Introduction To Societal And Social Policy PDF

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIETAL AND SOCIAL POLICY SO... WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? 1. What do you understand by the term social policy? 2. Who makes social policy? 3. Who does it affect? 4. What areas of life might...

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIETAL AND SOCIAL POLICY SO... WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? 1. What do you understand by the term social policy? 2. Who makes social policy? 3. Who does it affect? 4. What areas of life might social policy affect?  Social policy is a plan or action of government or institutional agencies which aim to improve or reform society. It consists SOCIAL of guidelines, principles, legislation a nd associated activities that affect POLICY the living conditions conducive IS… to human welfare, such as a person's quality of life. The Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics defines social policy as "an interdisciplinary and applied subject concerned with the analysis of societies' responses to social need" Social policies are made and implemented in the form of social provisions. The main reason is that social policies are meant to meet the needs of people in various ways:  providing cash benefits to offset poverty;  health services to maintain physical and mental well-being;  housing services to provide shelter;  education and training to enable people to live independently and participate fully in economic, scientific and cultural life; and so forth. Each service represents an important area of human need without which individual existence would be seriously deficient, if not impossible. SOUNDS SIMPLY… The logic of social policy is not, however, quite so straightforward. - The needs of other sections of society, apart from welfare recipients, must also be met, such as the needs of business for a healthy, educated and flexible workforce and of government for a regulated and content population. - Unfortunately the human needs reflected in social policy and the needs of business and government do not always coincide, as in the 1980s when the Thatcher government criticised the 'nanny' welfare state and tried to engineer the creation of an enterprise culture. Different social necessities or needs are in conflicts Enforcement of interests Lobbying Political ideologies have conceptualised need differently. Any decisions to be made finally has to be consensually for legitimation Meanwhile it is helpful to understand need from the perspective of political ideology, there is at present a debate about whether the major political ideologies that have shaped modern society over the last two centuries are relevant to the profound changes of the last quarter century. - new social, political and cultural forms of life from the forms that have emerged during the last two hundred years or more. - at the core of these new forms of life are new needs that new social policies must address. (new politics associated with social and political diversity and the new social movements of feminism, ecology, disability and so on)  NEEDS WANTS Social policy is all about making choices regarding the allocation of scarce resources, so as to make their best possible use and satisfy human wants and needs. HIERARCHY OF NEEDS Maslow (1954) suggested that human needs could be structured into five categories in a hierarchy of ascending order of prepotency and probability of appearance. - With reference to service provision, it has been claimed that services should be geared to meet these needs, as social problems are the results of these needs not being met. BRADSHAW’S TAXONOMY OF SOCIAL NEEDS (1972) 1.Normative need tends to be professionally defined and has a knowledge base. A desirable standard is set by professionals, policy makers or social scientists, against which the actual standard is compared. Those below the standard are said to be in need of support and special services. 2.A felt need is equated to what people want. It can be defined easily by asking service users or potential users what they wish to have. Hence, a felt need can be inflated by users’ reference to their own high expectation (for example, a housing unit reaching a good private market standard). A felt need can be deflated by the potential users’ ignorance or rejection of services 3.An expressed need is generally taken as equivalent to demand, as the unmet need. The notion is that one does not make a demand unless one feels the need. However, considering that people requiring social services are often those with fewer resources and education, they do not often voice their demands. 4.Comparative need is measured by reference to a user already receiving the service in question. Therefore, a person is in comparative need if he or she has the same or worse characteristics as someone receiving the service. LIMITED SOURCES, UNMET NEEDS Global income inequality has returned to levels recorded in the 1820s—when the Industrial Revolution produced sizable wealth gaps between the rich and poor. - Great strides have been made in some areas such as literacy, life expectancy, and gender inequality. - People's well-being has generally progressed since the early 20th century across a large part of the world, but while income inequality, as measured by pre-tax household income among individuals within a country, fell between the end of the 19th century until around 1970, it began to rise markedly at that point, perhaps in response to globalization. - The enormous increase of income inequality on a global scale is one of the most significant— and worrying—features of the development of the world economy in the past 200 years. It is hard not to notice the sharp increase in income inequality experienced by the vast majority of countries from the 1980s. (OECD, Better life Initiative, 2016) Statistics on the gap between rich and poor around the world are stunning. Crédit Suisse says people with a net worth of more than $1 million represent just 0.7% of the global population, but they have 41% of the world’s wealth. Meanwhile, those with a net worth of less than $10,000 represent 69% of the population, but just 3% of global wealth. Inequality is a major problem, in part, because it is linked to so many other challenges, such as “poverty, environmental degradation, persistent unemployment, political instability, violence and conflict.” Source: Inequality.org  Gini coefficient , also known as the Gini index or Gini ratio, is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality, the wealth inequality, or the consumption inequality within a nation or a social group Source:OECD, 2023 GLOBAL GINI INDEX, 2023 (SOURCE: WORLD BANK, 2024)