Social work and self-determination.

Self-determination is a curious concept, related to, but not quite the same as, freedom and autonomy. As an ethical principle, the principle of self-determination bears little relationship to the way social workers behave. It is used as if clients were being allowed a free, independent choice; but clients are subject to pressure, and the social work relationship is often conceived within a structure of authority. As a guide to practice, the concept of self-determination ignores the cases where direction is legitimate or desirable. Self-determination can be seen as a professional ideology - an inter-related set of values and ideas. The concept is derived from a number of ideas and values outside social work, but it appears to have little direct relevance to social work in practice. The paper suggests that the concept of freedom may be more useful and less remote from the realities than self-detemination is

Developing indicators: issues in the use of quantitative data about poverty.

Indicators are often confused with measures. This article argues that precise measurement is often inappropriate in relation to complex, multidimensional issues such as poverty. A good indicator should be understood as a pointer, not a measure. It should be accessible, robust and reinforced by other pointers. By treating indicators as quantities, summary indices conceal key issues, hide the values and concepts implicit in the exercise, and are vulnerable to mathematical accident. Using multiple indicators is sounder in principle, in methodological terms, and in practical application

Concepts of need in housing allocation.

Policies for the allocation of council housing are subject to considerable local variation. Despite the differences, the schemes which housing departments have developed seem often to reflect a common understanding of the concept of 'need'. Their emphasis is on an individual, material, absolute idea of 'need' which depends strongly on conventional interpretation to determine what is included and what is not. The values expressed in explicit policies form part of an ideology of need, in the sense that they constitute an inter-related set of ideas commonly shared within a profession. This ideology is based less in the implementation of common principles than the constraints of practice

Poverty as a wicked problem.

This brief argues for a pragmatic approach to poverty, rather than an analytical one: 1. Poverty is a wicked issue - complex, multidimensional, unclear and changeable. There is not one problem to be addressed. If we are not dealing with a set, specific problem, or even a defined process, there is little point in chasing after definitive, mechanistic answers. 2. There are some common misunderstandings about anti-poverty policy. The first is the belief that we can prevent poverty by identifying and dealing with its causes, or the 'generative mechanisms' that lead to people being poor; this has led to a long series of bad policies. The second misconception is to suppose that if we know what causes the problems, we will know how to stop them; the way into a problem is not usually the way out of it. Neither position is tenable, and too often they have led policy astray. 3. The problems are not going to sit there waiting for someone to solve them, so that they can be picked off one by one; new problems and issues are arising all the time. Poverty is dynamic - constantly shifting and changing, as an enormous range of processes coincide and collide. 4. One of the central insights offered by the emphasis on poverty as a multidimensional issue has been to emphasise the importance of the perceptions, experience and voice of people who suffer it, as a way of clarifying issues and developing priorities

The nature of a public service.

Public services have been misunderstood. They are not simply services in the public sector, they are not necessarily there because of market failure, and they cannot be analysed by the same criteria as market-based provision. They have four defining characteristics. They exist for reasons of policy; they provide services to the public; they are redistributive; and they act as a trust. They consequently operate differently from production for profit, in their priorities, costs, capacity and outputs

The ethics of policy research.

Codes of ethics governing research in social science have tended to focus on the rights of participants in research. This focus is too narrow to be an effective guide for ethical policy research. Some typical problems concern the development of organisational research, research in the public domain, and conflicts between the rights of participants and others. Policy research needs to be guided by standards related to professional practice in policy, public accountability and general principles related to the promotion of welfare

Equality versus solidarity.

Although equality and solidarity are often thought of as constituent parts of the same ideological framework, there are inconsistencies between them. Both concepts refer to a range of meanings: equality can refer to equal treatment, opportunity or result, and solidarity, a term which is of growing influence in European social policy, can refer to mutual aid or group cohesion. Despite the close association of these ideas in theory, there is a tension between them, and they offer prescriptions for policy which are likely to conflict. British pensions policy is taken as an illustration; the case for solidaristic redistribution has had to be balanced against that for egalitarian policies, with some unpredictable results. The concepts of equality and solidarity can be reconciled, but this depends on the application of a set of limiting interpretations; they can just as easily be represented as incompatible

Economics as practical wisdom.

The discipline of economics has been represented as deductive and theoretical, deductive and empirical, and inductive and empirical. All of these approaches have been subject to withering criticism in other social sciences: their weaknesses are theoretical, evidential and methodological. Part of the problem rests in the interpretative or prescriptive character of much that is written in economics, but the core rests in the attempt to generalise about economic processes beyond the context where they occur. The situation where an economic insight is applied cannot be bracketed off, or set aside, from its context and the influence of other factors; the process of generalisation does not of itself provide useful prescriptions for policy. The principles of phronesis are based in experiential knowledge and practice. Economics has to adapt to complexity and ethical considerations, relying on judgement in particular contexts rather than generalisation. It is a phronetic activity

Introducing Universal Credit.

In this chapter, author Paul Spicker interrogates the government's introduction of Universal Credit, a controversial scheme designed to unify various means-tested benefits for people of working age. The scheme brings together six existing benefits: income-related Jobseeker's Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance, Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, Housing Benefit and Income Support. Spicker argues that analysts of Universal Credit must drill down to the detail of the scheme and the benefits that it covers. He sees defects in 'the concept and design' of the Universal Credit agenda, as there were in previous grand schemes in social policy history. He also sees potential for the benefit system to break down if it cannot prove to be practically viable. Governments, Spicker contends, cannot easily meet the multiple objectives that must be typically met in 'simple' and 'unified' benefit programmes

Five types of complexity.

This article describes five types of complexity in the operation of social security benefits. The first is intrinsic complexity: some benefits are complex in their concept, structure or operation. The second is extrinsic: systems become complicated when several benefits or agencies have to be dealt with. Third, there are complex rules. Some are imposed for administrative reasons, but there may also be some 'conditionality', including moral conditions and rules about rationing. Fourth, there are complex management systems, including the proliferation of agencies and the problems of information management. Finally, there is complexity that arises through the situation of claimants. Benefits which try to adjust to people's changing circumstances require elaborate rules and procedures, and they are always slightly out of step. If we want to simplify benefits, we need to focus on conditionality, administrative rules and management procedures. Some aspects of complexity, however, are unavoidable