Money Isn't Everything. Fiscal Policy and Family Policy in the Child Support Act

One of the explicit aims of the 1991 Child Support Act is to ensure that parents honour their financial obligations towards their natural children to a greater extent than they have hitherto. An equally important underlying objective is that of reducing the costs to the state of supporting lone parents. This paper examines the extent to which these two objectives are compatible within the framework of the Child Support Act through an examination of the impact of the Act's implementation on lone mothers and their children. It presents some of the key findings of a study of lone mothers on means-tested benefits, interviewed almost one year after the implementation of the Act. The paper concludes that the Act is failing to meet its stated aim of increasing the extent to which parents honour their financial obligations to children, because of an excessively narrow conception of the ways in which financial obligations are met combined with too strong an emphasis on maximizing savings in state expenditure on lone parents. The implementation of the Child Support Act, far from enhancing the welfare of children in lone parent families, has brought with it considerable financial and emotional costs for children and their mothers.     

Culture, cultural identity, and cultural sensitivity in child and family social work

Child care legislation, policy, and procedures increasingly emphasize the obligations of social workers to give due consideration to the culture and cultural background of children and their families. This paper explores the implications of those obligations. It seeks the meaning of these terms, and critically examines meanings attributed to them. There are many obstacles in the way of fulfilling these specific statutory obligations in child and family social work: there is a history of neglect, confusion, and negativity towards culture in social work literature, and a current attempt to subsume culture within the concept of ethnicity; racism has often been regarded as a more significant issue than culture; the cultural heritage of clients and their families has been perceived as oppressive, and culture has been misinterpreted to explain and to tolerate unacceptable behaviour. Other disciplines, for example anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, perceive culture and cultural identity differently. They have much to offer social work. The paper provides a definition of culture and cultural identity which reflects much of what has been learnt in the literature generally. It should contribute towards an enhancement of cultural sensitivity, and a fulfilment of statutory obligations relating to culture in child and family social work.     

Social workers' attitudes towards family group conferences in Sweden and the UK

The New Zealand family group conference (FGC) approach to decision making in child welfare and protection has attracted strong interest among policy makers and professionals all over the world. While New Zealand’s legislation makes use of FGCs more or less mandatory in child protection, other countries permit social workers to refer families to an FGC at their own discretion. Knowledge about social workers’ attitudes towards the model is thus paramount if we want to understand implementation and evaluations of FGCs outside New Zealand. This study looks at attitudes towards and actual referrals to FGCs amongst 219 social workers from 18 local authorities in Sweden and the UK. Results reveal an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards FGCs in both countries. Given these attitudes it was striking that only 42% of the social workers had initiated at least one FGC over an 18‐month period. The number of implemented FGCs was almost exactly the same in Sweden and the UK, after adjusting for time and number of social workers. Possible explanations for this paradox are discussed, using data from the survey and child welfare literature.     

Elderly Consumers and Social Care Policy

The development of social care policy for elderly Australians is proceeding with little regard for the preferences and perspectives as expressed by the elderly themselves. The likely consequence is a continuation of policies based largely on other people's assumptions about what elderly people actually need and the extension of service categories into which many elderly people do not easily fit. Discussions with 71 elderly consumers during 1983 in Queensland established that they have input to make into policy and service delivery issues such as the provision of information on services, the determination of needs, the extension of choices between alternative services and choice of appropriate service providers. Social care policy should not continue to develop around singular and untested assumptions concerning what elderly people need and prefer.     

社会政策视角下的流浪儿童救助保护

我国政府历来重视对流浪儿童的救助保护,也取得了相当的成绩,但该领域的政策体系尚存缺陷与不足,难以满足社会发展的需要。立足现实,从社会政策的视角,探究流浪儿童救助保护政策的现状,并提出有关对策建议,以期建立健全该领域的社会政策框架。     

‘My daughter is a drug addict’: grandparents caring for the children of addicted parents

This article reports on one aspect of a large multi-method survey of grandparents raising grandchildren, carried out in 2016. The research report [Gordon L. (2016). The empty nest is refilled: the joys and tribulations of grandparents raising grandchildren in New Zealand. Auckland: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust (NZ)] notes that the most commonly cited reason for children coming into care was parental drug addiction. This article reports on the circumstances and well-being of families where parental drug addiction was cited as a reason for the children living with grandparents. Common causes of grandparents struggling to care for their grandchildren were personal health issues, housing, financial problems and dealing with traumatised or unwell children. Contact with parents was often random, with non-contact caused by parental death, imprisonment, parents moving away or re-forming families, children not wanting to see the parent or parents not turning up for scheduled visits. As noted in another article [Gordon L. (2017). Experiences of grandparents raising grandchildren in getting income support from Work and Income offices in New Zealand. Kotuitui. 12(2):134–145], many of the families had difficulty getting income support from Work and Income. Many of the children suffer from a range of emotional and behavioural problems, leading to concerns about their future. The conclusion considers the policy and service implications of these findings, in the context of the growing ‘epidemic’ of methamphetamines and other drug use in Aotearoa.     

Social Policy and the Discipline of Social Administration

The last ten years have seen a spate of books analysing social policy in terms of ideologies or models of welfare. These models, which combine an explanatory or scientific and a normative or value component, offer the discipline of social administration a terrain or base of its own from which it can legitimately explore a range of normative and scientific issues. It is suggested that the central task of social policy analysis, at the highest level of generality of the discipline, is to tease out the relevant normative and factual propositions or assumptions underlying these models and subject them to close scrutiny. In this the discipline would largely be following, but also extending somewhat, the agenda for social administration outlined by Richard Titmuss in 1968.     

Social Support for Mothers of Children With Disabilities in China

ABSTRACT.

This article analyzes the gendered parenting experiences of mothers of children with disabilities in China. These mothers struggle to meet their children's needs, including daily care, financial security, and child development. In the context of China's social welfare development, are social services responding to their needs, so that mothers can share responsibility for the needs of their children with disabilities? The research analyzed qualitative data about 6 case-study children in rural and urban China. The data were derived from observation and interviews with their parents and other family and community members. The analysis revealed that the capacity of the mother, community, and local social services had an impact on the rights of the children and mothers. They experienced social discrimination, insufficient social support, and local failure to implement central policy social services and income support. These findings are consistent with international research about disability rights. They reinforce the importance of economic redistribution to enable local implementation of the national disability rights policies, rather than merely relying on ephemeral concepts of cultural change. Further research about the comparative impact of economic and social change in China on mothers and children with disabilities would extend these findings.     

Redefining the 'Rural Question': The New 'Politics of the Rural' and Social Policy

Politics in the countryside has undergone a significant shift in emphasis in recent decades, which may be characterized as a transition from ‘rural politics’ to ‘a politics of the rural’. Whereas ‘rural politics’ refers broadly to politics located in rural space, or relating to ‘rural issues’, the ‘politics of the rural’ is defined by the centrality of the meaning and regulation of rurality itself as the primary focus of conflict and debate. However, far from marginalizing social issues – as early work on the new rural conflicts by Mormont implied – the paper argues that the new politics of the rural has liberated rural social policy from the shadow of agricultural policy, providing a new language and context through which rural social issues can be placed on the political agenda. Three examples of this are discussed, drawing on illustrations from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and North America – conflicts over the rationalization of public and commercial services in rural communities; campaigns around the closure of rural schools and their symbolic place at the heart of rural communities; and issues of difference and discrimination in the countryside, including responses to travellers and asylum‐seekers.     

Globalization, Regionalism and Social Policy

This paper explores the implications of globalization for social policy, and teases out those elements of globalization which have impinged most on it. Then it explores the most important ways in which globalization has had an effect on social policy. Seven issues are explored—the way in which globalization has highlighted and/or created new problems, its contribution to hollowing out the state, the way in which it has altered the balance of power between capital and labour, its contribution to stimulating an ideology of competitiveness, its re-establishing of the importance of trade in discussions about social policy and, finally, the way in which it has helped to make the maintenance of social order a new priority. The paper then explores the possibilities for supranational or regional social policy. It examines the case for moving towards such a policy and the problems of so doing.     

Targeting Social Expenditure in New Zealand: An Evaluation of the Current Policy Regime

This paper provides a brief account of how social expenditure in New Zealand has been targeted (i.e. means-tested) since the late nineteenth century, outlines the policy framework at the dawn of the new millennium, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the current targeting regime. It is argued that the existing policy settings are open to challenge on a number of counts. In particular, they are complex, inconsistent and relatively intrusive, they impose significant administrative and compliance costs, and they generate considerable incentive problems. Nor has the greater reliance on targeting since the mid-1980s prevented an increase in relative poverty and inequality. Given this situation, the paper outlines some possible reforms.     

发展型社会政策及其对我国政府政策制定的启示

20世纪90年代以来,社会政策的理念和实践模式发生了巨大的变化,这集中表现在发展型社会政策理论的形成和实践。发展型社会政策的核心理论是将社会政策看成是一种社会投资行为,注重对人力资本的投资,强调经济发展和社会发展的整合性。本文回顾了发展型社会政策产生的背景,指出发展型社会政策的重要理念,最后指出发展型社会政策对我国政府政策制定的启示。     

The New Social Policy in Britain

This paper starts from the proposition that approaches to crime and penal policy in contemporary Britain are of a piece with approaches to social policy across a number of fronts. "The New Social Policy" is examined in terms of "the stakeholder idea", its implications for how people are meant to behave, and the distance between this and socio-economic realities. The paper then explores various sectors of stakeholder social policy in their new order of importance—employment and training, education, health care, social care, housing, social security—before commenting on policies in respect of crime and crime prevention, in the light of the foregoing observations and with particular reference to the "lock-'em-up" tendency. The paper concludes that stakeholdership is no recipe for crime prevention.     

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.     

The Place of Fostering in Social Work

Summary To foster children is no longer regarded as the main objectiveof the child care services. However, fostering is once againa matter of social work and public debate. The paper explainsthat more types of children are now being assessed as requiringfostering at a time when social service departments are findingit difficult to expand their number of foster homes. This greaterdemand for foster homes coincides with recent researches whichhelp to clarify the nature of fostering. Accordingly, a distinctioncan be made between 'exclusive' and 'inclusive' fosterings.It is considered that a conflict exists between popularity ofexclusive fostering and research findings which stress the valueof inclusive fostering. Research is also identifying the contributionwhich social workers can make in the fostering field. But thedesired inputs of training, low caseloads and staff stabilitypose problems for social work management. Finally, the researchfindings discussed in the paper are used to argue that the forthcomingChildren Bill is not only based on false assumptions about thebehaviour of natural parents but will also promote exclusiverather than inclusive fosterings. A plea is made that childwelfare policy be seen in a larger context of social reform     

Ideas and Social Policy: An Institutionalist Perspective

Since the beginning of the 1980s, historical institutionalism has emerged as one of the most influential theoretical perspectives in social policy studies. Although their work is insightful, most institutionalist scholars tend to relegate policy ideas to the back of their theoretical constructions dealing with welfare state development. The objective of this paper is to show how institutionalist scholarship can pay greater attention to ideational processes without abandoning its core assumptions about the structuring impact of political institutions and policy legacies on welfare state development. If institutions truly influence policy‐making, policy ideas matter in and beyond the agenda‐setting process. Related to existing policy legacies, perceived problems mesh with policy alternatives grounded in a specific paradigm. When stressing the need to reform, and promoting new alternatives, policy entrepreneurs draw on existing ideological repertoires to frame these alternatives. The ability to successfully frame policy alternatives can become a decisive aspect of the policy process. A discussion of recent European and North American policy debates illustrates these claims.     

The political participation of social workers: a comparative study

This article reports on a comparative study that examined the political participation of social workers in KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa, the state of New South Wales (excluding the Hunter region) in Australia, and New Zealand. Each of these contexts had roughly the same number of social workers, that is, approximately 1,200. It was found that social workers in New Zealand tended to be more politically active than their counterparts in New South Wales and KwaZulu-Natal, and the reasons for this are examined. In the process, New Zealand is presented as a case study of the way in which social work has responded to its political context. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to the engagement of social workers in the policy cycle and of the need for them to become more active politically.     

Understanding the Self Through Siblings: Self‐awareness Mediates the Sibling Effect on Social Understanding

This study addresses the role of sibling influence on social understanding in the second year of life, in a sample of families living in New Zealand who identify as Pacific Island (N = 43). We tested toddlers at 20 and 26 months on social understanding tasks, as well as their levels of self‐awareness on the Stipek self‐concept questionnaire. We hypothesized that the presence of siblings provides a rich resource from which to learn about the mind. There were significant differences in children's social understanding and self‐awareness as a function of having older siblings. Further analyses revealed that the relation between older siblings and social understanding was mediated by toddlers' level of self‐awareness.     

Economic Policy and Social Policy: Policy-linkages in an Era of Globalisation

This article argues that changes in the role of the state in economic affairs will affect the process of social policy. Growing economic integration caused by globalisation now places a greater constraint upon the discretion of the nation state, bringing about a transformation into a more competitive state. States are increasingly having to compete against each other in order to promote competitiveness and attract foreign direct investment (FDI) from international capital markets. This competition influences in turn the social policy formation requiring the redesigning of social policy. Thus, welfare states may need to reform their social policy towards a "business-friendly social policy". The analysis of social policy inputs and outputs presented here suggests that there are common trends in most welfare states towards: a market-conforming policy on business taxation, a reduction of the share of employer's contributions in social protection revenues, more limited income security programmes, an increased allocation of resources for active labour market programmes and less state intervention in the labour market. All these reforming trends in social policy can be understood as a response of welfare states to the evolving needs of business caused by structural change, notably globalisation.     

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.