Talking About Welfare by Noel W Timms David Watson

Author:Noel W Timms, David Watson [Noel W Timms, David Watson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138611580
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Whatever the nature of the service, activity or function, and whether it be a service in kind, a collective amenity, or a transfer payment in cash or by accountancy, we need to consider (and here I itemize in question-form for the sake of brevity) three central issues :

(a) What is the nature of entitlement to use? Is it legal, contractual or contributory, financial, discretionary or professionally determined entitlement?

(b) Who is entitled and on what conditions? Is account taken of individual characteristics, family characteristics, group characteristics, territorial characteristics or social-biological characteristics? What, in fact, are the rules of entitlement? Are they specific and contractual – like a right based on age – or are they variable, arbitrary or discretionary?

(c) What methods, financial and administrative, are employed in the determination of access, utilization, allocation and payment?

Next we have to reflect on the nature of the service or benefit.

What functions do benefits, in cash, amenity or in kind, aim to fulfil? They may, for example, fulfil any of the following sets of functions, singly or in combination:

1 As partial compensation for identified disservices caused by society (for example, unemployment, some categories of industrial injuries benefits, war pensions, etc.). And, we may add, the disservices caused by international society as exemplified recently by the oil pollution resulting from the Torrey Canyon disaster costing at least £2 million. (13)

2 As partial compensation for unidentifiable disservices caused by society (for example, ‘benefits’ related to programmes of slum clearance, urban blight, smoke pollution control, hospital cross-infection and many other socially created disservices).

3 As partial compensation for unmerited handicap (for example, language classes for immigrant children, services for the deprived child, children handicapped from birth, etc.).

4 As a form of protection for society (for example, the probation service, some parts of the mental health services, services for the control of infectious diseases, and so on).

5 As an investment for a future personal or collective gain (education – professional, technical and industrial – is an obvious example here; so also are certain categories of tax deductibles for self-improvement and certain types of subsidized occupational benefits).

6 As an immediate and/or deferred increment to personal welfare or, in other words, benefits (utilities) which add to personal command-over-resources either immediately and/or in the future (for example, subsidies to owner-occupiers and council tenants, tax deductibles for interest charges, pensions, supplementary benefits, curative medical care, and so on).

7 As an element in an integrative objective which is an essential characteristic distinguishing social policy from economic policy. As Kenneth Boulding has said, ‘… social policy is that which is centred in those institutions that create integration and discourage alienation.’ (14) It is thus profoundly concerned with questions of personal identity whereas economic policy centres round exchange or bilateral transfer.

This represents little more than an elementary and partial structural map which can assist in the understanding of the welfare complex today. Needless to say, a more sophisticated (inch to the mile) guide is essential for anything approaching a thorough analysis of the actual functioning of welfare benefit systems.

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