies have long focused on advancing ‘asset building’ through housing policy. These efforts have two purposes: to use housing investment to drive economic development and to build family assets throughout life as a component of income protection for old age. These purposes work well in some countries but not as well in others. In policy terms, the common element among them is that governments promote home ownership as a component of social policy or as a complement to mainstream welfare. This article examines how home ownership fares as a form of asset-based welfare in selected East Asian countries (Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan) and considers the implications for understanding the role of institutions in development.     

The Transformation of Ideology from Mao to Deng: Impact on China's Social Welfare Outcome

This article aims at making a dialectical assessment of the development of social welfare between the period of Mao's socialism and Deng's economic marketization. It examines the transformation of ideological discourses between the two periods and its impact on social welfare outcomes. It posits that an ideological system is important in affecting the outcome of social welfare policy. Mao's welfare policy, despite certain shortcomings, created a relatively equal, sustainable and self-sufficient society with solid achievements in social welfare and especially in human development. Deng's economic marketization, although remarkable in economic growth, is producing social contradictions leading to the decline of welfare service. The current development discourse is dismantling Mao's welfare policy without establishing a new and more democratic conception of socialist political economy.     

Developing Practice Tools for Social Workers in End-of-Life Care

Abstract

This article describes the National Association of Social Workers' (NASW) strategies for providing social workers with important practice and policy information about palliative and end-of-life care. With funding from a Soros Foundation's Project on Death in America grant, NASW developed practice standards, a Web-based continuing education course, and drafted a new policy statement to guide social workers in end-of-life care practice. The article provides an in-depth view of the development and scope of these resources for professional social workers.     

A comment on ‘Climate change: Social workers’ roles and contributions to policy debates and interventions'

Peeters J. A comment on ‘Climate change: Social workers’ roles and contributions to policy debates and interventions' In this commenting article, I present several critical remarks about Lena Dominelli's contribution to the issue of climate change and its implications for social work. 1 In my view, her article lacks three important considerations. First, I argue that the issue of climate change should be addressed as part of a broader, fundamental challenge: the transition of the growth‐based economic system upon which our society is built. Second, within a context of social and ecological injustice, dealing with climate change inevitably requires a dimension of social struggle. Third and lastly, I emphasise social work's role in challenging the social, political and economic structures and processes that bring about climate change.     

The reform of the developmental welfare state in East Asia

This article examines social policy reforms in East Asia and whether the welfare states in the region became more inclusive in terms of social protection while maintaining their developmental credentials. It draws on findings from the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) project on social policy in East Asia, covering China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, Japan, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan Province of China, and Thailand. It shows that East Asian economies responded differently to the crisis in terms of welfare reform. While Singapore and Hong Kong maintained the basic structure of the selective developmental welfare state, Korea, Taiwan, and, to a lesser extent, Thailand implemented social policy reforms toward a more inclusive one. Despite such different responses, policy changes are explained by the proposition of the developmental welfare state: the instrumentality of social policy for economic development and realization of policy changes through democratization (or the lack of it).     

(Mis)framing Higher Education in South Africa

The question of how to make higher education more inclusive has been a central concern in South Africa and elsewhere over the past two decades. However, in South Africa there remains a disjuncture between policy aimed at promoting inclusivity and the experiences of students and staff in the higher education sector. In this article, the relationship between equity of access and equity of outcomes and the expectations that follow from these policy imperatives are examined from the perspective of Nancy Fraser's normative framework of social justice. In particular, her notion of misframing is used to analyze the current situation in the higher education sector in South Africa. The article concludes that a focus on individual higher education institutions is not sufficient to gain a perspective on the social arrangements required for participatory parity in higher education; and, in fact, such a focus is an instance of misframing and thus a form of injustice.     

Responsible pragmatism in Turkish social policy making in the face of Islamic egalitarianism and neoliberal austerity

Akan T. Responsible pragmatism in Turkish social policy making in the face of Islamic egalitarianism and neoliberal austerity Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 367–380 © 2011 The Author(s), International Journal of Social Welfare © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Founded in August 2001, the Justice and Development Party of Turkey (JDP) has forged a brand new identity, the Conservative Democracy, and initiated challenging politico‐economic reforms since November 2002 when it came to power. Among these reforms, the social policies of the Conservative Democrats have intriguingly yielded mixed blessings of a strategic settlement between equality of outcome and opportunity. This article argues that such a result originated from the commodification by the Conservative Democrats of the Islamic egalitarianism of ‘the Just Order’, the politico‐economic programme to which the JDP's leaders were strictly committed before becoming the Conservative Democrats. Entitling the social policy strategy of JDP as ‘Responsible Pragmatism’, this article concludes that it was an unsustainable but flexible social policy strategy that has gone as far as it can, now, on the eve of the 2011 general elections.     

The Emperor's new clothes: South Africa's attempted transition to developmental social welfare and social work

This article critically interrogates the depth and quality of change of post‐apartheid welfare policy and social work practice towards a social development paradigm against the background of inequality and poverty in South Africa. It asks several questions: what kind of welfare system has the current welfare dispensation created? How far has it moved from a residual, ameliorative system to an institutional developmental system, in keeping with the developmental welfare paradigm? To what extent can residual provisions be transformed into developmental processes? What conditions are necessary for this to happen? The answers to questions such as these provide the basis for assessing South Africa's new developmental processes. The article highlights the fundamental contradictions in social development policy imperatives, which call for a marriage of economic and social considerations, and the internal contradictions across and within various welfare policies. Further, it argues that the government does not have the political will to bear the costs of the substantive change that the move towards developmental social work requires, choosing instead limited, individually targeted and ameliorative measures, such as increased social security spending. Thus, it suggests that ideological critique, consciousness raising and participation in public policy debates remain crucial for those who seek long‐term solutions to inequality and poverty in South Africa.     

Social Work, Asset-based Welfare and the Child Trust Fund

Asset-based welfare represents a new departure in British incomemaintenance policy and the Child Trust Fund is its most importantcontemporary example. This Research Note explores the claimsmade for asset-based welfare in general and for the Child TrustFund in particular. It sets out the results of an investigationinto the views of young people into potential uses which individualsmight make of the Fund. It then suggests a series of reasonswhy social workers ought to take a particular interest in thedevelopment of asset-based welfare policies and the benefitswhich might flow from them.     

Social Enterprise – A New Phenomenon in the Field of Economic and Social Welfare?

Drawing upon insights from historical institutionalism, this article critically examines the origins of social enterprise and its emergence into the mainstream policy arena. It begins by relating the social enterprise idea to major non‐state/non‐private institutional traditions, including the European social economy, US non‐profits and the UK charitable sector, and places it within the specific field of economic and social welfare. In so doing, the article contests the idea that social enterprise is a new phenomenon in the social welfare field and proposes instead that the supposed ‘novelty’ of social enterprise as an organizational form and a subject of public policy lies primarily in the nature of the socio‐political and economic context of the 1980s–1990s, during which time it became ‘en vogue’. The process of institutionalization of social enterprise and its ascension into the mainstream policy arena is examined in more detail in the case of England during the time New Labour was in office and beyond, and lessons are drawn from this experience concerning both the role that social enterprise plays or is expected to play as a vehicle to address economic and social needs, and how this is intertwined with both a dominant neo‐liberal discourse, as well as alternative perspectives that emphasize more equalitarian and sustainable development paths. The article concludes with some reflections in relation to the apparent consensus that seems to exist around social enterprise as a legitimate subject of public policy and the resulting social enterprization of public services which is currently taking place in England.     

Advocacy Coalitions and Health Politics in Korea

This article analyses the political dynamics underlying health care reform in Korea after the Asian economic crisis. The reform was a significant volte‐face in respect of the social policy paradigm, which now aims to enhance equity in National Health Insurance. The article pays special attention to the evolution of the advocacy coalition for equity in health policy and how it developed the two attributes required for successful policy change: institutional strength and the elaboration of policy rationale for reform. This process was not a simple linear development but a combination of setbacks and advances. The article also takes into consideration the structural conditions that set the policy environment over the course of the advocacy coalition's evolution since the 1960s. In short, the policy reform of 2000 was not a simple policy change in response to the economic crisis, but rather the outcome of the long‐term evolution of the advocacy coalition for equity in health policy.     

China's social assistance policy: experiences and future directions

The Minimum Living Standard Guarantee System (MLSGS) forms the core of China's current social assistance policy, and special assistance programmes are used to supplement this policy. This paper scrutinizes the evolution and achievements of the social assistance policy, and analyses the challenges and problems that the policy faces. In this paper, we argue that the international trend of social assistance reforms, institutional background changes and the problems of social assistance in China require a developmental model to guide the future development of the social assistance policy. Therefore, social assistance policy should not only fulfil the basic living requirements of the underprivileged and enable underprivileged people to share the outcomes of economic and social development, but also should enable the underprivileged to develop human capital and participate in the labour market. To move towards developmental social assistance, this article proposes several relevant policy suggestions.