Critical Social Policy

Despite the current economic crisis facing the global economy we continue to be faced with the seeming triumph of global capitalism/ neo-liberalism. This is despite the great insecurity, difficulties and hardship that undoubtedly result for the majority of people. Social workers have to deal with many of the casualties of this system on a day-to-day basis, and I argue they require journals like CSP to provide a critical perspective on social policy issues and developments at both a practical and theoretical level. This piece highlights some of the main CSP articles which have helped one social worker in this regard over the last almost thirty years of his career.

This paper is based on research amongst women living in England who are on the margins of the labour market. It analyses why current policy works so inadequately for this group of women, whose existence is often marked by poverty and social exclusion. It emphasizes the significance of the reality of women's lived experiences and the nature of local labour markets, and discusses how and why policy fails to respond to these. Women lack bespoke support and are channelled into `women's jobs', perpetuating gender inequalities in employment and reinforcing precarious relationships with the labour market. In addition, the effect of the key ideas underpinning policy, in particular `welfare dependency' and a `work first' orientation, is to distort the responses to women claimants and to ignore the needs of non-claimant women returners. In conclusion the paper argues that current policy both overlooks the specificity of women's labour market disconnection and contributes to its reproduction.

The capabilities approach (CA) most closely associated with the thinner and thicker versions of Sen and Nussbaum has the potential to provide a paradigm shift for critical social policy, encompassing but also transcending some of the limitations associated with the Marshallian social citizenship approach. The article argues, however, that it cannot simply be imported from the majority world, rather there is a need to bear in mind the critical literature that developed around it. This is generally discussed and then critically applied to case studies of CA in the developed capitalist world, particularly the Equalities Review conducted for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

`Personalized learning' has become a popular term within education policy and practice in England, and is part of wider moves towards the `personalization' of public services and the promotion of personal responsibility within social policy discourse — including education, welfare, health and adult social care. In analysing personalization in education policy as a discursive formation, this paper visits some of the tensions, ambiguities and apparently `uncommon' trajectories in contemporary education policy, including its association with the `de-schooling' movement. It is argued that personalization cannot be understood simply as the most recent incarnation of the neoliberalization of education policy, nor as a politically neutral set of learning practices. In conclusion, unpacking personalization as a generative discourse enables us to understand the continuities and contradictions in New Labour social policy without relying on the sometimes heroic, revelatory and emancipatory intentions of critical analysis.

Disability researchers have voiced the criticism that the concept of care, together with research based on it, consists of the view that disabled people are dependent non-autonomous second-class citizens. The perspectives of disability studies and care research certainly are different from each other. Disability studies analyse the oppression and exclusion of disabled people and emphasize that disabled people need human rights and control over their own lives. Care research focuses rather on care relationships, informal and formal care, care-giving work and `an ethics of care'. Nevertheless, it is suggested here that the two perspectives are not mutually exclusive and that the two groups could learn from each other's approaches. For example, the relationship between disabled people and their personal assistants has much the same characteristics as the care relationship and requires a balancing of the needs and interests of the two parties. On the other hand, access to adequate care could be perceived as a basic civil and human right.

On the basis of extensive research, we turn a critical eye on often unnoticed processes of marginalization at play in current youth work policy and practice in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium). Although the historical situation seems different from that in the UK, current policies show similar results: vulnerable youth is increasingly monitored into particular target categories and separated into distinct and professionalized youth work initiatives. Inspired by critical class theory, we raise the veil of youth work as a hidden civilization strategy that empowers the yet powerful and has served the often unconscious agenda of enforcing social control on vulnerable youth to create order in late capitalist societies. The perspective of the critical social theorist Hermann Giesecke who perceives youth work as `politische Bildung' (a process of political socialization) allows us to explore strategies for inclusion which can be implemented to energize future youth work praxis.

Despite the controversial nature of illicit drug treatment, there is a relative lack of research on policy formation in this area. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with service providers and analysis of policy documents, conducted for an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council funded project entitled `Comparing the role of takeaways in methadone maintenance treatment in New South Wales and Victoria', to examine the formation and implementation of drug treatment policy. In particular, it considers two forces widely acknowledged to be important to drug treatment, and often argued to be antithetical to each other: community values and scientific evidence. Separation of the `social' and the `scientific' in treatment is a much-used but conceptually limited distinction. Two alternatives to evidence-based policy are proposed. The first, values-based policy, is increasingly important to critical discussions of social policy and could potentially add much to debates around drug treatment policy. The second alternative is suggested by social studies of science (STS), in particular feminist STS.

This article considers the theoretical perspective of post-Foucauldian governmentality, especially the insights and challenges it poses for applied researchers within the critical social policy tradition. The article firstly examines the analytical strengths of this approach to understanding power and rule in contemporary society, before moving on to consider its limitations for social policy. It concludes by arguing that these insights can be retained, and some of the weaknesses overcome, by adopting Stenson's realist governmentality approach. This advocates combining traditional discursive analysis with more ethnographic methods in order to render visible the concrete activity of governing, and unravel the messiness, complexity and unintended consequences involved in the struggles around subjectivity.

This paper focuses upon the privatization of Britain's employment services. It explores the extent to which the private sector is involved in the delivery of state-funded employment services, and the reasons why its involvement is to be extended in the future. The paper examines the catalyst — the Freud review of work-related social security policies — for extending private sector involvement in employment services before going on to critically engage with the privatization of such services. Here, the focus is upon ways in which such developments commodify non-employed people by creating an economic value for them, and the amount and nature of paid work that will be available through such services. The paper argues that the privatization of employment services will be more advantageous to the private sector than it will be to non-employed people because it is essentially a conservative policy that will not address the barriers that people face in securing paid employment.

In 2004 the Scottish Executive commissioned an independent review of social work. Changing Lives, the Review Report, was published in February 2006 and described as the basis for `the biggest overhaul of social work in Scotland for 40 years'. This paper examines the background to the Changing Lives Report, discusses its main findings and considers what has happened to social work in Scotland in the two years since its publication. It is argued that the Report reflects the problems that beset social work and offers ways forward that merit consideration. It is also argued that both the Report, and the ensuing change programme, fail to critically appraise the political and social forces that have undermined the status of welfare professionals and marginalized service users in recent times. The authors suggest that, as a result, the Changing Lives agenda is, as yet, unlikely to find full resonance with either practitioners or service users.

`Baby P', a 17 month old boy, died in August 2007 from severe injuries inflicted whilst he was in the care of his mother, her `boyfriend' and a lodger in the household. In November 2008 two men were found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable person. The mother had already pleaded guilty to the same charge. Importantly, for Children's Services, `Baby P' had been subject to a child protection plan following concerns that he had been abused and neglected. Following the convictions, the death of `Baby P', and the inadequate responses of child welfare professionals, began to dominate political and media discourses. This critical commentary initially focuses on media, particularly newspaper, reports on the case and identifies a number of key themes. It is then maintained, despite the largely pernicious newspaper accounts of the tragedy, there may now be room, following the publication of the joint area review (JAR) of Haringey Children's Services, to prompt more informed debates about `reform' within the sector.

This article is a response to Arai (2003) `British policy on teenage pregnancy and childbearing: The limitations of comparisons with other European countries' (Critical Social Policy 23: 89—102). It discusses the arguments put forward by Arai there that cross-cultural comparisons in the area of teenage pregnancy are often problematic due to the unique demographics of the UK. While Arai's considerations are important for cross-cultural research, they need to be more sensitive to the differences between countries included in these comparisons. Our article illustrates the potential value of cross-cultural research, using Germany as an example, and concludes that, as long as countries for such comparisons are chosen carefully, the merit of cross-cultural research on topics such as teenage pregnancy far exceeds its limitations.