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absolute poverty: Poverty defined and measured in terms of the minimum requirements necessary for basic subsistence and survival. Those deemed to be in absolute poverty are unable to afford even the basic necessities in life. They exist below even ‘subsistence poverty’, the level at which people can just continue to survive.
actuarial risk assessment: Statistical calculations which are used to predict the likelihood of an offender being reconvicted within a defined period based on reconviction rates for offenders with similar characteristics in similar circumstances.
adoption triangle: This term, coined by Tugendhadt, refers to the relationships between child, birth parent(s), and adoptive parent(s). It serves as a reminder that adoption is always a triangular affair, and can aid understanding of the relationships involved.
affordable housing: Housing whose cost is below some threshold considered socially acceptable, for example 20 per cent of household income. A measure of the affordability of owner-occupied housing is the ratio of the average price paid by first-time buyers to average incomes in an area. Though apparently clear, this is a highly confusing concept since a) household income itself can be measured in many ways, especially when incomes in an area are of interest, b) the sacrifices made by households in order to achieve a given income are excluded from consideration, and c) the subjectivity of the term affordability opens the way for all housing providers to claim that their housing is affordable.
age structure: This term is used to describe populations in terms of the relative numbers of people of different ages. The age structure of the population reflects variations in the past number of births, together with increased longevity and changes arising from migration (National Statistics 2005: 3).
ageing population: A change in the age structure of the population, whereby the proportion of older people increases relative to the numbers of younger people. The term is often used to describe a population in which the proportion over pensionable age is increasing, which in turn may imply more social spending on pensions and healthcare, and less revenue.
Anti-globalisation movement: transnational movement against neoliberal globalisation which unites a variety of international and national movements, such as the environmental, development, labour and consumer movements. Has received most publicity for attempts to disrupt summits of MEIs and IGOs. Also known as the global justice movement.
Anti-psychiatry: A socio-political movement which arose in the latter half of the 20th century, based on the premise that ‘mental illness is a myth’.
anti-social behaviour order (ASBO): Introduced in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and implemented in April 1999, these are civil orders which can be applied for by the police or local authority against an individual aged 10 or over whose behaviour is deemed to be ‘anti-social’. Orders last for two years and breach makes it a criminal (and imprisonable) offence.
Arts Council of England: The major state-funded arts organization in England, supporting music, drama, and the visual arts with government funds, and which is responsible to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport. In 1994 the Scottish and Welsh Arts Councils became autonomous, directly accountable to their respective Secretaries of State.
arts: The diverse body of creative endeavors concerned not simply with the visual arts, but also with music, theatre, cinema, and literature.
assisted places scheme: Under the 1980 Education Act, local education authorities could give financial assistance on a means-tested basis to enable young people who would otherwise be unable to, to attend private schools.
Asylum: Large-scale provision of long-stay accommodation and treatment of people with mental health problems, learning disabilities or other impairments.
attendance centre order: Requires a young person (aged 10–20) to attend a local centre run by the police for a maximum of three hours per day where s/he receives ‘appropriate occupation and instruction’. Length of orders range between twelve and thirty-six hours depending on age.
Audit Commission: an independent public body responsible for ensuring that public money is spent economically, efficiently, and effectively in the areas of local government, housing, health, criminal justice and fire and rescue services.
authority: legitimate power.
Benefits in kind: are social policy provisions which are administered as services (rather than cash transfers), e.g. health care, education, home helps, foster care etc.
biological determinism: The belief that human beings’ differences and their individual identities are primarily determined by their biology: by their genetic make up; by their natural, sexual, ‘racial’ and physical characteristics; by the age and condition of their bodies.
biomedical model: An understanding of health rooted in the biological and medical sciences. Its orientation is towards treating illness in individuals.
breakdown: Sometimes also known as disruption, breakdown describe a situation in fostering or and adoption where a placement ends sooner than planned or intended as a result of problems experienced within the foster or adoptive family.
British Crime Survey (BCS): A series of large household surveys of people’s experiences and perceptions of crime in England and Wales. The first one was undertaken in 1982.
building society: Financial institution which attracts money from savers and lends it to house purchasers. Today most have been privatized and have become banks.
Bureaucracy: an abstract organizational form characterised by formal jurisdictional areas of function, hierarchy of authority, rules for governing decisions and activities, records of transactions conducted under these rules, dedicated training to assist performance and the commitment to the organization of members' full working capacities.
business groups: representative organizations for employers whose major allegiance is to further the interests of their members’ economic interests.
capacity building: Any action which assists individuals, groups, organisations and communities to plan more strategically, act more consultatively, gain more sustainable resources and more nearly meet defined needs. Introduced, as an organising concept, into government – VCS programmes from c.2003.
Care management: A system of social care which gives a named person (care manager) responsibility for looking after the interests of a vulnerable person. This may entail providing or commissioning services and/or co-ordinating them.
care order: A court order which transfers parental responsibility to the local authority, although it does not entirely extinguish the responsibility held by the child’s parent. Care orders are made where the court believes this necessary to prevent significant harm to the child.
Care Programme: Approach Introduced as a guideline in 1991, this structured approach to care has become mandatory for people with severe mental health problems, and is also used with other groups. It features a named key worker, co-ordination of services and regular reviews.
Carers groups: Groups established to support people who have in common their caring role.
Carers organizations: Charities and voluntary sector organisations set up to publicise carers’ issues, to provide support structures and sometimes to lobby for change.
cash benefits: where the state provides welfare in the form of money (rather than services in kind) such as unemployment benefits (called Job Seeker’s Allowance in the UK), pensions, disability benefits, and a minimum income (Income Support in the UK).
cash limits: Term used in central and local government budgeting to indicate the monetary ceiling on expenditure for particular activities or categories of expenditure in any one financial year.
cash planning: Linked with a system of cash limits, this is a system of planning (brought in by UK governments in the 1980s) where public expenditure planning is done in cash terms; e.g. service level is determined by money available (how many books can we get for £10,000) rather than the previously used volume planning system (we will plan to purchase 1,000 books whatever they cost).
Cash transfers: is an expression for all types of social policy provision which, in contrast to benefits in kind, are made as monetary support to individuals or families. In Britain (but not the US) cash transfers have become synonymous with social security.
censorship: The suppression by authority of material deemed to be immoral, heretical, subversive, libelous, damaging to state security, or otherwise offensive. Censorship is not always the prerogative of government—the media can and do exercise a degree of self-censorship, in the film industry, for instance.
Charge against: When people are not able to contribute fully towards the costs of their long-stay care and are also unwilling or unable to sell their property, local authorities may accept ‘deferred payment’. The local authority recoups the money later by taking a legal interest (charge) in the property.
charity: A concept containing two, partially divergent, interpretations i.e. open, unlimited love, and caring which discriminates in favour of ‘true’ need and the work ethic. Since the 1601 Poor Law Act, the state has defined, registered and monitored charitable organisations. There are about 185,000 registered charities in England and Wales, 25,000 (an overestimate?) in Scotland and 5,000 in Northern Ireland. Charitable status is granted to organisations promoting the relief of poverty, the advancement of education, the advancement of religion and other purposes beneficial to the community. Such status brings advantages e.g. significant tax exemptions and privileges) and disadvantages (e.g. limitations on political activity).
child benefit: This is a universal benefit, paid to the mother of a child under 16, or under 19 if the child is still in full time education. At the time of writing there are higher rates of benefit for the first child and even higher rates for the first child of a lone parent (Child Poverty Action Group 2005: 85).
childcare: This term is used to refer to the paid help used by families to assist in caring for dependent children. It includes day nurseries and playgroups, as well as care by child minders and nannies, some of whom may come to the child’s house.
children’s rights: The term is used both to describe formal and substantive legal rights held by children and, more broadly, a philosophy which seeks to maximize the involvement of children in decision-making. There are different approaches to children’s rights, most notably those which see rights in a more paternalistic way, i.e. as rights to a certain treatment by adults, and those tending more towards ‘liberation’, emphasizing that children should have greater powers.
children’s trusts: Already being piloted, the children’s trusts are the preferred form for local authorities to provide integrated services by bringing together social care, education and health provision for children. Youth offending teams and the Connexions service may also be brought under the trust umbrella.
child-savers: A term coined by Platt to describe nineteenth-century reformers who sought to rescue children from life on the streets and its attendant deviance, and to provide homes which would offer a more constructive upbringing.
choice: Choice over goods and services can be established in markets through the act of buying. However, where these are distributed through administrative and professional means, the question of clients exercising choice can challenge received wisdoms about accepted welfare arrangements. It is difficult to increase choice for everyone, since the choices of some may restrict the choices of others.
citizenship: This is the formal status conferred on a member of a national community. With it normally come a set of rights to equal treatment under the law, to vote and to social support. It has famously been used by Marshall to analyse the twentieth-century welfare state (see Chapter 2, Box 2.9).
civil servants: permanent salaried administrators available to a government whose duty it is to undertake to develop and implement policies determined by government ministers, and who take a neutral stance to the ideological position of the government.
civil society: The ‘spaces’ between the market and the state where individuals and institutions can campaign for, and further develop, social and political rights.
classicism: A traditional, punishment-oriented approach to crime emphasizing clarity in the law and due process in criminal procedure, combined with certainty and regularity of punishment. Classicists see human beings, including offenders, as having free choice and as individuals who will therefore be deterred from certain acts prohibited by the law by the anticipation of swift and certain punishment.
clean break: An approach to adoption which involves complete severance of ties between the child and birth family, with its proponents arguing that this is in the best interests of the child, adopters, and usually, birth parents. See also openness in adoption.
collectivism: A system that favours collective or common provision and ownership in contrast to a system of individual provision and reliance on free markets.
Command economies: is one of many terms which describes the former communist Central and East European countries, highlighting the fact that their economies did not function to a free market basis but were, to a large extent, politically planned.
Command mode of governance: interactions and relationships regulated through the rule of law emanating from a sovereign body and delivered through a scalar chain of superior and subordinate authority with legitimacy for public service decisions and behaviours defined by the bounds prescribed through due process by the institutions charged with the provision.
Communion mode of governance: interactions and relationships regulated through a set of shared values and creeds under which legitimacy for service actions is defined by their consistency with the understandings, protocols and guiding values of the group’s shared frame of reference or way of interpreting and managing the world.
community action: Is issue-based campaigning by local groups concerned to improve the quality of, for example, housing, environmental conditions or crime patterns.
community association: A local group with formal purposes of a non-profit distributing kind; examples include pre-school playgroups, youth clubs, day-centres for older people, as well as educational and leisure pursuits.
community development: Aims to improve the capacity of local citizens to join voluntary organisations; often supported by local authorities as part of urban regeneration and neighbourhood renewal programmes.
Community mental health team: A group of health and social care professionals who share responsibility for a discrete population of service users and communicate on a regular basis.
community punishment and rehabilitation order (CPRO): Combines elements of both CPO and CRO. Offenders aged 16 or over can be required to perform between 40 and 100 hours of community punishment and be subject to probatia supervisia for between twelve months and three years commuity rehabilitation.
community punishment order (CPO): Requires an offender aged 16 or over to perform unpaid work on behalf of the community. Orders involve a minimum of forty and a maximum of 240 hours to be completed within twelve months. Managed by the Probation Service.
community rehabilitation order (CRO): Requires an offender aged 16 or over to be supervised by a probation officer for a specified period of between six months and three years. Requirements can be added to orders regarding accommodation, supervised activities, and treatment (mental health/substance misuse).
community sector: Refers to locally-based associations and groups mainly dependent on voluntary support e.g. pre-school playgroups, youth organisations.
compact: A formal agreement about the principles that should govern relationships between government and the private or voluntary sectors; established since 1998 at both central and local government levels, with both general and specific (Black and minority ethnic groups, volunteering and community groups) publications.
comparative need: Need established by comparing the standards achieved by similar groups within one society–for example those living in different parts of the country–or in different societies–for example a comparison of the incomes of, or provision for, retired people in one nation compared with those in another. In other words, need is seen as an inherently relative concept, and any debate about need must be related to the wider context within which the debates are taking place..
Comprehensive Spending Reviews (CSRs): Introduced by the 1997 Labour government, these Treasury reviews consider public provision item by item, asking whether any particular service needs to be provided by the state and, if the answer to this is yes, explores whether it might be possible to deliver it in alternative ways (e.g. more economically, efficiently, and effectively). The review then sets fixed three-year Departmental Expenditure Limits and, through Public Service Agreements (PSAs), defines the key improvements that the public can expect from these resources. The CSR is also a mechanism through which public expenditure can be redistributed between spending departments in line with the government’s priorities (see further Cm. 4011, 1998).
concealed household: A single person or group of people who share a meal a day together or a living room with another single person or group of people. Typically it refers to single persons or couples who are living with their parents but who would like to live independently, i.e. form separate households.
conditionalities: attached to loans by MEIs include requirements to open economic sectors to foreign investment, privatisation of state-owned enterprises and welfare services, removal of tariff barriers or food and fuel subsidies.
consensual approach to poverty: Attempting to establish a consensus about what the population consider to be necessities in that particular society, at that particular period in time, without which one could be defined as being in poverty.
consent: uncoerced agreement to a course of action.
constitution: basic rules formulating the structure of and procedures for government, either written or customary.
contested adoption: Adoption applications where the birth parent(s) does not consent to the child’s adoption. In this situation, courts can dispense with parental consent if they think it is being withheld ‘unreasonably’.
Continuing Care: Care provided over an extended period to meet physical or mental health needs arising from accident, illness or impairment.
contract culture: The assumption that quasi-legal agreements (‘contracts’), between local authorities (purchasers) and service-delivery voluntary organisations (providers), promote more formalised procedures in the latter. Advocates of such approaches welcome the specificity and cost effectiveness, whereas critics point to a loss of agency independence and the marginalisation of volunteers.
Contract mode of governance: interactions and relationships regulated through an inducement-contribution exchange agreed by both parties. Legitimacy for actions under such a mode lies within the terms of the agreed exchange, i.e. the contract, or at least its interpretations.
contracting out: When the responsible (state) organization contracts out the performance of a task (e.g. refuse collection) or the provision of a service (e.g. nursing home care) to another, often private or voluntary, agency.
cost–benefit and cost effectiveness analysis: Economic tools for assessing the merits of policies or practices. Both involve a broad assessment of the full costs of a decision to individuals, to the health service and to society more broadly. Cost–benefit analysis also attempts to make a full assessment of the benefits, in order to compare treatments for different kinds of problem.
crime and disorder reduction partnerships: The requirement for local authority chief executives to take lead responsibility for the development of multi-agency initiatives involving members of the local community, in particular 'hard to reach', victimization-prone groups.
criminal justice system: The term most commonly used to refer to the group of agencies responsible for various aspects of the work of maintaining law and order and the administration of justice. Key agencies are the Police Service, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Court Service, the Prison Service, and the National Probation Service. Sometimes referred to as the criminal justice process.
Critical junctures: are brief historical periods of intense policy debates and changes in policy direction are likely.
cultural need: Need defined as being unable to participate fully in the cultural life of society. The growing commercialization of culture and leisure has exacerbated the exclusion of economically weak individuals from even the most basic cultural and leisure opportunities.
cultural relativism: The idea that norms and behaviour can only be judged in the context of their own culture and that those of different cultures are equally valid.
culture: A very broad term, which literally means the way of life of a particular society or group of people. The term is often used more specifically to refer to art, music, and literature.
curfew order: Powers given to criminal courts by the Criminal Justice Act 1991 to impose a curfew requirement of between two and twelve hours for no longer than six months on offenders aged 16 and over. Implementation was delayed until electronic monitoring was working successfully. The Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 made it possible to make an electronically monitored curfew order on a young person below the age of 16.
custody plus: A term used by the CJA 2003 to describe the licence component of a term of imprisonment of less than 12 months. At the point of sentence, in addition to setting the overall term of imprisonment, the court must set the 'custodial period' and the 'licence period' – including conditions from a 'menu' of requirements such as unpaid work or a curfew.
dark figure (of crime): Refers to the amount of actual crime that does not appear in criminal statistics. It is often used to denote the volume of crime uncovered by the British Crime Survey that is not reported and/or recorded by the police.
dark green: Broad term describing the ideology of those who take a tough view of the changes needed to preserve the natural environment and to return it to ecological balance. Generally dark greens believe that very substantial, possibly revolutionary, changes to the economy and other social institutions are necessary. Contrasted with light green.
decarcertative: An approach to which deliberately moves away from the use of imprisonment as the 'first option' penal sanction.
De-commodification: is a central concept in Esping-Andersen (1990). Welfare states (or particular social policy programmes) differ in the degree of de-commodification, i.e. the extent to which they allow benefit recipients to withstand the pressure of returning to the labour market.
deep ecology: The welfare of human and non-human forms of life on the planet have value in themselves. Change will come about for humans at the individual level, and there is value in all viewpoints, so that change has to come through non-violent persuasion.
Dementia: A degenerative brain condition, attributable to a range of causes, most common in very elderly people. One cause is Alzheimer’s disease.
Demographic change: Measurable shift in the characteristics of a geographically-defined population (e.g. age profile, racial makeup, family structure).
demographic transition: A long-term process that has transformed the age profile of the population in developed societies, in which fertility declines (i.e. we have fewer babies) while life expectancy increases (i.e. we have longer lives).
dependency ratio: Usually the ratio of those outside the labour force (for example 0–15 and 65 and over) to those defined as in the labour force and of working age.
dependent population: The section of the population economically supported by those in employment.
deprivation index: A list of items defined as essential to being a full member of society, without which one could be deemed to be experiencing deprivation.
detention and training order (DTO): Introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and implemented nationally from 1 April 2000, this order replaced Detention in a Young Offender Institution for those aged 15 to 17, and Secure Training Orders for those aged 12 to 14. Orders are made for terms between four and twenty-four months, and are served half in custody and half in the community under the supervision of a probation officer or social worker.
deviancy amplification spiral: A process whereby a certain type of deviance arouses public attention and is focused on by, for example, the police and the media. The activity then appears to increase (and may actually increase) through heightened awareness, reporting, recording, and research.
Direct Payments: Introduced by the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act 1996, a means for local authorities to provide people with money instead of services to meet their own needs for care.
direct provision: where a social service is organized, financed, and provided by permanent government employees.
direct taxation: when government levies taxes on people’s incomes and not on goods that they purchase (indirect taxation). Income tax is the main form and is usually progressive, taking proportionately more the more people earn.
Discourses: Referring to the ways in which language is inscribed within the world to the extent that we can never get ‘beyond’ language and perceive or understand the world without reference to naming, signification and description. The concept expresses the idea that as well as being something we speak, linguistic signs and representations are that out of which our subjectivities and identities are formed.
diversion: A strategy in youth justice which seeks to avoid or minimize contact with the courts and custody.
division of labour: ‘One of the most distinctive characteristics of the economic system of modern societies is the development of a highly complex and diverse division of labour. In other words, work is divided into an enormous number of different occupations, in which people specialize’ (Giddens 1993: 491).
divisions of welfare: A sociological term used to describe the way that society may be divided into different groups according to the different ways in which people satisfy their needs for social security and pensions, housing, education, health, social care, etc.
Domiciliary care: Services provided in a person’s own home, such as home help, meals on wheels, bathing service.
dominant ideology: A term which comes out of a tradition of Marxist writing which argues that the economic relationships in a society allow an elite to determine the main social, political, and intellectual views of the day.
drift: Describes a situation where there is either no clear long-term plan regarding a child’s future or where the plan is not being effectively implemented.
drug treatment and testing order (DTTO): Introduced in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and implemented in October 2000, these orders are aimed at those aged 16 and over who are convicted of crimes committed to fund their drug habit and who show a willingness to cooperate with treatment and subsequent testing. The orders last between six months and three years.
dual systems: This is a system of vocational ET which combines work-based training with school- or college-based education. The German apprenticeship system is one example.
ecocentric view: Sees humans as one part of the natural ecosystem and argues for a sense of respect for nature. Usually allied to a deep suspicion of bureaucracy and technology.
ecological modernization: The belief that economic growth need not lead to greater environmental damage. Its proponents argue for environmental policy controls because they believe that these will lead the economy towards innovation, which will not only reduce the environmental impact but promote resource-intensive industries.
economic cycle: Also known as the business cycle. The tendency of an economy to move in waves between periods of growing output and employment and lower or falling output and greater unemployment. More strictly refers to the movement of an economy’s growth round the core long run trend determined by labour supply, productivity and technical change. Economies typically move from years where they grow above the trend, creating inflationary pressures, to years where they grow below the trend, implying deflation and wasted resources. A cycle takes place between two points where output moves above the long run trend. It is task of economic policy to keep economic activity as close to the trend as possible, avoiding large and disruptive vacillations.
education: This can refer both to the institutions, e.g. schools, colleges, universities, and to the process—that is, what is learnt in educational institutions or indeed in other contexts. The issues of what education is for or what it should contain are much debated, as was seen in this chapter.
electronic monitoring: Piloted extensively throughout the 1990s and available nationally since 1999, offenders' whereabouts are monitored through the wearing of a ‘tag’ working in combination with equipment located at their home address. Managed by private security companies, it is used in relation to bail, early release from prison, and as a community sentence attached to a curfew order.
empowerment: Recent developments in welfare debate have acknowledged that under the original 1948 arrangements, many clients of the welfare state were expected to be passive and grateful recipients of state handouts. There has now been a common criticism of this assumption on all sides, in favour of clients having more power, dignity, respect, and autonomy through a process of empowerment.
environmental justice: The recognition that environmental hazards are closely linked to race and poverty, and that poor people live in the most environmentally hazardous environments.
equality of opportunity: The conditions under which each individual in society has the same formal rights as any other in relation to employment and access to goods and services (including services such as education and housing). Equality of opportunity is not the same as, and does not guarantee, equality of outcome.
equality of outcome: This means that those with equal needs receive equal treatment. This may mean that some disadvantaged people might receive more support than others.
ethic of care: A set of values that embraces the nature of human interdependency and the importance of caring relationships for the maintenance of the moral and social order.
ethnicity: A term used to describe the specific but shared historical, linguistic, and cultural context that defines a human being’s identity, the society from which they come, and/or the community to which they belong.
Eugenics: The genetic assumptions and practices (sterilisation and selective breeding) that prevailed in the early decades of the twentieth century, based upon conceptions of biological determinism and, frequently, upon racist notions of biological inferiority and superiority. Though associated with Nazi Germany, forms of eugenics were also practiced in countries like Australia and Sweden until the 1970s.
European Community Household Panel: a large-scale comparative survey involving interviews with the same representative households and individuals over a number of years. Covering initially twelve European countries in 1994, the ECHP is under the responsibility of Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities.
European Social Model: defined somewhat vaguely, the term has been used by the EU as an expression of common values in member states, including democracy, individual rights, free collective bargaining, equality of opportunity, market economy as well as social welfare and social solidarity. Essentially it emphasises that economic competitiveness and social progress are not in conflict but go hand in hand.
European Union (EU) Social Chapter: An initiative taken by European Community members in 1989 to begin to harmonize social policy in particular in the area of labour market and employment relations, due to a concern that workplace conditions and arrangements might suffer as a result of the competitive single market. The Conservative government of John Major secured the UK an ‘opt-out’ from this arrangement; however, one of the first acts in the EU of Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997 was to waive this ‘opt-out’ and accept the Social Chapter’s terms.
exclusive and inclusive foster care: Terms used to describe foster care, depending on whether the birth family (and sometimes professionals) tend to be excluded from or included in the foster family and actively involved in the foster child’s life.
explanatory ideals: Social policy debate about the ideal goals of policies and the means of achieving them frequently includes discussions of the circumstances under which welfare states developed, and especially the way in which policies operate in the real world. Writers advocating particular policies may also have strong views about why welfare states exist and how they work. For example, ‘defending’ the welfare state makes assumptions about the circumstances under which welfare states exist or can be changed; or advocating a specific policy, such as to introduce market mechanisms or encourage professional change, will involve assumptions about how the policy will work in practice.
export-processing zone: a government-designated area for foreign businesses to manufacture goods and commodities destined for export. Companies operating in them enjoy limited tariff, tax and labour regulations; working conditions are characterised by minimal rates of pay and insecure, temporary employment, mostly of women.
expressed need: Need that has become a demand. There is a close relationship between need and demand, but simply because someone demands or wants something does not necessarily mean that they need it.
extended family: This term was coined by sociologists to describe the wider kin group, in contrast to the ‘nuclear family’. An extended family may link three or more generations and will include people whose relationship is that of grandparent/grandchild, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces and cousins.
externalities (external costs and external benefits): Either the costs or the benefits that economic behaviour bestows on those who are not parties to the bargain; for example, the damage done to a house by passing lorries or the ‘gain’ from living close to a perfume factory.
false memory syndrome: A memory which is objectively false but strongly believed to be true by the person concerned. The ‘syndrome’ connotes a situation in which this false memory has a profound influence on personality and lifestyle. In relation to sexual abuse, it has been claimed that false memories can be ‘planted’ during therapy, leading to false accusations being made.
family centres: Provided either by voluntary organisations or local authorities, family centres are usually based in deprived areas and offer a range of services from supervised contact or family therapy to support for young mothers and play facilities. Historically, they have striven to provide non-stigmatising support services.
family group conferences (FGCs): FGCs attempt to maximize the possibility of (extended) families finding solutions to childcare problems, while professional intervention is kept to a minimum.
family group home: A residential home modelled on ‘family life’ with relatively small numbers of residents and consistent parental figures among the staff.
family policy: For a social policy to be described as family policy .... the family would need to be the deliberate target of specific actions, and the measures should be designed so as to have an impact on family resources and, ultimately, on family structure (Hantrais and Letablier 1996: 139).
family rights: An approach to childcare issues which emphasizes the importance of birth family ties (or blood relationships).
family: The official definition of the family, used in all government censuses and surveys, is that a family is a married or cohabiting couple, either with or without their never-married children (of any age), including childless couples or a lone parent together with his or her never-married child or children (National Statistics 2005: 201).
felt need: An individual’s or group’s belief that they need something. This relies heavily upon an individual’s own perception of their need, and their perception of any discrepancy between what their situation may be and what their situation should be. This definition is very similar to a ‘want’.
feminization: The idea that in education, jobs, and economic life more generally men are progressively losing out to women.
Financial Management Initiative (FMI): Initiative introduced into UK government departments by the Treasury in 1982 aimed at improving the management of resources by a variety of strategies, including delegated budgeting and increasing the accountability of individual managers for the management of resources.
financial support: where a social service is financed by government but organized and provided by non-government organizations.
fiscal crisis: Term used to indicate a projected crisis for states with large public expenditure programmes, especially in areas such as health, welfare benefits, and pensions, where it is argued (but also disputed) that a combination of rising public demand, entitlements, and falling tax revenue will place governments under an increasing, if not intolerable, economic strain.
fiscal policy: A general term covering all of a government’s decisions about taxation and spending and borrowing. Fiscal policy is important not only because it determines the size and nature of the welfare state but because it affects the distribution of incomes and the performance of the economy. Currently fiscal policy is contrained by two fiscal rules the government has set itself: the golden rule and the sustainable investment rule.
Fiscal Welfare: Refers to the distribution of welfare which comes through the deliberate policy of not collecting revenue from people, e.g. due to tax reliefs and allowances.
flexible or casual work: This refers to jobs which are not full-time and permanent but rather temporary, on short-term contract, variable hours, or one-off contracts for a particular piece of work. Labour flexibility is the ability of a firm to modify the employment and utilization of its labour force in the face of changing labour and product market conditions (Pass et al. 1991: 328).
Fordist regime: Referring back to Henry Ford’s car factory as the archetype of factory production, the notion of a Fordist regime is that for much of the last century the economic growth and development of Western societies was based on mass production, mass labour and mass consumption. People’s work and life experiences, like the products they bought, were standardized.
foreign direct investment: financial capital transfer from one country to another for investment in production of goods or services.
formal: An adjective to describe something that has form, rather than (or as well as) substance. An individual may have a formal status or entitlement that is guaranteed in an abstract or procedural sense, but which it may be difficult substantively (that is, in reality) to achieve or enforce.
full employment: Usually defined either as more jobs available than people seeking employment or as a job available for anyone seeking one.
functionalist explanation: A kind of explanation which views the social system as a whole, and tends to argue that social arrangements exist because they work well to fulfil the functional requirements of the system. If those functions are not yet manifestly identified, they are assumed to exist latently. This analysis thus tends to be circular, in that it both assumes functions and then uses functions as an explanation. It is also teleological, in that it assumes that social development is evolving towards some kind of preferable end state.
gatekeeper: In the housing context, the owner or financier whose rules of access control who is able to gain access to a particular type of housing. It applies to mortgage lenders, councils, housing associations, private landlords, etc.
gender pay gap: ‘The Equal Opportunities Commission (1996: 2) offers a definition: ‘The gender pay gap is defined as women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s earnings. The pay gap is said to be narrow as this figure approaches 100 per cent.’
General Government Spending (or Expenditure): The international definition of general government expenditure (or public expenditure) includes the spending of central government, of local authorities and in the case of most counties, regional government.
global governance: commonly refers to multilateral institutional architecture of public and private, governmental and non-governmental, regulation of global social, political and economic issues.
globalization: In its economic sense, the tendency for the world to become one market in which goods will be produced where costs are lowest and sold where prices are highest.
golden rule: The self-imposed rule, followed by Gordon Brown as chancellor of the exchequer, that over the economic cycle the government will borrow only to invest and not to fund current spending.
good enough parenting: Phrase used to indicate a threshold below which action must be taken to ensure that the child is able to receive appropriate parenting.
government department: a major branch of central government responsible for a significant section of state activity, such as healthcare or social security.
grand narrative: A term in post-modernist writing applied to wide-ranging and comprehensive schemes such as communism or fascism, designed to perfect human society.
grant-maintained school: Under the 1988 Education Reform Act, schools were enabled to opt out of local authority control and become self-governing schools run by their head teachers and governors funded (grant-maintained) directly by central government. Under the New Labour government’s 1998 School Standards and Framework Act many of these schools will become Foundation Schools.
Gross Domestic Product: The value of all goods and services which are produced by those British citizens who are resident in Britain.
gross national product (GNP): all of a country’s output or goods and services (usually measured in a calendar year) plus income from assets abroad, but with no deduction (that is gross not net) for depreciation in the country’s assets.
higher education: This refers to degree-level and post-degree-level education.
Hippocratic oath: The commitment, recorded from ancient Greece by Hippocrates, still traditionally given by medical doctors to work for the good of the patient, and to ‘do the sick no harm’.
home detention curfew (HDC): Introduced in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the scheme began operating on 28 January 1999. It allows prisoners serving sentences of between three months and four years to be considered for early release subject to a home curfew enforced by electronic monitoring.
horizontal dimension of need: Number of people with a given level of need.
horizontal redistribution: contrasts particularly with vertical redistribution and is where resources are taken from some (usually in the form of tax) and given to others no worse off but who have particular characteristics or needs (such as children in state schools or who are ill or disabled).
household: A household is a person living alone or a group of people who have the address as their only or main residence and who either share one meal a day or share the living accommodation. (National Statistics 2005, 201).
housing association: A non-profit organization set up to build and manage social housing.
housing stock: The number of available housing units in the country. There are a certain number of physical dwellings available, through the convertibility of buildings between residential and other uses means the size of the stock is not absolute. However, not all units are available to those seeking housing. For example, some housing is unfit or ‘hard to let’. Housing located in a very unattractive neighbourhood may be unlettable even if it is physically acceptable. Council housing in blocks without lifts may be let to students but be unlettable to ‘ordinary people’. The concept of housing stock thus has both physical and social dimensions.
housing tenure: The legal relationship between household and dwelling. The main types of tenure, owning and renting, involve sets of rights and obligations which depend partly on national legislation and partly on rules applied by mortgage lenders, councils, etc. Hence, for example, the rights of private tenants vary between countries and over time.
hyphenated society: Marshall (1963) argued that industrial society in the UK had by the middle of the twentieth century developed to a balanced point that included a strong but not uncontrolled capitalist economy, and a comprehensive but not too intrusive welfare state brought about by democratic means. This balance, which he felt was a good one, was a mixture, or hybrid, whereby the various parts kept each other in a check in a hyphenated society of democratic-welfare-capitalism.
Ideal types: are central to the sociology of Max Weber. For Weber ideal types do not exist in empirical reality but as conceptual thought figures which highlight characteristics of phenomena to be analysed. In comparative welfare state research, Esping-Andersen’s three worlds of welfare capitalism (1990) can be regarded as ideal types in the sense that the Swedish welfare state, for example, is an empirical reality which can be measured against Esping-Anderen’s ideal type of a social democratic welfare state.
identity: An important concept in modern adoption, which recognizes the importance of ‘origins’ or heritage (e.g. familial, social, cultural, racial, religious) in the adoptee’s sense of self and wellbeing.
identity/identities: The sense(s) of self by which individuals define who they are—both in terms of belonging to a society or social group and in terms of having integrity as a unique being.
ideology: Ideologies are sets of ideas, assumptions and images, by which people make sense of society, which give a clear social identity, and which serve in some way to legitimise power relations in society (McLennan 1991: 114).
impairment: The absence of, limitation of, or damage to a bodily organ or physical or mental function, that may (or may not—depending on the nature of the social context and physical environment) result in disability.
imputed rent: An imputed rent is an attempt to value the housing services owner occupiers enjoy as they live in their house. In private rented housing, tenants pay rent for the housing services they receive and governments tax landlords on this income. As owner-occupation progressively displaced private landlordism governments lost access to a source of taxation. The taxation of the imputed rents of owner occupiers was an attempt to preserve it. In practice it was difficult to understand and hence lacked legitimacy.
incapacitative punishment: A form of punishment which attempts to remove an offender's ability to commit further crime(s). The ultimate form of this type of punishment is the death penalty.
incarcerative punishment: Punishment which ensures an individual is unable to reoffend through some form of constraint—the physical constraint of the prison walls being the most obvious form.
income quintiles: The division of a population, such as individuals or households, into a hierarchy of five parts each containing equal numbers. The bottom quintile would contain the fifth with the lowest incomes, and so on to the top fifth, containing those with the highest incomes. The income of each quintile is usually given in the form of the average income of all the units in it.
independent living: A term pioneered within the disabled people’s movement to define arrangements by which disabled people can exercise direct control over their own living arrangements (for example, by directly employing personal assistants) and fully participate in society.
Independent sector: That group of providers of social care, not owned and run by the state but operating through commercial or not for profit channels.
Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare: Conventional economic indicators such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product) do not necessarily measure welfare. The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare takes into account personal consumer expenditure, but then adjusts this to take account of such factors as income inequality, unpaid domestic labour, environmental degradation, depletion of natural resources, and long-term environmental damage. It was pioneered by Daly and Cobb (1990) in the USA, and has been adapted for the UK (Jackson et al. 1998).
indirect taxation: when government raises money by adding taxes to other things that people do (drive cars) or to goods and services that they buy (value added taxes, duties on fuel, liquor, and cigarettes). Indirect taxes tend to be regressive and to hit the poor harder as a proportion of their incomes.
individual welfare: the good of the individual citizen.
individualism: In contrast to collectivism, a set of beliefs that puts paramount importance on the rights and freedoms of individuals and the power of free-market mechanisms.
individualization: This term refers to the process by which the individual, rather than the group, becomes the key unit in society. The idea implies the breaking down of the structures of class, occupation, locality and gender.
Inequality: Inequality implies that the distribution of social resources is concentrated more upon some than upon others and may be either justified (if this distribution is based upon efforts, choice and merit) or unjustified (if based upon relations of oppression, discrimination and class).
infant mortality rates: These count the deaths of children under 1 year old and measure them over time, or in comparison with other countries. They are expressed per 1,000 live births, and are regarded as an indicator of comparative health.
Informal care: Family members, friends, neighbours or volunteers who help disabled or older people on an unpaid basis.
input measure: Measure of resources used in providing a service or benefit, e.g. spending, number of staff employed.
Institutional care: Care provided away from the person’s own home, for example in a long-stay hospital or asylum, a residential or nursing home.
Institutionalisation: Name given to the negative psychological effects of living in impersonal settings which feature disempowerment and lack of personal choice.
institutionalist approach: An approach to interpreting crime statistics which suggests that they are more a product of the institutions that define and measure crime than ‘real’ phenomena.
intermediary organisation: Acts as a link between local and national voluntary agencies and other sectors, especially the state. General examples include Councils of Voluntary Service (CVS) in urban areas and Rural Community Councils (RCC). Specialist examples exist in most welfare fields e.g. Age Concern; Community Relations Councils (with reference to black and minority ethnic groups).
intermediate needs: Needs which are not ends in themselves, but rather a means to an end. For example, we may need some things, such as a basic education, in order to fulfil other needs, such as finding employment, which in turn may answer the more ultimate need for income.
internal market: A structure for providing health (or other public services) in which the authorities responsible for making decisions about the availability of services, and for purchasing them, are separate from the organizations which produce and deliver services to patients. They introduce competitive market forces into public services.
International governmental organisations (IGOs): organisations formed by governments and operated by international civil servants. Includes the United Nations, MEIs such as the IMF and the World Bank, and regional formations such as the EU.
International Labour Organisation (ILO): was founded in 1919 and became the first UN specialised agency in 1946. The ILO produces international labour standards in the form of Conventions and Recommendations, provides technical assistance and promotes the development of employers’ and workers’ organisations. It is governed by a unique tripartite structure in which workers, employers and governments cooperate as equal partners.
International Monetary Fund (IMF): International body established (together with the World Bank) as a result of the 1942 Bretton Woods meeting of forty-four countries to create and stabilize the world monetary order, including exchange rates, balance of payments deficits, and the operation of the system as a whole. The IMF can advance credit to countries with serious balance of payments deficits, but has the right to demand economic compliance with its suggestions. Hence it has the power to intervene in the domestic policy-making of countries it assists.
international non-governmental organisations (INGOs): part of the international voluntary sector, INGOs are non-governmental organisations based mainly in western countries which operate in a variety of countries, sometimes in cooperation with local and national NGOs, often delivering government aid in emergency situations. Recent decades have seen the growth of superINGOs such as Oxfam and Save the Children, which dominate their areas of operation.
Internet: A global system of electronic networks or a World Wide Web, through which global sites and addresses—and in turn the information they contain—can be easily accessed via a computer and a modem. The Internet is not owned or controlled by anyone.
just deserts: The classical notion that wrongdoers should be punished in proportion to the harm done—literally that they receive their ‘just deserts’. Desert-based sentencing is based on this principle.
justice: social justice is a fair action in accordance with rules that prescribe our rights. Increasingly social policies are seen as fulfilling social rights that citizens possess. In complex societies it may be that an unequal distribution of services can increase the capacity of the whole system to fulfill social rights, and simple egalitarian social justice is thus difficult to operationalize.
justice model: An approach to youth crime which stresses the responsibility of young offenders for their crimes, that punishment is important, and that it should be proportionate to the seriousness of the crime.
key worker housing: Affordable housing provided for specified groups of workers, usually in the public sector. A response to the successful definition of their problems as deserving special treatment.
Keynesian economics: An approach to national economic management named after the British economist and political adviser John Maynard Keynes that places strong emphasis on governmental intervention in economic management and, traditionally, on an associated goal of full employment.
knowledge economy: This refers to the fact that as the economy moves from one based on manufacturing to one based on services the kinds of skills that people need to get jobs changes from manual to mental skills.
labour intensification: Increasing the intensity of work means that people have to work harder and expend more mental or manual effort in a given period of work.
labour market: The labour market refers to the process whereby firms look for employees (the demand side of the market) and people offer their labour power in return for a wage/salary (the supply side of the market). In practice, there can be said to be many different labour markets, for example local labour markets: the supply and demand for labour in a local area; or skilled and specialist labour markets.
lean production: The original idea of lean production is usually associated with the 1990 book by J. Womack and colleagues The Machine that Changed the World (New York, Maxwell Macmillan), in which they advocated the need for organizations to restructure to reduce staffing and waste in order to survive in harsher competitive conditions.
legal definitions (of crime): The definition of a crime simply as an act defined as criminal by the law, irrespective of how current social values define the act.
liberal democracy: the system of government based on the universal right to vote for candidates chosen from a range of alternatives to represent the interests of sections of the community, combined with the freedom to organize and propose policies on issues of the day.
liberal, free-market-based approach: An approach to social policy which is built on the assumption that individuals should be free to choose their own welfare, buying through markets, rather than having them provided through the state.
life course: A holistic term used to describe the development and experiences of an individual, cohort, or social group though a lifetime. (Unlike the term ‘lifecycle’, it does not imply that the processes of a human life are necessarily fixed or recurring.)
lifelong learners: Traditionally, education and schooling was associated with learning at the outset of life. It is argued that to face the fast pace of change in contemporary society, and especially in the world of work, individuals will have to continue to learn and update their knowledge and skills throughout their lives.
lifetime redistribution: an understanding of state provision of benefits and services which interprets it in terms of taking resources from people at points in their lives when they are well off (usually through taxes and social insurance contributions paid by the employed) and returning them when they are less well off or in need (when they are unemployed, ill, or retired, for example).
light green: Broad term describing the ideology of those who believe in the possibility of policies that will sustain and improve the quality of the natural environment and which are at the same time largely compatible with existing economic and social arrangements. Contrasted with dark green.
Local authority: In the UK, the level of local government responsible for arranging or commissioning social care services.
Local Management of Schools: Under the 1988 Education Reform Act, the budgets for schools were devolved from the local authority to individual schools. The board of governors for each school became responsible for managing the budget.
lone parent family: A lone parent family consists of a lone parent living with his or her never-married dependent children, provided these children have no children of their own (National Statistics 2005: 201).
Long term care insurance: Policy taken out by individuals against the possibility of requiring residential or nursing home provision in old age.
long-run efficiency: Obtaining economic efficiency over a variously specified longer term, usually several years, and contrasted with short-run efficiency. Long-run efficiency usually requires saving, investment, and innovation.
lumpy goods: Those products that cannot be bought in small amounts, for example a house or primary education. This means that many people may not be able to afford them.
macroeconomic management: The management by a government of the overall performance of the economy using such controls as interest rates, taxes, and government spending.
male breadwinner model: This model assumes a traditional nuclear family structure in which the man goes out to work and earns a family wage (enough for himself and his dependants) and the woman stays at home and works in the domestic sphere.
Malthusian: Pertaining to the views of Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), who in his book Essay on the Principle of Population argued that there were natural limits to growth in human population and to the capacity of the economy to provide for that population.
mandatory legislation: Legislation which imposes a duty on, for example, a council to undertake certain actions.
marginal benefit: The satisfaction or utility gained by the consumption of the last unit of a product, for example the last mouthful in a meal or the last day of a holiday.
marginal cost: The cost, measured either in money spent or the effort of work, required to obtain or produce the last unit of output, for example the last car off the production line or the last working hour of the week.
market failure: When the market fails to produce what is most wanted at the lowest possible price: usually reflected in unemployed resources, unconsumed output, or unmet demands.
market model: The market model of training provision is where government provides little or no direct training provision nor imposes any requirement on companies to train. The amount of training is left to the market to decide. In theory, if the company needs a particular skill in order to compete, it will acquire it through either training or recruitment. An individual may invest in their own training because they can see a future labour market advantage in doing so.
market renewal: Measures to reinvigorate housing markets in areas of low demand.
Marxisant pessimism: sees globalisation as the latest stage of capitalism, driven by constant search for increased profitability, leading to homogenisation of culture through commodification. Claims transnational corporations’ increasing control of the world economy leads to decline in the power of the state and organised labour.
mass media: The techniques and institutions through which information and communication is broadcast to a large, heterogeneous and geographically dispersed audience. In the twentieth century, the mass media include books, newspapers, radio, cinema, television, and the Internet.
material deprivation: Having insufficient physical resources–food, shelter, and clothing–necessary to sustain life either in an absolute sense or relative to some prescribed standard.
maternal deprivation and attachment: A theoretical perspective deriving from the work of John Bowlby, which emphasizes the importance of secure attachments between children and their parental figures, and explores the consequences of attachment problems.
maternity allowance: This is a contributory benefit paid to women who are pregnant or who have recently given birth, who have paid sufficient contributions but who do not qualify for Maternity Pay, either because they have changed jobs during pregnancy or because they are self-employed (Child Poverty Action Group 2005: 455).
maternity leave: This term refers to the right for women to take paid leave from employment around the time of the birth of a baby.
McDonaldization: creation of increasingly homogenized international mass culture through the adoption of the global culture of mass consumerism accompanied by the abandonment of national, local and indigenous cultures. Often used as a synonym for Americanisation.
Means tested: Feature of a welfare benefit which means that entitlement to it is conditional on having an income and/or capital below a specific threshold.
medical model: An approach to understanding child abuse which treats it as a disease, with abusive behaviour the visible symptom.
Medical model of disability: Theoretical approach, often implicit, which regards disability as a consequence of impairment, locating the problem and hence the need for change with the individual.
Medicalisation: Attribution of problems to organic disorders treatable by the science of medicine. See medical model.
merit: means that under the rules an individual receives what they deserve. For some writers this is an essential incentive for individuals to produce effectively for the whole system, and to deter others from non-production. For other writers, the rules are seen to be devices for exclusion, such that the term ‘merit’ camouflages the systematic reproduction of inequalities.
merit goods: Goods and services where individual consumption also produces a more general community benefit, e.g. a child’s consumption of education.
ministry: see government department.
mixed economy: Refers to service provision by combinations of sectors (private, state, voluntary and informal).
mixed economy of welfare: A description of the diverse sources of welfare, in state, private, voluntary, and informal family sectors. During the latter part of the twentieth century governments saw it as their role to stimulate and support a wider range of sources of provision, beyond the state. This has largely continued under New Labour, though recent developments have re-emphasized the role of the state in funding and providing services, especially in health and education.
Modernity: A period of social development whose chronology is disputed. However, many associate modernity with the post seventeenth century age of Enlightenment in which the emphasis was upon progress, rationality and secularisation. Some believe that this age of modernity is now finished or at least coming to an end.
moral panic: The term used by Stanley Cohen in Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) to indicate a process of collective overreaction to a form of apparently widespread deviance. The media initially ‘identify’ the ‘crisis’, and the inevitable societal reaction is to demand greater control through increased policing and more retributive law.
Moral treatment: 18th century reaction to widespread confinement and constraint of people with mental health problems, stressed the humanity of the patient, using treatments that would now be classed as psychological.
mortgage, mortgage arrears: Households buying dwellings normally take out loans, or mortgages. The mortgage allows the purchaser to pay the whole cost of the dwelling to the seller, and in exchange the household undertakes to make monthly repayments of the loan to the mortgage lender. When the household fails to maintain these payments the mortgage is said to be in arrears.
multilateral economic institutions (MEIs): exemplified by the IMF and the WB are believed to have increasing influence on national economic and social policy formation, in particular through conditionalities attached to loan programmes.
Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy: An (alleged) form of abuse where a parent or carer fakes or creates symptoms in a child in order to gain attention from medical personnel.
myth of classlessness: A phrase coined by Pelton which attacks the view that child abuse occurs equally across all social classes, and which highlights the importance of poverty and inequality in generating abuse.
National Audit Office: the supreme audit institution in the UK. It scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament. It is independent of Government and headed by the Comptroller and Auditor General, an officer of Parliament. The Office audits the accounts of all central government departments and agencies, as well as a wide range of other public bodies, and report to Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which they have used public money. (See also Audit Commission)different ages.
national curriculum: This was introduced by the 1988 Education Reform Act; it applies to all children of compulsory school age in state schools, with a few exceptions such as hospital schools. The curriculum specifies subjects to be taken and levels of attainment to be achieved at.
National Health Service (NHS): The system of health service provision established by the NHS Act in 1946. Its system of public funding, with no charges at the time of use, made it a model of the collectivist ideals of the postwar era, when the emphasis was on collective, state action to meet human needs and to regenerate society.
National Lottery: A national game of chance in which tickets sold may win a substantial prize. Established in 1994, the main National Lottery game in the UK involves trying to guess correctly the numbers of six balls randomly drawn from a choice of forty-nine—at odds of 14 million to one!
national lottery charities: board (renamed the Community Fund) – one of six boards or committees charged with distributing the 28% of overall lottery income allocated to them.
National Offender Management Service (NOMS): Aims to bring together the prison and probation services to ensure end-to-end management of offenders in which contact with a probation officer is maintained from start to finish of each sentence. It also aims to make it possible for providers of both prison and probation services for offenders to come from private and voluntary as well as the public sector.
National Probation Service (NPS): The Criminal Justice and Courts Services Act 2000 renamed the Probation Service for England and Wales ‘the National Probation Service for England and Wales’, and set out its aims as being to protect the public, to reduce offending, and to provide for the proper punishment of offending.
national standards: Introduced into legislation by the Criminal Justice Act 1991 and implemented in 1992, the standards provided guidelines on the circumstances in breach of which action should be taken by probation officers supervising offenders in the community. Successive Standards in 1995 and 2000 have limited officers’ discretion considerably.
national vocational qualifications (NVQs): In 1986, the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) was set up to establish a system of national vocational qualifications (NVQs). These NVQs are work-based assessments of competence and skill at five levels. The standards for each level were developed by leading bodies in industry, the public sector, and commerce.
Nation-state: The conjunction of political and national boundaries, so that the authority of the state is contained within determinate geographical borders. Nation-states emerged from the 17th to the 19th centuries and represent the most common forms of modern citizenship and social association. However, some insist that the sovereignty of the nation-state has never been absolute.
needs: The most central concept to social policy debate. Where goods and services are distributed outside the market, in which we can express our preferences through the act of buying, it is difficult to identify who should have what. What people need is established in relation to administratively or professionally defined norms, but these are inherently open to debate and challenge. In particular, beyond very basic needs for food and shelter, there is considerable cultural variation in socially defined needs (see Chapter 5 for an extended discussion).
negative equity: Equity refers to the value of a household’s investment in a dwelling. This value is calculated by estimating the value of the dwelling and then deducting the value of outstanding loans. If the result is positive, the household has positive equity; if it is negative, the household has negative equity.
neoliberalism: a political philosophy of competitive individualism which calls for minimal state involvement in economic and social regulation, associated with the emergence of the New Right (Reagan and Thatcher) in the 1980s and exemplified in the ‘Washington consensus’.
Networks: Flexible, web-like forms of interaction and inter-relationship. More ‘horizontal’ than the hierarchies and structures with which social science has traditionally been concerned, some insist that networks are becoming the organisational archetypes of human societies.
New Deal: The specific name given to a range of schemes designed to ease the transition into paid work through the coordination of social security, taxation and employment policies.
New Public Management: Term applied to the use of business structures and approaches by government departments in order to promote economic efficiency.
New Right: Term used in the 1980s to describe the intellectual and political influences on conservative-inclined governments such as those of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA. The intellectual basis of New Right thinking is often associated with writers such as the political economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek and the economist Milton Freedman and the development of free market or ‘public choice’ economics. New Right thinking is also heavily influenced by ideas of individualism, and advocates social and governmental systems based on this.
new social movements: Social movements are collective attempts to change social arrangements through public campaigns. Traditional movements included the labour movement and the suffragette movement. Since the 1960s a number of new social movements have developed or renewed themselves as part of the general liberalization of social values at that time. These include movements focused on environmentalism, women, and anti-racism.
newly industrialising countries (NICs): mainly refers to countries in East and Southeast Asia and Latin America which industrialised during the 1970s and 1980s, emphasisising production for export markets under state guidance.
non-governmental organisation (NGO): Is the term traditionally used to identify those agencies dedicated to economic and social development in the Third World; they can be broadly divided into i Northern – NGOs in the more developed societies; ii Southern – NGOs in the developing societies; iii International – NGOs which cut across national boundaries. N.B. The term ‘non-governmental’ in this chapter is mainly synonymous with ‘voluntary’.
Normalisation Principle: that people with learning disabilities should lead a life which resembles, as far as possible, the rest of society, with opportunities to have friends, live in their own homes, study, work, enjoy close relationships and pursue leisure activities.
normative concepts: Much debate in social policy between different major ideological positions, such as left and right, takes place at a middle range, or intermediate level, over particular concepts that are prescriptive—that is, they say what ought to be or should be the case. The case for more or less state intervention, or equality, for example, is often made through appeal to these middle-range normative concepts, such as needs, choices, justice, merit, rights, and obligations.
normative ideals: Social policy debate is not just about the scientific evidence for engineering social change, but also about the way society ought to be. This involves normative ideals, including both the desired end states we would like to push towards and also the means by which we would like to get there. Many writers mix up ends and means in their writing, which we have to reflect on carefully in order to appreciate their views.
normative need: How an expert, such as a doctor or welfare professional, may define need in a given situation or circumstance. Important because welfare professionals are closely involved in the identification of need, and the determining of how this may best be met within the confines of existing resources.
north–south divide: The evidence of different health experience in different regions in the UK is strong, with the poorer regions of the north having higher mortality rates than the richer south-east.
not-for-profit organizations: those that seek only to cover the costs of providing services, as do most charitable welfare organizations, and not to make a profit.
nuclear family: This term was coined by sociologists to describe the social group consisting of parents and their children; it is particularly contrasted with the ‘extended family’, which includes members of the wider kin group, such as grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces, and grandchildren.
obligations: In recent years most shades of ideological opinion have come to place increasing emphasis on the obligations that go along with the rights that individuals can acquire. This is in part a recognition of the anthropological observation of the central place of reciprocity in social life: exchanges are usually balanced, and in the case of a right the balance is an obligation. Thus an individual is expected to work hard, get better, or take employment in exchange for education, healthcare, and income support.
occupational identity: In the past a lot of men, especially skilled workers, could expect to stay in their industry or craft throughout their working lives, and as a result there were often strong occupational identities, for example in shipbuilding, mining, and the steel industry.
Occupational Welfare: The benefits which a person receives by virtue of their occupation or career, e.g. from employers, trade unions or other workplace associations.
offending behaviour programmes: Groupwork (and sometimes individual) intervention based on a synthesis of methods drawn from behavioural and cognitive psychology which aim to change the way offenders think about themselves, their victims and their environment in order to encourage behavioural change.
official inquiry: government-sponsored review of the operations of a particular area of policy.
open method of co-ordination: (OMC) a form of policy coordination at the EU level. Agreed upon at the Lisbon Summit of March 2000, the OMC has become a means of spreading best practice within the EU and thereby achieving greater convergence. Its mechanisms include fixing guidelines at the EU level and translating them into national and regional policies by setting specific targets, adopting quantitative and qualitative indicators and benchmarks, and monitoring and evaluating policy development. The OMC has become a central tool for the European Employment Strategy and the EU ‘social inclusion’ process.
openness in adoption: Adoptions where contact (which may take a variety of forms) is continued between the adopted child and the birth family.
opportunity cost: Refers to the value of all possible lost opportunities to consume resources in other ways from the current or proposed one.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): A Paris-based international organization financed mainly by the leading international industrial countries set up in the wake of the US Marshall Plan of the 1940s. The OECD is engaged in a variety of research and similar activities in areas ranging from economic forecasting and studies of comparative economic performance to science policy, environmental policy, and the growing importance and effects of information technology.
outcome measure: Type of measure (of social policy) which looks at final impact, e.g. level of illness, examination results.
output measure: Measure of volume of service produced, e.g. number of patients treated, number of council houses built, number of people receiving home help. An intermediate measure between input measures and outcome measures.
parental responsibility: The Children Act 1989 used this term to sum up the collection of duties, rights and authority which a parent has in respect of a child.The aim was to stress that parents, rather than the state, have the prime responsibility for children. Mothers, and the fathers of legitimate children, automatically have parental responsibility, while fathers who are not married to the mother of the child can acquire parental responsibility in a number of different ways (Department of Health 1989: 1).
participation rates: This refers to the percentage of a particular group, for example women, who are in or seeking paid employment.
particular conception of ideology: A concept used by Mannheim to indicate those ideas that an individual or group might express about particular circumstances, which are erroneous, and which may or may not be deliberately false, but which the proponent of the view has an interest in sustaining.
partnership: Is a generic term for any systematic set of relations between at least two organisations. More recently, it has become increasingly formalised to refer to inter-sectoral agreements.
patriarchy: A term to describe political, social, and economic systems, institutions, and practices that are based on male domination and the oppression of women.
pensioner states: a term used by the OECD to describe countries that spend 10% or more of their GDP on income payments to retired people.
permanence: A principle of childcare which seeks to avoid drift and to resolve the long-term futures of children both decisively and fairly speedily.
permissive legislation: Legislation which allows but does not require, for example, a council to undertake certain actions.
Person Centred Planning: An approach to personal support developed within learning disability services which seeks to realise the aspirations of individuals by giving them control over the planning process, recognising them as experts with respect to their own lives.
philanthropy: Practical benevolence, often in the form of funding.
plural pragmatism: sees globalisation as longterm process, resulting in greater interdependence of national economies, driven by a variety of forces, including technological, ideological and cultural ones. In this view local and national factors continue to be of importance in mediating the impact of global forces.
points system: System of allocating council housing in which applicants are given points based on criteria of housing need.
policies: plans of action formulated in general terms by political parties, and their representatives in government, especially ministers, and often developed in detail by civil servants.
policy networks: informal affiliations of actors with a conscious interest in shaping policies and their outcomes.
political legitimacy: Term used to indicate the likely necessity that policy initiatives and spending decisions should match the values and expectations both of voters and of those making such proposals. For example, while the economic case for reforming the welfare state may be strong, the political legitimacy of many proposals for this may be challenged by the public.
positional goods: Some goods and services are valuable to us in part because they are not available to everyone. For example, not everyone can enjoy a beautiful countryside view from a commanding height above the potential viewing points of others. Some social services, such as higher education, can be thought of in this way. While there is a limited technical solution to the problem of mass viewing (as in football stadia and theatres), in the end there will have to be an unequal distribution of the view. We can describe these goods and services as ‘positional goods’.
positivism: Most commonly associated with the Italian Cesare Lombroso, the positivist school of criminology views crime as caused by factors and processes that can be discovered by observation and scientific investigation. Positivists often subscribe to the doctrine of determinism: that human beings, including criminals, do not act from their own free will but are impelled to act by forces beyond their control.
post-industrial: As the share of employment in industry has declined and advanced capitalist economies such as Britain are dominated by non-industrial employment, the term ‘post-industrial’ has been used to denote a new phase for these economies.
post-modernism: This is a new historical era, after the modern era, identified initially in architecture in the mid-1970s as a reaction to the functional designs of housing estates in the middle of the twentieth century all over the world. The term has since spread into social analysis through French intellectual work in the 1980s. An important part of this work has been to argue that there are no longer any grand ideas or schemes (see grand narrative) such as communism or fascism, that human society can follow to improve itself.
postwar settlement: the political consensus, accepted by most major political parties in Britain and elsewhere, that the welfare state institutions established after the Second World War should be maintained.
Poverty: Poverty denotes a lack of material resources (especially income) and so to basic social needs that remain unmet.
Poverty Trap: The situation where an increase in earnings does not leave an employed individual much better off, and possibly even worse off, due to the combined effects of taxes and benefit withdrawal.
power: the ability to bring about preferred policy outcomes, or to prevent unwanted outcomes, or to shape the way in which policy options are considered.
pre-Budget Report: A report to parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. First introduced in 1997 it provides a progress report on the outcomes of government spending and outlines government economic policy that will inform the Budget the following spring.
pressure groups: organized groups aiming to develop or influence government policies.
Primary Care Trusts (PCTs): PCTs in England and Local Health Groups in Wales are now the main purchasers of healthcare services. They receive money from central government, mainly according to their population size. They serve populations of between 50,000 and 250,000 people. PCTs provide primary care services, but purchase hospital and other services—which could include physiotherapy and alternative therapies—from other providers. In Scotland the system of purchasing and providing is more integrated.
principle of proportional service provision: Principle according to which provision varies in proportion to need.
principle of uniform service provision: Principle according to which provision is equal per member of group in need.
Private Finance Initiative (PFI): A scheme introduced by John Major’s Conservative government and continued with Tony Blair’s Labour government that seeks to finance public sector projects (e.g. bridges, hospitals, student accommodation) by schemes that involve the injection of private-sector capital in return for an income stream from such investments to the financing organization (e.g. through tolls or rents).
private finance initiative (PFI): an arrangement where the state uses a for-profit company to find and invest the capital required to provide a government service. Thus a private company might finance and build a hospital or a school that the state then guarantees to rent for a specific length of time. This method reduces public borrowing, may lead to more efficient management of the capital investment, but commits the state to current expenditure in the future.
Private Member’s Bill: A proposed law introduced by an MP or peer, from government or opposition parties, but without overt government support.
Private social expenditure: the definition used here is that developed by the OECD. It is expenditure by organizations separate from government, such as health insurance funds, or pension funds, to which people have been required by law to pay premiums and which subsequently provide individuals or households with payments or services in order to support them during circumstances that adversely affect their welfare.
private-for-profit organizations: are those which, in the context of social policy, provide welfare services, such as social care or nursing home care, but seek not only to cover their costs but also to make a profit for their owners.
privatization: when publicly owned service providers are transferred into the for-profit sector and run by private owners.
problematize: An expression often used by social scientists to denote the process by which everyday occurrences or phenomena may come to be recognized or reconstituted as a social problem through changing social, political, or academic discourses.
producer capture: This occurs where the producer of a service is able to ‘capture’ and dictate the preferences of consumers and terms of service delivery. Professional groups such as doctors are accused of this control from time to time. Where consumer representatives or advocates have been set up, there is concern that in a more narrow sense they may also be captured and come to espouse the interests of the producers rather than the consumers.
Profession: occupational groups distinguished by their specialist knowledge and expertise, their position (or autonomy) in relation to clients and employing organizations, and ethos (i.e. the values which vocation demands are to be promoted for the benefit of the profession and its clients).
professional associations: representative organizations for different professions, sometimes with a legal monopoly over the interests of a particular profession.
progressive taxes: taxes that take a growing proportion of people’s incomes as their incomes go up. Income tax is usually progressive, the percentage rate of tax going up as particular income thresholds are passed. Taxes that do not rise in this way are said to be regressive.
Protocol on Social Policy: allowed eleven EU member states to proceed in implementing their ‘agreement on social policy’ in 1991. Impossible to reach agreement among the then twelve EU members, a solution was found in the form of an ‘opt-out’ for the UK from the social policy provisions of the Maastricht Treaty to which the Protocol was annexed in December 1991.
Psychosis: A psychiatric symptom which features a significant disturbance of a person’s perception (hearing, vision or other sensations), usually without their awareness that anything is amiss.
public and private spheres: The separation of public and private has a long history in Western European thought, deriving from the Ancient Greek distinction between the polis, meaning the sphere of public life, and the oikos, meaning the private household. The involvement of the state in the private life of the family has been criticised as interference and control, or it has been welcomed as a support to the work done in this sphere and as a check on the tyranny which the strong can exercise over weaker members of families.
Public Expenditure Survey (PES): Annual system of public expenditure planning in UK government involving bilateral bargaining between the major Whitehall spending departments and the Treasury, culminating in Cabinet agreement on public expenditure objectives over the next (and subsequent) financial years. Formerly conducted on an annual basis, this process was moved to a three-year cycle from 1998/9 (see further Cm. 3978, 1998).
public goods: Products from which people cannot be excluded from consumption (e.g. fresh air) and where one person’s consumption does not reduce what is available to another. There is no possible profit in the production and marketing of such goods.
public schools: These are independent schools, which charge fees; they do not have to provide the National Curriculum.
Public Sector Net Cash Requirement/Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR): The amount the government needs to borrow at any one time to bridge the gap between income and expenditure. In 1998 this was retitled the Public Sector Net Cash Requirement in line with other changes to the organization and operation of the public expenditure planning system introduced by the Labour government (Cm. 3978, 1998).
public sector: This is the share of the whole economy under the control of the government. It includes both central and local government, the institutions of the welfare state, such as the health and education services and a growing number of government agencies.
Public Service agreements: These are written agreements between the Treasury and government spending departments which are negotiated as part of the Comprehensive Spending Reviews and published at the same time. They set out the main performance outcomes the departments are expected to achieve over the next three years, how they will be measured and who is responsible for achieving them.
public social expenditure: the definition used here is the that developed by the OECD. It is expenditure by governments on services or payments provided to households and individuals in order to support them during circumstances that adversely affect their welfare.
purchaser–provider splits: The separation of a state welfare bureaucracy into one part that commissions the provision and another part that ‘contracts’ to provide it.
quality of lif