Welfare Reform And The Education Provisions

Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

Social investment policies have enjoyed prominence during recent welfare reforms across the OECD world, and yet there is insufficient long-term strategy for their success. Reviewing labour market, family and education policies, this edited collection analyses the emergence of social investment policies in both Europe and East Asia. Adopting a life course perspective and examining both public and private investments, this book addresses key contemporary policy issues including care, learning, work, social mobility and inequalities. Providing original observations, this seminal text explores the roads and barriers towards effective social investment policies, derives practical social policy implications and highlights important lessons for future policymaking.

Every Child Matters represents the most radical change to education and welfare provision in almost two decades. This book moves beyond a descriptive âe~how toâe(tm) framework to examine the underlying political and social aims of this policy agenda. The authorsâe(tm) analysis reveals that Every Child Matters represents the Governmentâe(tm)s attempt to codify perceived risks in society and to formulate their responses. In doing so, children are made the strategic focus of much wider social policy reform, the effects of which are first felt in education. Does Every Child Matter? explores the ramifications of this along three key lines of analysis: the restructuring of the state beyond its welfare functions changes in governance and the creation of new binaries a redefining of the education sector around the needs of the child. This book provides a unique and insightful critique of Every Child Matters and its contribution to understandings of New Labour social policy. It locates the genesis of the policy in terms of its social, political and historical contexts and questions the validity of constructing social policy around issues of child welfare. Students, academics and researchers in education studies and education policy will find this book of great interest.

The New Labour Government has placed great emphasis on service delivery. It has provided performance information in the form of Annual Reports, Public Service Agreements, Performance Assessment Frameworks, and a host of other targets. But has New Labour delivered on its welfare reform? Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms: provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of the welfare reforms of New Labour's first term; compares achievements with stated aims; examines success in the wider context; contributes to the debate on the problems of evaluating social policy. It is essential reading for academics and students of social policy and provides important information for academics and students in a wide range of areas such as politics, sociology, public policy, public administration and public management interested in welfare reform and policy evaluation.

The first phase of a study of state welfare-to work programs in 1988 consisted of a survey mailed to the states. Results provide practical information on the operational experience of state welfare-to-work programs, and at the national level, enhance both policy development and implementation activities, especially in conjunction with the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training Program (JOBS). The study showed that state efforts to promote economic self-sufficiency among welfare recipients have provided both the basis for welfare reform and a valuable lesson on program implementation. The study also revealed that much more needs to be done, particularly in meeting new federal participation requirements and in improving data tracking systems for state and national monitoring and evaluation. Additionally, the study found that most states have created networks involving agencies other than the state welfare agency to provide services to welfare-to-work participants. It also found that most welfare recipients are in need of educational services. Most states have not targeted services to specific groups beyond those required to participate in the welfare-to-work program. The study concluded that many states will have to expand the services included in their welfare-to-work programs to meet the JOBS service requirements, and some states will have to increase substantially the amount of state dollars allocated to the program. (KC)