Introduction to social policy-To what extent is social policy fair?

Authors Avatar by imaan786 (student)

 Introduction to social policy-To what extent is social policy fair?

The focus of this assignment will be Social policy, my hypothesis for this assignment is to explore and understand “To what extent is Social policy fair?” with reference to race/ethnicity, from this title many questions arise, for example is the welfare state racist? Is there an increase or decrease in multicultural services? Is there a need for a stronger political voice to ethnic minority communities? These questions need to be answered to come to a conclusion, however to understand this topic more clearly, I need to gain a better understanding of what social policy is, public policy is a part of social policy, however social policy deals with social issues. In Europe policies affecting the social conditions under which people are referred to as social policies. Important areas of social policy that are focused on in Europe are education, labour regulation, unemployment insurance, accident insurance and health insurance, throughout the course of this essay I hope to understand what social policy has done, and what its results are. I intend to come to a conclusion on this topic by answering as many of the questions at the beginning of my introduction as I can, I will also carefully study and analyse by gathering research from related books, articles and journals, I will also be looking at Social divisions, patterns of inequality and different sociological perspectives, for example I will be focusing on ideologies and perspectives of feminism, middle way, and anti-racism etc.  

A key point to understand when looking at Social policy, is what social policy actually is, here’s a brief explanation

                          “Social policy is the study of human well-being.”

        Dean, H. (2006) Social Policy, Cambridge, Polity p.1

From this quote we learn that social policy is focused on the concept of human needs, these needs are satisfied through the structure of social policy. The guidelines for social policy are focused on changing maintenance or the creation of living conditions that are conducive to human welfare.

Having gained a little bit of a better understanding into social policy, I then went on to gather some further research on social policy with reference to race/ethnicity related issues,

Many argue that  ethnic minorities are not considered in social policy and are left in poverty, as policies are increasingly benefiting the white middle class population, however poverty is regarded as undesirable creating a stigmatised status, and those occupying this status are considered inferior and unequal, perspectives such as the New Right reflect this e.g Murray sees young black males as prone to criminality, Murray argues that they are labelled at school and throughout their lives, there isnt any form of social policy to prevent this, Lewis’ culture of poverty thesis agrees with the New Right on this matter, as it suggests that the ethnic minority poor are both conformists, conforming to their own subcultural values, and deviants, deviating from the culture of wider society, and this all comes down to the matter that ethnic minorities are possibly not given equal opportunities and thus social policy can be proved to be unfair.

Join now!

Further research that I found on social policy with reference to race/ethnicity related issues, showed that

“Public expenditure on the social services for ethnic minorities has not achieved equality in any of its interpretations. Public expenditure on healthcare, education, housing and transport systematically favours the better off, and thereby contributes to inequality in final income.”

        The strategy of equality, redistribution and the social services, 1982, Julian Le Grand, p.137

This quote suggests that social policy is not making any progression for ethnic minority communities, and so strikes up an argument that social policy is not very ...

This is a preview of the whole essay