All Our Welfare

The UK welfare state is under sustained ideological and political attack. It has also been undermined by accusations of paternalism and past failures to engage with the very people it is intended to help. This unique book is the first to critique the past, present and future welfare state from a participatory perspective. Peter Beresford, champion of user involvement, draws on pioneering theories and practice of welfare service user movements to offer a blueprint for a new participatory social policy. He controversially challenges orthodox social policy and the limitations of both Fabian and Neo-liberal perspectives in engaging people to improve their own welfare, drawing on service users ‘ own ideas and experience, including fascinating vignettes from his own family’s experience, to demonstrate the value of ‘user knowledge’. Filling a much-needed gap in the literature, this accessible text will provide a great introduction for students and a road-map for practitioners of an alternative vision for a future participatory and sustainable social policy. It will also command much wider interest from everyone concerned with how we look after each other in future in society.

"This ... new history tells the story of one [of] the greatest transformations in British intellectual, social and political life: the creation of the welfare state, from the Victorian workhouse, where you had to be destitute to receive help, to a moment just after the Second World War, when government embraced responsibility for people's housing, education, health and family life, a commitment that was unimaginable just a century earlier. Though these changes were driven by developments in different and sometimes unexpected currents in British life, they were linked by one over-arching idea: that through rational and purposeful intervention, government can remake society. It was an idea that, during the early twentieth century, came to inspire people across the political spectrum."--Jacket

The first book to discuss the Canadian welfare state through a health-focused lens, The Politics of Health in the Canadian Welfare State argues that the nature of Canada’s liberal welfare state shapes the health care system, the social determinants of health, and the health of all Canadians. Documenting decades of work on the social determinants of health, authors Toba Bryant and Dennis Raphael explore topics such as power and influence in Canadian society, socially and economically marginalized populations, and approaches to promoting health. Each chapter examines different aspects of the links between public policy, health, and the welfare state, investigating how broader societal structures and processes of the country’s economic and political systems shape living and working conditions and, inevitably, the overall health of Canadians. Contextualizing the history and status of Canadian health and health care systems with Canada’s welfare state, this concise and timely text is well suited as a supplementary resource for health studies, sociology of health, and nursing courses in universities across Canada.

Faced with rapidly changing social and economic conditions, service professionals, policy developers, and researchers have raised significant concerns about the Canadian child welfare system. This book draws inspiration from experiences with three broad, international child welfare paradigms—child protection, family service, and community healing/caring (First Nations)—to look at how specific practices in other countries, as well as alternative experiments in Canada, might foster positive innovations in the Canadian child welfare approach. Foundational values and purposes, systems design and policy, and organization and management are discussed, as are front-line service delivery, service provider work environments, and the realities of daily living for families. Informed by recent research, the contributors provide clear directions for policy, administration, and service-delivery reforms. Informing policy debates addressing child maltreatment and family welfare, this book will serve as a vital resource for managers, service providers, professionals, and students in the fields of social work, child and youth care, family studies, psychology, and special education.

This is a major contribution to our understanding of European integration. It analyzes for the first time, in a highly systematic fashion, European integration as transnational political society formation in a common political space. Four conceptual chapters discuss different approaches to studying European ‘transnationalization’ including networks and socialization. Six empirical chapters provide in-depth studies of different aspects of this process and policy fields ranging from European party networks and university collaboration to informal economic governance in the Eurozone and police collaboration across borders. This book redresses the excessive concentration in EU research on supranational policy-making and inter-state bargaining. It will be of great interest to political scientists as well as contemporary historians, sociologists and lawyers.

In this book, Chris Pierson argues that we will need to think quite differently about the British welfare state after COVID-19. He looks back to the welfare state’s origins and development as well as forwards, unearthing some surprising solutions in unexpected places.

Imagine that the United States were to scrap all its income transfer programs—including Social Security, Medicare, and all forms of welfare—and give every American age twenty-one and older $10,000 a year for life.This is the Plan, a radical new approach to social policy that defies any partisan label. First laid out by Charles Murray a decade ago, the updated edition reflects economic developments since that time. Murray, who previous books include Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, demonstrates that the Plan is financially feasible and the uses detailed analysis to argue that many goals of the welfare state—elimination of poverty, comfortable retirement for everyone, universal access to healthcare—would be better served under the Plan than under the current system. Murray’s goal, shared by Left and Right, is a society in which everyone, including the unluckiest among us, has the opportunity and means to construct a satisfying life. In Our Hands offers a rich and startling new way to think about how that goal might be achieved.