Making Welfare Work
Subtitle: Reconstructing Welfare for the Millennium
By: Valerie Jenness
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 210
ISBN-13: 9781351309523
Subjects: Public welfare; Welfare state; Social policy; Aide sociale; État providence; Politique sociale
Description: "The welfare system in the United Kingdom is broken. The number of claims has escalated and so, in consequence, have welfare expenditures. The social system does not encourage welfare recipients to become independent. Half the population of the United Kingdom lives in households drawing one of the major means-tested benefits. Research documents that means-tests paralyze self-help, discourage self--im-provement, and tax honesty while at the same time rewarding claimants for being either inactive or -deceitful. In Making Welfare Work, Frank Field challenges the current political orthodoxy, particularly its emphasis on the role of legislation alone in bringing about social improvement in a welfare state. Field argues that the impact legislation has on personal character is pivotal to human advance in a welfare state. Welfare reconstruction needs to address and channel the differing roles of self-interest, self-improvement, and altruism, which are among the great driving forces in human character. A successful welfare state must reinforce these important forces which influence our nature because to create an imbalance between these three motive forces will always undermine welfare's objectives. Field discusses in detail aspects of modern British society in dire need of change. These include the drug trade, benefit traps, permanent adolescence, the rise of part-time work, inequality in incomes, excluding the disabled, single parents, and the very elderly, for example. This clearly delineated, well-researched blueprint for success will be important reading for politicians and policymakers in all industrialized nations. Its author is well-positioned to revise and review the welfare policies of democratic -societies."--Provided by publisher.
Table of contents: title: Chapter Introduction to the Transaction Edition *  -- Frank Field; title: chapter Introduction  -- Frank Field; title: chapter 1 The New Barbarism  -- Frank Field; title: chapter 2 The Winter of Our Discontent  -- Frank Field; title: chapter 3 The Flawed Vision  -- Frank Field; title: chapter 4 Minimum Income Levels  -- Frank Field; title: chapter 95 Social Insecurity  -- Frank Field; title: chapter 6 The Disintegrating Socio-Economie Landscape  -- Frank Field; title: chapter 7 A Stakeholder's Welfare -- Frank Field.