Welfare, Exclusion & Political Agency (The State of Welfare)

229 Pages·1999·1.46 MB·English

by  Janet Batsleer

Welfare, Exclusion and Political Agency
As a result of research and reflection on practice in social welfare and in education
outside school, Welfare, Exclusion and Political Agency explores the connections
between professional practice and wider patterns of division, exclusion and resistance.
The chapters discuss such issues as: working-class children, competence and
citizenship, 1850–1914; colonization of the poor; the role of welfare in the internal
control of immigration; social work and social exclusion; the experience of women
practitioners in health, welfare and education; alienation and the dilemmas for formal and
informal educators, and how lesbians negotiate and experience coming out.
Welfare, Exclusion and Political Agency will be essential reading for health and
welfare professionals, academics and students of social work and social policy.
Janet Batsleer is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Community Studies and Women’s
Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Beth Humphries is a Principal Lecturer
at Manchester Metropolitan University and Director of Postgraduate Studies in the
Department of Applied Community Studies
The State of Welfare
Edited by Mary Langan
Nearly half a century after its post-war consolidation, the British welfare state is once
again at the centre of political controversy. After a decade in which the role of the state in
the provision of welfare was steadily reduced in favour of the private, voluntary and
informal sectors, with relatively little public debate or resistance, the further extension of
the new mixed economy of welfare in the spheres of health and education became a
major political issue in the early 1990s. At the same time the impact of deepening
recession has begun to expose some of the deficiencies of market forces in areas such as
housing and income maintenance, where their role had expanded dramatically during the
1980s. The State of Welfare provides a forum for continuing the debate about the services
we need in the 1990s. Titles of related interest also in The State of Welfare series:
Taking Child Abuse Seriously
The Violence Against Children Study Group
Women, Oppression and Social Work
Edited by Mary Langan and Lesley Day
Managing Poverty
The Limits of Social Assistance
Carol Walker
Towards a Post-Fordist Welfare State?
Roger Burrows and Brian Loader
Working with Men
Feminism and Social Work
Edited by Kate Cavanagh and Viviene E.Cree
Social Theory, Social Change and Social Work
Edited by Nigel Parton
Working for Equality in Health
Edited by Paul Bywaters and Eileen McLeod
Social Action for Children and Families
Edited by Crescy Cannan and Chris Warren
Child Protection and Family Support
Nigel Parton
Social Work and Child Abuse
David Merrick
Towards a Classless Society?
Edited by Helen Jones
Poverty, Welfare and the Disciplinary State
Chris Jones and Tony Novak
Welfare, Exclusion and Political
Agency
Edited by Janet Batsleer and Beth Humphries

London and New York
First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York,
NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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© 2000 Janet Batsleer and Beth Humphries, selection and editorial matter;
individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been
requested
ISBN 0-203-97858-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-19513-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-19514-4 (pbk)
Contents

Notes on contributors vii
Series editor’s preface ix
Acknowledgements xi

1 Welfare, exclusion and political agency 1

JANET BATSLEER AND BETH HUMPHRIES
2 From ‘street arabs’ to ‘angels’: working-class children, competence and 17
citizenship, 1850–1914
TOM COCKBURN
3 The colonization of the poor 35

DARYL S.CROSSKILL
4 Outsiders within: the role of welfare in the internal control of immigration 47

DEBRA HAYES
5 Clinical psychology in a cold climate: towards culturally appropriate services 59

GILL AITKEN
6 Resources for hope: social work and social exclusion 77

BETH HUMPHRIES
7 Critical professionals and reflective practice: the experience of women 88
practitioners in health, welfare and education
MARY ISSITT
8 Socio-economic factors: a neglected dimension in harm to children 102

VIC TUCK
9 School exclusion: alienation and the dilemmas for formal and informal 118
educators
CAROL PACKHAM
10 Sparring partners: conflicts in the expression and treatment of self-harm 133

HELEN SPANDLER AND JANET BATSLEER
11 Three prisoners’ stories: talking back through autobiography 147

STEVE MORGAN
12 In or out?: how lesbians negotiate and experience coming out 165

HELEN WILLIAMSON

Index 184
Contributors
Gill Aitken works as a clinical psychologist in a regional secure unit at Mental Health
Services of Salford. She has an ongoing commitment to reflect on personal,
professional and institutional assumptions and practices in order to develop more
appropriate, less oppressive service provision. She is actively involved in various
networks, lecturing and writing as part of this process.
Janet Batsleer is a senior lecturer in Applied Community Studies and Women’s Studies
at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is currently chair of FortySecond Street, a
Manchester resource for young people experiencing mental health difficulties, which
has a long tradition of participatory and innovatory practice. She is the author of
Working with Girls and Young Women in Community Settings (Arena 1996), her
attempt to prevent some recent feminist politics and activism from disappearing from
the written record.
Tom Cockburn is currently a lecturer in the Department of Applied Community Studies
at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 1992 he completed an MPhil (University of
Manchester) on children’s relationship to citizenship. In 1996 he was awarded a PhD
(University of Manchester) which was an analysis of children in Manchester from the
late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. From 1996–98 he worked on a research
project with young people in the Moss Side district of Manchester. His research
interests are with past and present representations of children and young people,
research methods and social theory.
Daryl S.Crosskill is an independent trainer specializing in working with diversity, group
dynamics and identity formation. He is currently completing a PhD thesis at
Manchester Metropolitan University which argues that ideas associated with
colonialism are relevant to the deconstruction of ideologies underpinning the welfare
state.
Debra Hayes completed a master’s degree in social work and was in the probation
service for seven years, before taking up a senior lecturer post at Manchester
Metropolitan University in 1991. She has collaborated extensively with Greater
Manchester Immigration Unit over a number of years. She has jointly organized three
conferences on prisoners and deportation, on children, social work and immigration,
and on health and immigration controls. Her PhD research is on Race, Health and
Immigration Control and she has a number of publications in this area. Debra is joint
author with Steve Cohen of They Make You Sick: essays on immigration control and
health (MMU/GHIAU 1998).
Beth Humphries is a principal lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and
director of postgraduate studies in the Department of Applied Community Studies.
She has published in the areas of research methods and in ‘empowerment’ in social
work. Her most recent book is Research in an Unequal World (1999, edited with
Carole Truman and Donna M.Mertens)
Mary Issitt is a senior lecturer in the Department of Humanities and Applied Social
Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is currently course leader in the
MA/Postgraduate Diploma in Health Promoting Practice. She worked as a practitioner
in a wide range of human service contexts prior to coming into higher education. She
has been conducting research and publishing in the spheres of competence and
reflective practice for several years.
Steve Morgan is a senior lecturer in social work and applied community studies at
Manchester Metropolitan University. He worked for ten years as a probation officer
and his research background is in penology and criminal justice policy. His current
work on prison autobiography has its roots in concern for the recognition of offenders
as credible voices in debates about crime and offending.
Carol Packham is a teacher and youth and community worker. She is senior lecturer and
route leader in youth and community work at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Her specialisms are informal education, youth work involvement with schools, and
participatory methodologies in community auditing. She was a member of Manchester
Free School and Chair of Governors at her local primary school in Whalley Range,
Manchester, where she is a voluntary youth and community worker and chair of the
Community Forum.
Helen Spandler is a research student at the Discourse Unit in the Department of
Psychology and Speech Pathology at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has
researched and written on young people and self-harm and the mental health user
movement. She has been active in socialist and mental health politics for over ten
years.
Vic Tuck is a staff development officer with Solihull Social Services Department where
he organizes child protection training. He has researched links between social
deprivation and harm to children.
Helen Williamson is a social work practitioner working for an innercity community
drugs team in Manchester. She moved to Manchester in 1978 to undertake a BA
honours degree in social science. She recently completed a master’s dissertation in
social work at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research topic was
experiences of lesbians of ‘coming out’. Before qualifying as a social worker, Helen
did a variety of work for Women’s Aid and a local HIV organization. She has a keen
interest in gender and sexuality issues and in raising their profile in social work.
Series editor’s preface
State welfare policies reflect changing perceptions of key sources of social instability. In
the first half of the twentieth century—from Bismarck to Beveridge—the welfare state
emerged as a set of policies and institutions which were—in the main—a response to the
‘problem of labour’, the threat of class conflict. The major objective was to contain and
integrate the labour movement. In the post-war decades, as this threat receded, the
welfare state became consolidated as a major employer and provider of a wide range of
services and benefits to every section of society. Indeed, it increasingly became the focus
of blame for economic decline and was condemned for its inefficiency and
ineffectiveness.
Since the end of the Cold War, the major fear of capitalist societies is no longer class
conflict, but the socially disintegrative consequences of the system itself. Increasing fears
and anxieties about social instability—including unemployment and homelessness,
delinquency, drug abuse and crime, divorce, single parenthood and child abuse—reflect
deep-seated apprehensions about the future of modern society.
The role of state social policy in the Clinton-Blair era is to restrain and regulate the
destructive effects of market forces, symbolized by the Reagan-Thatcher years. On both
sides of the Atlantic, governments have rejected the old polarities of left and right, the
goals of both comprehensive state intervention and rampant free-market individualism. In
its pursuit of a ‘third way’ the New Labour government, which came to power in Britain
in May 1997, has sought to define a new role for government at a time when politics has
largely retreated from its traditional concerns about the nature and direction of society.
What are the values of the third way? According to Tony Blair, the people of middle
England ‘distrust heavy ideology’, but want ‘security and stability’; they ‘want to
refashion the bonds of community life’ and, ‘although they believe in the market
economy, they do not believe that the only values that matter are those of the market
place’ (The Times, 25 July 1998). The values of the third way reflect and shape a
traditional and conservative response to the dynamic and unpredictable world of the late
1990s.
The view expressed by Michael Jacobs, a leading participant in the revived Fabian
Society, that ‘we live in a strongly individualized society which is falling apart’ is widely
shared (The Third Way, London: The Fabian Society, 1998). For him, ‘the fundamental
principle’ of the third way is ‘to balance the autonomous demands of the individual with
the need for social cohesion or “community”’. A key New Labour concept that follows
from this preoccupation with community is that of ‘social exclusion’. Proclaimed the
government’s ‘most important innovation’ when it was announced in August 1997, the
‘social exclusion unit’ is at the heart of New Labour’s flagship social policy initiative—
the ‘welfare to work’ programme. The preoccupation with ‘social exclusion’ indicates a
concern about tendencies towards fragmentation in society and a self-conscious
commitment to policies which seek to integrate atomized individuals and thus to enhance
social cohesion.