EXPLORING SOCIAL POLICY
2013
MCYM
SALLY NASH
What do you know?
• http://ukcitizenshipsupport.com/chaptertest/chapter-testfeq/
If you were devising a test for citizenship for
children and young people what would you
include?
How does social policy impact
–Your life?
–The life of children and young people?
–Your practice?
–Future employment prospects?
–Churches
–Christian organizations…
What is social policy?
A policy is a course or principle of action adopted or
proposed by a government, party, business or
individual
A social policy is defined as a deliberate
intervention by the state to redistribute resources
amongst its citizens so as to achieve a welfare
objective
(John Baldock, Nicky Manning, Sarah Vickerstaff,
eds, Social Policy, 2nd ed. Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2003, p.xxi)
What is social policy?
• Social policy entails the study of the social
relations necessary for human wellbeing and
the systems by which wellbeing may be
promoted. It’s about the many and various
things that affect the kinds of life that you and
I and everyone can live (Dean, H. 2012. What
is Social Policy? 2nd ed. Cambridge Polity
Press, p1).
However:
• The main determinants of welfare are
economic
• The government’s role in diverting
resources into social policies is linked to or
dependent on the economy
• Social policies will be determined by views
about how the economy does or should
operate
But:
A range of other issues affect the concept of
welfare for an individual including:
• Individual action
• Job opportunities
• Support from family and friends
• Activities of non-state institutions such as
churches, charities, community
organizations, trade unions etc
• Religious faith
Three influencing factors
• Conceptions of citizenship
• Concepts of justice
• Entitlements and obligations
Functions of the services or benefits
of the Welfare State
1
2
3
4
5
6
As partial compensation for identified disservice
caused by society and the disservices caused by
international society
As partial compensation for unidentified services
caused by society
As partial compensation for unmerited disability
As a form of protection for society
As an investment for future personal or collective
gain
As an immediate and/or deferred increment to
personal welfare
Poverty
The composition of those in poverty is very different today than 10
or 20 years ago. The proportion
of pensioners in poverty has halved since the early 1990s, while
that of working-age adults without
children has risen by a third.
Over half of children and working-age adults in poverty live in a
working household. In-work poverty has been rising steadily for at
least a decade.
Some 6.4 million people now lack the paid work they want. There
are 1.4 million part-time workers wanting full-time work – the
highest figure in 20 years.
The welfare cuts so far are likely to hit low-income households
more than once, through changes to both income-related and
housing benefits. Changes to disability benefit could mean
low-income disabled people being hit even harder.
•
http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/poverty-exclusion-government-policy-summary.pdf
Making policy for
children and young people
1
Divide into four teams
2
Each team draws up a list of five policies that
they think would improve the situation for children
and young people in society. Assume as a policy
maker you have unlimited power to implement
your policy.
3
A combined list of twelve policies is then
drawn up with each group contributing a policy in
turn until the list is complete. This list needs to be
able to be seen by all groups.
•4
In your teams you need to look at the
combined list and try to decide which policy will be
most popular with the other teams playing the
game. Each team picks one. Write down the
number on a piece of paper so it can be seen by
other teams when you hold it up.
5
Scoring for teams is as follows: You score
points in each round depending on how many
groups picked the same policy as you did.
6
Once the round is completed, the most
popular policy is written on a new list and crossed
off the common list.
•7
Repeat the process. If there is a tie each
team needs to argue for its policy and the teams
vote again.
•8
To find out who won add up the scores
from the rounds. The highest score wins and
this is the team with the best feel for public
opinion on an issue. This team is the policy
maker.
10 Another winner can be found by looking to
see which team had most policies in the final list.
This team is the problem solver.
Discussion: What are some of the issues around
social policy that have emerged from this game
Ways of Analysing Policy
• Intentions and objectives of the policy
• Administrative and financial arrangements
• Outcomes – particularly in terms of gains and
losses
(Baldock et al p7-16)
Intentions and objectives
Redistribution – from those who have more to
those who have less….
Robin Hood function – fairness and justice.
Market failure - free schooling or pensions
Risk management – from harm people face over
life – childhood, sickness, old age,
unemployment, environment
Reducing social exclusion –contested term,
alternative word for poverty or those who have
slipped through the net of services provided –
threat to stability and security
Administrative and financial
• Need to set up procedures and organizations
to carry out social policies
• Regulation – seat belts, alcohol and tobacco
selling, food hygiene etc
• Providing services in kind eg healthcare and
education
• Privatization and contracting out
• Direct and indirect taxation
Outcomes
• Is the intention less important than what is actually
achieved?
Five reasons why aims and outcomes may differ and why
policies may ‘fail’:
Inadequate policy formulation
Poor structural implementation
Poor (or even subversive) practice
The intervention of unforeseen external circumstances
The stated or overt aims were not the real intentions,
instead outcomes concur with covert aims
Case Study – Viagra and the NHS
The publicity surrounding Viagra has generated a felt
need. Interestingly, however, it has also led to much
more expressed need by legitimizing a request that
had previously been highly stigmatized. There has
also been a strong element of comparative need in
this debate – people may have access to it in some
countries or areas but not in others. The debate here
is also very much about normative need and about
who should be the arbiter of need: government,
medical professionals or consumers?
Reference: J Baldock et al, 2003. Social Policy Oxford: OUP, p111-3.
Trends
Increase individual and private responsibility
Move from public to private provision
Market principles
Punishment and control in youth justice
Less provision more management and regulation
From benefits to work or training
Political perspectives
Take one of these tests…
• http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
• http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php
"The Left"
"The Right"
Socialists
Greater Economic Uniformity
(therefore less economic freedom)
+
Greater Social Uniformity
(therefore less social freedom)
=
BIG GOVERNMENT
Extreme version is communism
Conservatives
Greater Economic Freedom
(therefore less economic uniformity)
+
Greater Social Uniformity
(therefore less social freedom)
=
MEDIUM-SIZED GOVERNMENT
Extreme version is the religious right
↑
S
O
C
I
A
L
← ECONOMIC
Liberals
Greater Economic Uniformity
(therefore less economic freedom)
+
Greater Social Freedom
(therefore less social uniformity)
=
MEDIUM-SIZED GOVERNMENT
Extreme version is hippy communes
S
C
A
L
E
↓
"Traditional
"
SCALE →
Libertarians
Greater Economic Freedom
(therefore less economic uniformity)
+
Greater Social Freedom
(therefore less social uniformity)
=
LITTLE OR NO GOVERNMENT
Extreme version is anarchism
"Progressive
"
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
• What are the key social policy, theological and
political issues being raised in Martin Luther
King’s letter?
• What would you write in a letter to your
fellow children/school/youthworkers?
Public theology
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Liberation
Liberationists know that the only God worth worshipping is biased in favour of the
oppressed, and that truly pious living involves active social engagement for and
advocacy of their rights. Liberationists know that much of science, philosophy, and
religion is an ideological construction designed to protect the interests of the
powerful against the weak.
Vocation
God has a purpose for individuals and groups – the chief end of our lives is to serve
God. Each sector of the common life is called by God to define, obey and enhance
the specific values and purposes that are proper to it.
Covenant
Covenant relates to how we humans are to form communities of mutual
responsibility as we live out our vocations. People require one another to be whole,
and persons in community require a shared framework of common moral obligation
that provides the principles by which to structure these relationships.
Moral Law
Moral law attempts to answer the question “Is there right and wrong?” A public
theology will hold that there are universally valid moral laws rooted in God. The
United Nations Declaration on Human Rights is an attempt to articulate a universal
moral law.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sin
We encounter distortion, brokenness, corruption, and failure within ourselves and in
every sociohistorical context.
Freedom
Human freedom is the answer to the question of how sin entered the world if God
created it.
Need to note distinctions between sin and crime.
A public theology will always work indirectly. It will attempt to persuade people to
exercise their cultural, social, political and economic freedom responsibly through
pluralistic institutions allowing governments to constrict those public behaviours that
are a clear threat to human rights or the common good and that cannot be controlled
by other means.
Ecclesiology
Church is how believers are to organize their lives together and put their views into the
public domain.
Trinity
A summary statement of the conviction that the ultimate reality which created the
world and which finally governs history is made up of persons with specific vocations
inextricably bound together in convenantal community, cosmic in scope.
Adapted from Max L Stackhouse (1987). Public Theology and Political Economy. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, p17-35.
Theological reflections – social justice
• A theology of social justice must include the following:
• Every human being is made in God's image. So we uphold the right of
every person to live in freedom, in dignity, in peace and in health - and to
know the One whom to know is to experience fullness of life.
• Our generous Creator God has entrusted us with a bountiful world, which
we 'subdue' but also 'replenish'. The earth was given to all, not just to the
rich. There is enough food to go around for our need, but nor for our
greed. It is not God's will that a quarter of us live in luxury while the rest
struggle to survive .
• The 'mark of Cain' is upon us - we are all sinners - but God's gracious
concern is for both Cain and Abel, exploiter and exploited. Jesus
differentiated between 'sinners' and 'sinned against'. To the Pharisees he
preached judgment so that they might receive forgiveness; to the sinnedagainst he preached a different message: 'I do not condemn you; go and
sin no more'.
• I am my brother's keeper. I must not walk by on the other side of the
road/tracks/sea.
•
•
•
•
•
•
He sends his prophets who say, ‘The effect of justice will be peace' (Isaiah 32:
17). False prophets want 'peace, peace' without justice.
Abundance may betoken God's blessing, but it carries an awesome stewardship.
Because God's shalom is based on right relationships between us, God and each
other, we have a simple choice: his kingdom or violence. Outside the kingdom
all are oppressed, some by unjust systems and persons, others by their
selfishness and greed. Jesus said the second oppression is much worse than the
first.
.God comes among us both as judge and victim, rebuking our selfishness and
being nailed to a cross. He calls upon us to repent, to live in radical obedience
to the kingdom's demands, not just as individuals, but in loving community.
We pray 'Give us this day our daily bread'. If! am hungry that is a material
problem; if someone else is hungry that is a spiritual problem.
Our mission in a lost world includes three elements:
– word - preaching good news
– deed - faith without works is dead
– sign - words and deeds without the Spirit's power may not be Christian. (1
Thessalonians I :5; I Corinthians 4:20).
From Rowland Croucher 1986. Recent Trends Among Evangelicals. Bromley:
MARC, p46-7.
Theological reflections - Bible
• The hermeneutical principle for an exegesis of the
Scriptures is the revelation of God in Christ as the
Liberator of the oppressed from social oppression
and to political struggle, wherein the poor
recognize that their fight against poverty and
injustice is not only consistent with the gospel
but is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
From James H Cone 1997. God of the Oppressed.
MaryknoIl NY: Orbis, p74-5.
Theological reflections – the church
• The Church and the State
• In 1933, the year that Hitler came to power in Germany, Bonhoeffer
identified three tasks that he believed were responsibilities for the
church in relation to the state .
• The first related to challenging the state: "whether it could answer
for its action as legitimate political action ... In relation to the Jewish
question, the Church must now put that question with utmost
clarity". ~
• The second task involved action on behalf' of victims of the state:
"The Church has an unconditional obligation towards the victims of
any social order, even where those victims do not belong to the
Christian community."
• The third element involved the church, putting a spoke in the wheel
of the state if it went too far, as well as binding up the wounds of
those beneath the wheel.
From Eberhard Bethge, 1970. Dietrich Bonhoeffer London: CoIlins,
p208.