scholarly journals The Evolution of Choice Policies in UK Housing, Education and Health Policy

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN GREENER ◽  
MARTIN POWELL
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Healthcare It ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Welfare State ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Comparative Examination

AbstractScholarship in social policy in recent years has examined how policy positions users in a range of roles, particularly most recently in terms of their roles as ‘choosers’ through the increased use of markets in welfare. This article considers how choice policies have positioned users since the creation of the modern welfare state, presenting a history of choice policies, but also a comparative examination of how they have differed in the UK between housing, education and healthcare. It concludes by suggesting that although approaches to choice vary considerably between the three public services examined, policy-makers often appear unaware of these differences, leading to mistaken assumptions that policies can be transferred or transplanted unproblematically.

scholarly journals Knights and Knaves in the English Medical Profession: the Case of Clinical Excellence Awards

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK EXWORTHY ◽  
PAULA HYDE ◽  
PAMELA MCDONALD-KUHNE
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
National Health Service ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Clinical Excellence ◽  
Medical Professional ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Written Responses ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The Uk

AbstractWe elaborate Le Grand's thesis of ‘knights and knaves’ in terms of clinical excellence awards (CEAs), the ‘financial bonuses’ which are paid to over half of all English hospital specialists and which can be as much as £75,000 (€92,000) per year in addition to an NHS (National Health Service) salary. Knights are ‘individuals who are motivated to help others for no private reward’ while knaves are ‘self-interested individuals who are motivated to help others only if by doing so they will serve their private interests.’ Doctors (individually and collectively) exhibit both traits but the work of explanation of the inter-relationship between them has remained neglected. Through a textual analysis of written responses to a recent review of CEAs, we examine the ‘knightly’ and ‘knavish’ arguments used by medical professional stakeholders in defending these CEAs. While doctors promote their knightly claims, they are also knavish in shaping the preferences of, and options for, policy-makers. Policy-makers continue to support CEAs but have introduced revised criteria for CEAs, putting pressure on the medical profession to accept reforms. CEAs illustrate the enduring and flexible power of the medical profession in the UK in colonising reforms to their pay, and also the subtle inter-relationship between knights and knaves in health policy.

Can Complexity Move UK Policy beyond ‘Evidence-Based Policy Making’ and the ‘Audit Culture’? Applying a ‘Complexity Cascade’ to Education and Health Policy

2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Geyer
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Visual Metaphor ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Audit Culture ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Evidence Based Policy ◽  
The Uk

For much of the twentieth century UK public policy has been based on a strong centralist, rationalist and managerialist framework. This orientation was significantly amplified by New Labour in the 1990s and 2000s, leading to the development of ‘evidence-based policy making’ (EBPM) and the ‘audit culture’ – a trend that looks set to continue under the current government. Substantial criticisms have been raised against the targeting/audit strategies of the audit culture and other forms of EBPM, particularly in complex policy areas. This article accepts these criticisms and argues that in order to move beyond these problems one must not only look at the basic foundation of policy strategies, but also develop practical alternatives to those strategies. To that end, the article examines one of the most basic and common tools of the targeting/audit culture, the aggregate linear X-Y graph, and shows that when it has been applied to UK education policy, it leads to: (1) an extrapolation tendency; (2) a fluctuating ‘crisis–success' policy response process; and (3) an intensifying targeting/auditing trend. To move beyond these problems, one needs a visual metaphor which combines an ability to see the direction of policy travel with an aspect of continual openness that undermines the extrapolation tendency, crisis–success policy response and targeting/auditing trend. Using a general complexity approach, and building on the work of Geyer and Rihani, this article will attempt to show that a ‘complexity cascade’ tool can be used to overcome these weaknesses and avoid their negative effects in both education and health policy in the UK.

scholarly journals Domesticating the ‘troubled family’: Racialised sexuality and the postcolonial governance of family life in the UK

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 933-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Turner
Keyword(s):  
Biological Control ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
National Health ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Benefit Sanctions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Postcolonial Governance

This article examines how the UK’s Troubled Families Programme works as a strategy of domestication which produces and delimits certain forms of ‘family life’. Drawing upon critical geographies of home and empire, the article explores how the Troubled Families Programme works to manage the troubled family as part of a longer history of regulating unruly households in the name of national health and civilisation. Viewing the Troubled Families Programme as part of the production of heteronormative order highlights how the policy remobilises and reconfigures older forms of colonial rule which work to demarcate between civility/savagery, the developable/undevelopable. In examining the postcolonial dimension of neoliberal social policy, the article stresses how the Troubled Families Programme relies on racialising and sexualised logics of socio-biological control borrowed from imperial eugenics. Reading the Troubled Families Programme in this way contributes to our understanding of neoliberal rule. That the troubled family can be either domesticated or destroyed (through benefit sanctions and eviction) equally reveals the extent to which domesticity works as a key site for the production of both ‘worthy’ and ‘surplus’ life.

Channel 4 and the Red Triangle: A Case Study in Film Curation and Censorship on Television

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-498
Author(s):  
Justin Smith
Keyword(s):  
Audience Research ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Home Video ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Autumn And Winter

This article charts the history of an experiment, conducted during the autumn and winter of 1986–7, in which Channel 4 trialled an on-screen visual warning symbol to accompany screenings of a series of international art-house films. The so-called ‘red triangle’ experiment, though short-lived, will be considered as a case study for exploring a number of related themes. Firstly, it demonstrates Channel 4's commitment during the 1980s to fulfilling its remit to experiment and innovate in programme form and content, in respect of its acquired feature film provision. Channel 4's acquisitions significantly enlarged the range of international classic and art-house cinema broadcast on British television. Secondly, it reflects contemporary tensions between the new broadcaster, its regulator the IBA, campaigners for stricter censorship of television and policy-makers. The mid-1980s was a period when progressive developments in UK film and television culture (from the rise of home video to the advent of Channel 4 itself) polarised opinions about freedom and regulation, which were greatly exacerbated by the press. Thirdly, it aims to shed light on the paradox that, while over thirty years of audience research has consistently revealed the desire on the part of television viewers for an on-screen ratings system, the UK is not among some forty countries that currently employ such devices on any systematic basis. In this way the history of a specific advisory experiment may be seen to have a bearing on current policy trends.

Re-engineering health policy research to measure equity impacts

2019 ◽  
pp. 277-290
Author(s):  
Tim Doran ◽  
Richard Cookson
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Public Health Interventions ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Organizational Barriers ◽  
Analytical Tools

The determinants of health inequality have become increasingly well understood, but policy makers have repeatedly failed to address the issue effectively, and many public health interventions unintentionally worsen inequalities because they disproportionately benefit those with greater resources. This is a policy failure, but it is also a scientific failure. Although policy makers often understand that their decisions have differential impacts across society, the analytical tools used to inform policy lack a substantial perspective on equity, focusing on averages rather than social distributions, leading to inequitable solutions. In an age of social division driven by rising inequality, rigorous new methods for precisely measuring the equity impacts of health and social policy interventions are required, drawing on new partnerships between researchers across disciplines. By developing these methods, and using them to assess the effectiveness of major public health and healthcare initiatives, researchers can improve understanding of the structural, behavioural and organizational barriers to delivering equitable health outcomes. Policy makers will then have the necessary information to judge who gains and who loses from their decisions.

scholarly journals No More “Us” and “Them”: Integrating Recovery and Well-Being into a Conceptual Model for Mental Health Policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Mulvale ◽  
Mary Bartram
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Mental Health Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
International Perspectives ◽  
Health Strategy ◽  
History Of

To set the stage for this special edition on Responses to the Mental Health Strategy for Canada: Canadian and International Perspectives on Mobilizing Change, we discuss the role of ideas in the public policy literature and the influence of key ideas over the history of mental health policy. Drawing on academic and policy literature and feedback from a convenience sample of mental health policy makers, we integrate the concepts of recovery and well-being into a conceptual model that can be used by policy makers as a tool to realize the transformative ideas captured in the Mental Health Strategy for Canada.

scholarly journals Trans* policy, politics and research: The UK and Portugal

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Hines ◽  
Ana Cristina Santos
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Gender Recognition ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Activist Groups ◽  
Policy Shifts

This article explores law and social policy regarding trans* activism amongst trans* and non-binary social movements, and academic research addressing trans* in the UK and Portugal. In considering different possibilities for theorising gender diversity, this article positions a politics of difference and embodied citizenship as fruitful for synergising the issues under discussion. The authors consider recent law and policy shifts around gender recognition in each country and examine the gaps and the connections between policy developments, activism and research around trans*. Though each country has divergence in terms of the history of trans* activism and research, the article identifies significant similarities in the claims of activist groups in the UK and Portugal and the issues and questions under consideration in academic research on trans* and non-binary.

scholarly journals ‘Avoiding Fruitless Controversy’: UK Child Migration and the Anatomy of Policy Failure

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-317
Author(s):  
Gordon Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Child Migration ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Policy Failures

AbstractThis concluding chapter explores why it was that post-war child migration to Australia was allowed to resume and continue by the UK Government despite known failings in these schemes. It is argued that one factor was the sheer administrative complexity of a multi-agency programme operating over different national jurisdictions and large distances which made control and oversight of conditions for British child migrants harder to achieve. Despite concerns that the post-war welfare state would be a powerful, centralised mechanism, the history of these programmes demonstrates British policy-makers’ sense of the limits of their powers—limits arising from lack of resource, the perceived need to avoid unproductive conflict with powerful stakeholders, the wish to respect boundaries of departmental policy remits and assumptions about the value of following policy precedents. The chapter concludes by considering how fine-grained analyses of such policy failures can contribute to public debates about suitable redress.

Health Services Research – What it is, How to Do it, and Why it Matters

1994 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 214-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Lilford
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Health Services Research ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Clinical Research ◽  
Services Research ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Uk

The term ‘Health Services Research’ (HSR) has achieved only recent currency in the UK. The purpose of this short article is to explain what it is, to say how it differs from clinical research even when using similar methods, and to argue that it is likely to become of rapidly increasing importance to health policy-makers and managers.

Introduction: Hiding in plain sight or Disappearing in the rear view mirror?: Whatever happened to the revolution in information for Health and Social Care – Learning from England and Australia

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-568
Author(s):  
Rob Wilson ◽  
Susan Baines ◽  
Ian McLoughlin
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Social Care ◽  
The State ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Rear View Mirror ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
The Uk

This themed section has at its heart reflections on the development of policy of, and for, information in health and social care over the last ten years in both the UK and Australia. It addresses a set of concerns often overlooked within social policy, namely the use of information and information systems as tools by organisations, policy makers and practitioners in the modernisation or transformation of public services, including in this case health and social care. Not long ago, in both countries, information was perceived as a panacea for the problems of integrating care services between health and social care organisations and these organisations and the patient, client or user of services. The authors focus upon England and Australia and contrast them briefly with other countries in Europe where the state plays a range of roles in the provision of health and social care.

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