Search

This paper considers the origins and traces the history of the Social Fund, an ideologically-motivated social policy departure of the Thatcher era. It identifies the controversy, in research communities amongst others, which surrounded the establishment of the Fund, and considers the evidence of recurring difficulties in its practical operation over a thirty-year period. It then turns to the Coalition administration in Westminster’s decision to divest itself of responsibility for key parts of the Fund, devolving such obligations to local authorities in England, the Parliament in Scotland and the Assembly in Wales. The paper sets out a comparison of the approaches being developed to discharge the Fund’s prior responsibilities in the three nations. It concludes that the essential policy thrust lies in a determination to roll back central state obligations in poverty relief and income maintenance which had hitherto been accepted by all post-war administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports the number of sex workers in Scotland and England who are in contact with specialist services for sex workers. Then, using methods and multipliers derived from the frequently quoted Kinnell study (1999) the paper provides various updated estimates of the wider population of sex workers. We point out the limits of our estimates and the methodological difficulties of estimating the size of this hidden population. The paper argues that many claims about sex work made by politicians and the media are misleading especially where they conflate sex work with trafficking and abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the number of sex workers in Scotland and England who are in contact with specialist services for sex workers. Then, using methods and multipliers derived from the frequently quoted Kinnell study (1999) the paper provides various updated estimates of the wider population of sex workers. We point out the limits of our estimates and the methodological difficulties of estimating the size of this hidden population. The paper argues that many claims about sex work made by politicians and the media are misleading especially where they conflate sex work with trafficking and abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work aspires to empowerment ideals, including taking a 'non-expert' position of professional curiosity, and validating the perspectives of people in contact with services. Yet in child protection, social workers are involved in practice that refutes the views and opinions of people and are positioned by their role as an identifier of abuse and risk manager. Social workers and people who are subject to child protection services can be locked into meaning battles regarding the effect of parental behaviour and the representation of risks to children. These negotiations over meanings are especially difficult in the pre and perinatal period, where who controls the representation of the baby's voice or best interests is fundamental to decision outcomes. Using Fricker's concept of 'testimonial injustice' as an analytical lens, this article draws on studies in two different contexts: Aotearoa New Zealand and Scotland, to examine the implications of the intense mediation of meanings that affect child protection practice. We find that concepts relating to the importance of mothering, love for children, and extended family relationships were sources of mother's disagreements with professional views of risk, but that through qualified agreement or advocacy from community workers, a shared risk narrative could be constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2007 the Scottish National Party emerged as the largest single party in the Scottish Parliament and with contingent support from the Greens it now forms a minority Scottish government. This paper considers the ways in which social policy making is being approached by the SNP and the extent to which this represents divergence from the policies of the previous New Labour-Liberal Democrat administration. The paper argues that while the SNP has no tradition of policy making in the field of social welfare there are already some signs emerging of the direction it is likely to follow. Tensions between economic development and social justice agendas are highlighted with a concern that social justice could take even more of a second place than it has in the recent past. Finally it is argued that a neo-liberal vision of Scotland informs current as well as past policy making and explains why the promotion of social justice is more than likely to take second place to the pursuit of economic growth, reflected in the SNP's goal of transforming Scotland as a 'Celtic Lion' economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the extent to which a distinctively Scottish social welfare policy has emerged post-Devolution. Exploring the myths that continue to pervade the discussion and analysis of Scottish society today, it is argued that the scope for policy departure is limited in a number of different ways. While acknowledging that there are important institutional and implementation differences that can and do affect the delivery of welfare in Scotland and England, nonetheless the paper argues that there is a need to acknowledge the similarities between New Labour policy in London and in Edinburgh, to go beyond narrow institutional-centred approaches and to explore both the social relations that underpin and shape the delivery of social policy and the mounting contradictions that are at the heart of the New Labour project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Devolution in the UK in the 1990s resulted in newly gendered political opportunity structures for feminists seeking to influence the political agenda and pursue ‘women-friendly’ policy outcomes. There is, however, little work that compares jurisdictions across the UK. This paper provides a preliminary comparison of the politics of a classic feminist issue – domestic violence – in Scotland and Wales. We examine how, and with what effect, devolution has opened up opportunities to promote feminist frames and policy preferences. Despite some key similarities in Scotland and Wales, notably, high numbers of female parliamentarians, well-established refuge movement organizations and opportunities presented by aspirations for a new and more open politics, there are significant differences with respect to timing, framing and policy approaches in each place. In particular, we argue that asymmetric devolution has created different ‘devolution effects’ which in turn shape and constrain framing contests with different outcomes for feminist politics and for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from a Scottish research study, this paper explores the relationship of professionals’ perceptions about specific perpetrators and victims to their constructions of ‘adult protection’ issues in practice. It finds that professionals’ perceptions of victim distress did not consistently coincide with the construction of adult protection issues, whilst the connection to any assessment of victims’ heightened vulnerability in specific cases was not clear. With respect to perpetrators, implicit practice rules were evidenced which differed from explicit policy criteria. In particular, there were different rules for relatives, staff and service user perpetrators, whilst harms attributed to institutions were de-emphasized. Explanations of the findings are advanced based on the complex power relations underpinning practice but unacknowledged in policies. More research is recommended to deepen this analysis in a changing policy context, to foreground service user perspectives, and to contextualize harms potentially resolvable through adult support and protection/safeguarding routes with respect to harms better addressed in other ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the ongoing social exclusion and marginalization of Roma migrants living in Scotland in a context of European Union enlargement eastwards and the development of National Action Plans for Social Inclusion at the level of national and regional government which have as their stated aim the extension of opportunity and social justice to all citizens of Europe. It argues that so long as primary legislation dictates that A8 migrants will have 'no recourse to public funds', Roma families will continue to be excluded from mainstream society and prevented from making a sustained and valued contribution to public life. Moreover, the evidence suggests that this structural barrier to inclusion, coupled with racism, discrimination and exploitation at the local level, work to hinder regional policy makers and local service providers where they are working to meet the welfare needs of one of the most excluded sections of their community and facilitate wider community cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class has become the social condition that dare not it speak its name in the devolved Scotland. This is despite the persistence of marked class divisions and structured inequalities within contemporary Scottish society. We critically examine the most empirically sophisticated and coherent analysis of social class in Scotland - that provided by 'the Edinburgh school' of social scientists, particularly their claim that Scotland is now a prosperous, 'professional society' where only a small but significant minority are trapped in poverty. This paper further considers the extent to which 'devolution', and the dominant representations to which it has given rise, serve to generate a series of other myths in which class is both devalued but simultaneously mobilized in the negative portrayal of some of the most disadvantaged sections of the working class. Against an emerging, home-grown view of 'New Scotland' as a prosperous 'Smart, Successful Scotland', poverty and wealth inequalities continue to be a necessary feature of the division of labour. In Scotland, as elsewhere, class remains the pivot-point around which much of social policy is encoded and enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During March and April 2004 5,000 local authority employed nursery nurses in Scotland were involved in a national all-out strike. A two and a half year dispute over pay was transformed into a struggle to maintain national bargaining in the face of employer attempts to impose local pay deals. Drawing on interviews with striking nursery nurses, this paper seeks to explore the factors that led to the largest all-out strike in Scotland since the Miners' Strike in the mid 1980s. It is argued that the experiences of these nursery nurses highlight particular ways in which New Labour's welfare reforms, and its approach to pay and conditions in the public sector, are impacting on some of the most poorly paid groups of public sector workers, and in doing so suggest that this dispute has a much wider resonance beyond Scotland and beyond the nursery nurses' fight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with learning disabilities in England and Scotland have experienced an increased risk of illness and death during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on data of a longitudinal qualitative study with 71 disabled people and 31 disability organisations, this article examines the experiences of 24 people with learning disabilities in England and Scotland during the pandemic, reflecting on what rendered them vulnerable and placed them at risk. Qualitative interviews were conducted with participants and key informants at two timepoints; June–August 2020 and February–April 2021. Findings emerged across four key themes: failure to plan for the needs of people with learning disabilities; the suspension and removal of social care; the impact of the pandemic on people's everyday routines; and lack of vaccine prioritisation. The inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities in this study are not particular to the pandemic. We explore the findings in the context of theoretical frameworks of vulnerability, including Fineman's conceptualisation of a 'vulnerability paradigm'. We conclude that the structured marginalisation of people with disabilities, entrenched by government action and inaction, have created and exacerbated their vulnerability. Structures, policies and action must change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social care provision across high-income countries has been transformed over the last ten years by personalisation – a policy agenda to give people with eligible support needs more choice and control over their support. Yet the ideological underpinnings of this transformation remain highly mutable, particularly in the context of reduced welfare provision that has unfolded in many nations advancing personalisation. How the policy has manifested itself has led to an expectation for people to self-build a life as individual consumers within a care market. This article draws on a study exploring how people with learning disabilities in England and Scotland are responding to the everyday realities of personalisation as it is enacted where they live and show the relationality inherent in their practices. We propose that the personalisation agenda as it currently stands (as an individualising movement involving an increasing responsibilisation of individuals and their families) ignores the inherently relational nature of care and support. We propose that social care policy needs to recognise the relational ways in which people build their lives and to advocate a redistribution of responsibility to reduce inequalities in the allocation of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of the impact of welfare reform by the UK government and the opportunity for change presented by the debate on Scottish independence produced a profusion of alternative proposals for social security from scholars, formal political parties, the Scottish Government, and a range of think tanks and civil society organisations. The extent to which these proposals demonstrated considered gender analysis or specific objectives to address economic and social constraints principally experienced by women and arising from the constraints of gender relations varied considerably. This article considers the extent to which concerns for alternative approaches to social security policy reflect a political commitment to women’s economic and social well-being in a future Scotland through an analysis of proposals from key policy documents prior to the referendum and the proposals emerging in the post-referendum period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of ‘intergenerational cultures of worklessness’ has become influential in UK politics and policy, and been used to explain contemporary worklessness and to justify welfare reforms. Workless parents are said to pass on to their children attitudes and behaviours which inculcate ‘welfare dependency’. In its strongest version, politicians and welfare practitioners talk confidently of ‘three generations of families where no-one has ever worked’; even though no study, bar this one, has investigated whether such families actually exist. Solid evidence for intergenerational cultures of worklessness is elusive so this study tested the idea via interviews with twenty families in Glasgow and Middlesbrough that had been long-term workless. Theories of intergenerational cultures of worklessness feel like ‘zombie arguments’ – resistant to evidence and social scientific efforts to kill them off. Regardless, the findings of this critical case study are offered as a fresh batch of ammunition with which to try to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Scottish National Party’s election win in 2011 produced the first overall majority for any party since the Scottish Parliament’s inception in 1999, despite the proportional representation system that was supposed to prevent single party governments. This historic election has been followed by much discussion of how much further the powers of the Scottish Parliament could be extended and whether devolution would allow Scotland to have a superior welfare settlement. In this context policy divergence has been the major focus of the developing devolution debate but discussions about greater powers or even independence for the Parliament have increased significantly. They are often presented as a means to achieve a ‘better’ or more ‘fair’ society. This article argues that shortcomings in the steps towards fairness achieved under the current arrangements of devolution highlight the need for a far-reaching and innovative approach to social justice to be carried out alongside any further discussions of independence. Such an approach cannot be taken for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In an article in this journal in 2006, Law and Mooney hold up our book, Living in Scotland: Social and Economic Change since 1980, written with Lindsay Paterson, as a prime exampIe of what they regard as a theoretically ill-informed account of the social structure of Scotland. In reaching their conclusions they make use of highly selective quotations, inaccurate statements and unacceptable inferences from what we say to why we say it. Our purpose in this brief note is to set the record straight and defend ourselves against what we see as a perverse use of Living in Scotland to support their ideological position by damning our book with faint praise, employing selective quotation and misinterpreting what we say. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scotland's post-devolution government has implemented a number of policies engaging with the third sector. These sit within the UK context of New Labour's welfare reform with its twin emphases on neo-liberalism and neo-communitarianism. Moves by the Scottish Executive to translate these themes into the Scottish context are illustrated by policies on the relation between the state and third sector organizations, on the social economy, and on volunteering. However, as a case study of the sector in Glasgow demonstrates, significant challenges emerge for the realization of policy claims for the development of social capital and citizenship in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout Europe there is a view that social policy objectives can and should be achieved via the route of increased work participation. This is often fuelled by government assumptions that simultaneous progress on the employment and poverty front can be achieved. Employment activation and poverty reduction are central to the so-called active welfare state that lies at the heart of New Labour policies. In this article the relationship between devolution (another of New Labour's central policies) and active labour market policies is analysed. In particular a discussion of the decentralization of powers relating to employment is undertaken alongside an assessment of whether the 'social policy' focus of the devolved Scotland results in an effective integration of employment and poverty reduction policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews recent major developments in key areas in criminal justice policy in Scotland, including the renowned Children's Hearings System, the role of criminal justice social work, the use of imprisonment and the implementation of antisocial behaviour legislation. It explores the extent to which the welfarist approach that characterized Scottish criminal justice pre-devolution has been challenged by the politicization of criminal justice issues and increasing levels of popular punitivism more familiar in England and Wales under the New Labour government. It explores some of the reasons why there has been greater convergence with policy south of the border rather than the divergence which might have been expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, drawing on the research findings from the ESRC-funded project 'The Meaning of the Learning Society for Adults with Learning Difficulties' explores how the introduction of the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act, with its emphasis on the establishment of a 'mixed economy' in social care, has affected the lives of people with learning difficulties living in a rural area of Scotland. The impact of the quasi-market, in particular the purchaser-provider split and the operation of contracts, on the lives of three adults with learning difficulties is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The re-establishment of a Scottish parliament in Edinburgh in May 1999 has promised new and innovative developments in social policy. Focusing on poverty and social exclusion, this article considers the likelihood that the approach by the new Scottish parliament will represent a departure from the approach of the Westminster government. There is some expectation that Scotland's experience will be different given the distinctive political and cultural environment, but instead it is argued that the Scottish parliament is very much in tune with New Labour thinking in relation to poverty. The neglect of wider structural inequalities in wealth and income means that the Scottish parliament is unlikely to develop a radical approach which challenges existing structures of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the prospects for the Scottish parliament to 'contribute to a fairer and more inclusive society' through the use of housing policy. After reviewing concepts of social exclusion and initiatives to increase inclusion, the article considers the powers of the parliament under the Scotland Act 1998. It argues that institutional and resource constraints surround future housing policy interventions and concludes that greater social inclusion is more likely through participation and improved economic prospects than through housing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the resettlement of people with learning difficulties from Scottish hospitals. First it outlines the policy background, tracing the rise and demise of the long-stay institution. It then reports on a study examining current resettlement policies in Scotland, where there is no national closure programme. The research found that resettlement is largely in disarray, with particular difficulties in planning, financial arrangements and inter-agency collaboration. There is a great risk of hospitals being perpetuated or reconstructed, particularly through the activities of NHS Trusts, and of people with dual labels remaining resident in them for years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]