Critical Social Policy

The article draws a distinction between family policy and moral regu lation and argues that there has been increasing emphasis upon the latter in recent public debate about family life. The analysis suggests that British social policy compares unfavourably with other European countries because it lacks an explicit family policy. The Conservative government's family strategy has revealed confusions, most noticeably in the divergence between the Green Paper Looking to the Future which advocates a move to 'no fault' divorces and the broader politi cal project of demonising lone parenthood. The article concludes by examining some evidence that undermines the view which suggests that family structures have a unique explanatory power in accounting for a rise in incivility and criminality in modern society.

The 1989 Children Act emerged at a time of considerable tension in the relationships between the state, the 'family' and the individual.

This article examines the shift on the part of formerly progressive local authorities, from a municipal socialist to a municipal pride stance. The author argues that this municipal pride approach to urban regene ration, capitulates to the shrunken horizons of the new marketised contract culture, whereby social service provision is separated from local authority delivery and is effectively privatised, creating a new and private relatiomhip between purchaser and provider. This forfeits the principle of the universality of welfare provision and, argues the author, amounts to a betrayal, by Labour authorities, of those con stituents who cannot wield the power that comes with being a purchas ing customer. The article then seeks to re-appropriate the terms of this new contracting environment and turn it against itself, in the process re-empowering those ordinarily disempowered by the unbridled workings of the market.

This article draws on research into the experiences of London home less families placed in accommodation leased by their local housing authority from the private sector (PSL) while awaiting rehousing. It reveals the financial and social costs to families of government moves towards a blurring of the distinction between temporary and perma nent local authority rehousing duties — costs that are unaccounted for in assessing the public cost of homelessness, and which are more liable to fall on particular social groups of families than others.