Critical Social Policy

Since its election in 1997, the New Labour government has espoused the value of civil society. Civil society has become increasingly utilized in policy initiatives, especially in regard to regenerating communities and fighting social exclusion. In this regard, civil society, traditionally viewed as a sphere outside of the state, now finds itself engaged in various types of ‘partnerships’ with both the state and the business community. This has had the effect of redrawing the boundaries between civil society and the state. This article examines what I term ‘manufactured’ civil society; that is, groups that look like civil society, but are in fact a mixture of state/voluntary sector organizations. The article concludes that civil society pays a high price for involvement with the state.

What enables young people with significant impairments to make the transition to adulthood? Becoming householders, finding work, becoming parents, feeling included as citizens: these are all more challenging in the context of housing needs, a discriminatory labour market, the need for personal assistance and transport. Our study interviewed a group of 31 young adults in receipt of disability living allowance, who had jobs and independent households, and smaller comparative groups, who had one or neither of these. We explored disabled people’s own accounts of adulthood and what had facilitated their achievement of jobs and independent living. Education, family, employment, personal assistance, housing, benefits and welfare services were on our agenda, but respondents’ own accounts are of ‘exceptional’ parents as the key.However, not everyone can have exceptional parents. We discuss the politics and economics of parenthood that prevailed while our respondents grew up, when parental responsibilities were extended and parental resources reduced. And we ask how much the politics of parenthood under New Labour offers to families with disabled children.

Direct payments enable individuals to purchase their own care rather than have directly provided services. This article unpacks the complexities involved in the implementation of direct payments by addressing the need to reconcile the strong evidence of their benefits with emerging concerns about the wider consequences of their implementation. One practice that highlights the conflicts at the heart of direct payments is the employment of personal assistants. While directly employing personal assistants offers maximum benefit for recipients, it also produces the strongest concerns. Therefore, an understanding of the context of direct payments, specifically the practice of employing personal assistants, is used to explore these complexities in greater depth. The discussion concludes by arguing for a more critical awareness of the wider context in which direct payments are being developed in order to understand how this context can open up or limit opportunities for greater self-determination. It suggests a number of factors that need to be addressed to ensure that direct payments continue to be a progressive strategy. These include reconciling conflicting ideologies such as those advocating individual choice and/or collective provision; the need for political action to secure adequate resources; and the development of alternative strategies such as cooperatives to address the collective needs of direct payment recipients and workers.

NHS Direct, the 24-hour telephone helpline, uses modern communications technology to offer easier and faster access to advice about health, illness and the NHS so that people are better able to care for themselves and their families. In-depth interviews with callers to the service show that they bring with them discourses of the ‘deserving’ and ‘ undeserving’ familiar in the provision of other welfare services. The figure of the ‘time-waster’ is the NHS equivalent of the welfare ‘scrounger’, acting as a mechanism to problematize entitlement. NHS Direct dispels such fears and legitimizes demand. At the same time, ever-rising levels of service use constitute a threat to what callers value most about it.

This review of British government policy on accommodation for people with learning disability compares two White Papers: Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped(DHSS, 1971) and Valuing People(DOH, 2002). NHS employment issues muted the influence of Better Services. Statistics show a slow transfer from the NHS to other providers, but little development of independent living alternatives since 1971, despite a policy emphasis on social inclusion themes in recent policy. Promotion of housing choice, where residential care provision dominates, inhibits inclusive housing. Valuing Peopledoes not address the potentially conflicting choices of disabled people and their families and is critical of local authorities for not supporting large-scale residential care. Supported living alternatives cannot receive sufficient support where residential care agencies’ interests predominate. Better incentives are needed for local authorities to provide support for people with learning disabilities to safely live in a home of their own rather than in residential care.

This article looks at the development of citizenship education within schools and assesses its impact on the school strike wave against the war on Iraq that took place during February and March 2003, in part utilizing interview material drawn from active strikers. Although citizenship, as outlined in the Crick Report, should have welcomed young people’s active engagement with the political process, the overwhelming response of the educational establishment was to castigate and punish those who took part in the strikes. In conclusion, the article argues that the actuality of citizenship classes focuses on individual aspects of responsibility and moral education and had little influence on the engaged ‘active citizens’ who demonstrated against war by walking out of their schools.

In a number of recent policy statements, the Labour government has developed a series of reforms for employer-sponsored company pension schemes, an integral element of the contracting out arrangement of compulsory second-tier pensions. At best, the reforms are ambivalent. While they address a number of important issues, they are likely to reinforce income insecurity. Above all, we identify a range of issues that must be integral to the reform of company pensions, but that have been ignored by the government – compulsory employer contributions, universality and the role of employees in sponsoring and administering pension schemes.