Social Policy Social Welfare And Scandal

By examining the landmark scandals of the post-war period, including more recent ones such as the Victoria Climbie Inquiry, this book reveals how scandals are generated, to what purposes they are used and whose interests they are made to serve.--

This book explores the complex relationship between public policy and scandal. By critically examining some of the landmark scandals of the post war period, using a variety of contemporary records and by close examination of the public inquiries which followed, this book describes the process whereby scandals are constructed and pursued, and demonstrates how scandals coincide with key shifts in public policy, in ways that are more complex and reciprocal than might first appear.

Scandals do not just happen. They are made. They are constructed out of such everyday tragedies as the small carelessnesses and institutional brutality of the long stay hospital, the abuse of children or the violent deaths of innocent bystanders. This book, by examining the landmark scandals of the post-war period, including more recent ones, such as the Victoria Climbie Inquiry, reveals how scandals are generated, to what purposes they are used and whose interests they are made to serve. In particular, it examines the role of the public inquiry, an increasingly familiar policy device, in the process whereby the 'story' of a particular scandal is told and its meaning fixed. Using transcripts, press coverage, materials from the Public Record Office and other contemporary sources each of the scandals described in the book is located in its own historical and policy context in order to explore the complex cause and effect relationship between public policy and scandal.

This report takes stock of approaches taken by public organisations to counter external fraud in social benefit programmes (SBP) and suggests areas for improvement. It provides insights on preventive and detective measures, and promotes a risk-based approach to addressing fraud and error in SBPs in line with the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Public Integrity.

Engendering Social Policy brings new and fresh perspectives to the question of how social policy constructs gendered social relations. With the restructuring of welfare firmly back on the political agenda, in the context of a reassertion that traditional families are the backbone of society, this book raises important issues for students, academics and practitioners grappling with social policy issues at the end of the millennium. Articles in the collection draw on a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives engaging with issues that have vexed feminist analysts and activists over more than two decades. The collection explores how social policy constructs gendered relations, the difference/equality debate, representations and discourses of gender in social policy, the tensions and issues associated with restructuring domestic relations, and feminist alternatives to mainstream social policy solutions. The book adopts a comparative and international perspective taking on board the importance of global changes as well as illustrating its argument with practices and research from a number of countries. This book is essential reading for those interested in seriously addressing questions of gender and social policy in an international framework.

Over the last three decades, welfare policies have been informed by popular beliefs that welfare fraud is rampant. As a result, welfare policies have become more punitive and the boundaries between the welfare system and the criminal justice system have blurred—so much so that in some locales prosecution caseloads for welfare fraud exceed welfare caseloads. In reality, some recipients manipulate the welfare system for their own ends, others are gravely hurt by punitive policies, and still others fall somewhere in between. In Cheating Welfare, Kaaryn S. Gustafson endeavors to clear up these gray areas by providing insights into the history, social construction, and lived experience of welfare. She shows why cheating is all but inevitable—not because poor people are immoral, but because ordinary individuals navigating complex systems of rules are likely to become entangled despite their best efforts. Through an examination of the construction of the crime we know as welfare fraud, which she bases on in-depth interviews with welfare recipients in Northern California, Gustafson challenges readers to question their assumptions about welfare policies, welfare recipients, and crime control in the United States.