British drugs policy: Problematizing the distinction between legal and illegal drugs and the definition of the ‘drugs problem’.

This article draws upon an extensive literature review of the social and medical sciences, official documents and various websites to critically re-evaluate the basis of British drugs policy. The article problematizes the rationale for criminalizing certain substances and questions the distinctions created between legal and illegal drugs; in so doing, the article argues that the definition of the `drugs problem' is the real problem. It shows that the debate on illegal drugs is filled less with factual truths and more with misinformation which creates public fear and provides a questionable basis for public policy. The article questions current thinking regarding the drugs/crime relationship and concludes by exploring some implications for policy and practice.

Social exclusion and social capital: A comparison and critique

Social exclusion and social capital are widely used concepts with multiple and ambiguous definitions. Their meanings and indicators partially overlap, and thus they are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the inter-relations of economy and society. Both ideas could benefit from further specification and differentiation. The causes of social exclusion and the consequences of social capital have received the fullest elaboration, to the relative neglect of the outcomes of social exclusion and the genesis of social capital. This article identifies the similarities and differences between social exclusion and social capital. We compare the intellectual histories and theoretical orientations of each term, their empirical manifestations and their place in public policy. The article then moves on to elucidate further each set of ideas. A central argument is that the conflation of these notions partly emerges from a shared theoretical tradition, but also from insufficient theorizing of the processes in which each phenomenon is implicated. A number of suggestions are made for sharpening their explanatory focus, in particular better differentiating between cause and consequence, contextualizing social relations and social networks, and subjecting the policy 'solutions' that follow from each perspective to critical scrutiny. Placing the two in dialogue is beneficial for the further development of each.

Museums and youth: between misunderstanding and disappointment. Youth perceptions and arguments about the cultural consumption of museums in Chile

Young people are less explored in museum audience research; this is a paradoxical situation when considering its strategic location in the cultural reproduction and if considering the high performing cultural consumption compared with other sectors. The phenomenon of museums consumption by young Chileans who are self recognized as public and non-public museums is explored from a qualitative approach. It was conducted with focus groups in the three largest cities in Chile (Santiago, Valparaíso and Concepción). They identify the museum as a cultural institution in full force. However, in questioning museums activity youth reveal the specificity of their cultural matrix. This is referred to a social temporality based on the fragment, the discourse of familiarity, proximity and instead of breaking and critical. They claim a museum aesthetic / historical experience based on pleasure and enjoyment. An overview is proposed to further clarify the youth cultural consumption to characterize more precisely the place of the museum in the set, to design more effective policies museums.

Beyond Poverty: Social Justice in a Global Marketplace

The social justice paradigm, developed in philosophy by John Rawls and others, reaches limits when confronted with diverse populations, unsound governments, and global markets.Its parameters are further limited by a traditional utilitarian approach to both industrial actors and consumer behaviors. Finally, by focusing too exclusively on poverty, as manifest in insufficient incomes or resources, the paradigm overlooks the oppressive role that gender,race, and religious prejudice play in keeping the poor subordinated. The authors of this article suggest three ways in which researchers in marketing could bring their unique expertise to the question of social justice in a global economy: by reinventing the theoretical foundation laid down by thinkers such as Rawls, by documenting and evaluating emergent “feasible fixes” to achieve justice (such as the global resource dividend, cause-related marketing, Fair Trade, and philanthrocapitalism), and by exploring the parameters of the consumption basket that would be minimally required to achieve human capabilities.

The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability:Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World

Going against both the naive techno-optimist of ‘greening business as usual’ and a resurgent ‘catastrophism’ within green thinking and politics, The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability offers an analysis of the causes of unsustainability and diminished human flourishing. The books locates the causes of unsustainability in dominant capitalist modes of production, debt-based consumer culture, the imperative for orthodox economic growth and the dominant ideology of neoclassical economics. It suggests that valuable insights into the causes of and alternatives to unsustainability can be found in a critical embracing of human vulnerability and dependency as both constitutive and ineliminable aspects of what it means to be human. The book defends resilience, the ability to ‘cope with’ rather than somehow ‘solve’ vulnerability. The book offers a trenchant critique of the dominant neoclassical economic ‘groupthink’, viewing it not as some value-neutral form of ‘expert knowledge’, but as a thoroughly ideological ‘common sense’. Outlining a green political economic alternative replacing economic growth with economic security, it argues economic growth has done its work in the minority, affluent world, which should now focus on improving human flourishing, lowering socio-economic equality and fostering solidarity as part of a new re-orientation of public policy. Complementing this, a, ‘green republicanism’ is developed as an innovative and original contribution to contemporary debates on a ‘post-growth’ economy and society. The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability draws widely from a range of disciplines and thinkers, from cultural critic Susan Sontag to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, contemporary debates in green political thinking, and the latest thinking in heterodox and green economics, to produce a highly relevant, timely, and provocatively original statement on the human predicament in the twenty-first century.

Constructing a global understanding of the social ecology of leaving out of home care

Engagement with globalisation is growing in the field of youth transitions from out of home care. This includes cross national exchange of research, policy and practise, regional advocacy networking and global policy development. Furthering this emerging international child welfare perspective requires extending it to countries in the developing world and building conceptual frameworks which encompass a social ecology of care leaving, including its global dimension, the latter needs to address not only the needs, expectations and rights of care leavers but also the theories of change underpinning service design and delivery. Such a model is presented combining resilience and social capital as personal assets situated within a social ecology of support. To illustrate how this provides a means to help engage with the experience of countries where there appears to be very little information available on care leaving, a small scale South African initiative is considered. SA-YES is a youth mentoring project for young people leaving a variety of out of home placements. Planned as a three-year pilot, initial results are encouraging but require more rigorous evaluation focusing on program process and outcomes, quality of interpersonal relationships and synchronisation with cultural expectations and policy environment.

Telling stories of 21st Century welfare: the UK Coalition Government and the neo-liberal discourse of worklessness and dependency’ Critical Social Policy

Policy documents are a useful source for understanding the privileging of particular ideological and policy preferences (Scrase and Ockwell, 2010) and how the language and imagery may help to construct society’s assumptions, values and beliefs. This article examines how the UK Coalition government’s 2010 Green Paper, 21st Century Welfare, and the White Paper, Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, assist in constructing a discourse about social security that favours a renewal and deepening of neo-liberalization in the context of threats to its hegemony. The documents marginalize the structural aspects of persistent unemployment and poverty by transforming these into individual pathologies of benefit dependency and worklessness. The consequence is that familiar neo-liberal policy measures favouring the intensification of punitive conditionality and economic rationality can be portrayed as new and innovative solutions to address Britain’s supposedly broken society and restore economic competitiveness.

Using Non-Monetary Deprivation Indicators to Analyze Poverty and Social Exclusion: Lessons from Europe?

Non-monetary indicators of deprivation are now widely used in studying poverty in Europe. While measuring financial resources remains central, having reliable information about material deprivation adds to the ability to capture poverty and social exclusion. Non-monetary indicators can help improve the identification of those experiencing poverty and understand how it comes about. They are most productively used when multidimensionality is explicitly taken into account, both in framing the question and in empirical application. While serious methodological and measurement issues remain to be addressed, material deprivation indicators allow for new insights in making poverty comparisons across countries and analyzing changes over time. (C) 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Government Laws, Regulations and Policies: Small Fish in a Big Pond

Global development has, in recent years, been shaped by the rise of transnational capital. This has implications for the quality and effectiveness of those national laws, regulations and policies in place to monitor transnational capital, ensure that multi national organisations assume responsibility and hold them accountable should they fail to do so. In balancing these objectives, contrasting issues come to the fore, such as the fear of capital flight; an issue especially profound in small open economies where the balance may tip in the favour of retaining, as opposed to regulating, foreign capital.
This paper can be considered in three parts. First, the paper addresses the shift in global leadership from national governments to multinational corporations (with particular reference to the rise of the Transnational Capitalist Class). This shift will incorporate the connotations of the Third Way. In considering this ideology, it will propose the Third Way as a transition phase to a stage when government is more the “third wheel” than an equal partner in governance structures. Second, the implications of the changing nature of governance on the capacity of nation states to develop effective laws, regulations and policies is discussed which leads on to the third aspect of the paper which identifies the challenges for governments, business and society in reimagining the governance structure pertaining to law, regulation and policy and the need to reconsider existing structures in light of global shifts in power structures.
A new leadership structure, both within the national and international governance system has far reaching implications. Boundary constraints no longer an issue, the potential for equality and global democracy is huge. Instead, a post recessionary world faces new governance challenges in the shape of; legitimacy; accountability and responsibility. Capitalism has invaded government and the primary challenge will be in avoiding the same issues that have dogged our financial markets for the last number of years. The challenge then to laws, regulations and public policy is huge, especially considering that the governments regulating are smaller than those dictating agenda on a global level

Canada's Compassionate Care Benefit:Is it an adequate public health response to addressing the issue of caregiver burden in end-of-life care?

Background: An increasingly significant public health issue in Canada, and elsewhere throughout the developed world, pertains to the provision of adequate palliative/end-of-life (P/EOL) care. Informal caregivers who take on the responsibility of providing P/EOL care often experience negative physical, mental, emotional, social and economic consequences. In this article, we specifically examine how Canada's Compassionate Care Benefit (CCB) - a contributory benefits social program aimed at informal P/EOL caregivers - operates as a public health response in sustaining informal caregivers providing P/EOL care, and whether or not it adequately addresses known aspects of caregiver burden that are addressed within the population health promotion (PHP) model. Methods. As part of a national evaluation of Canada's Compassionate Care Benefit, 57 telephone interviews were conducted with Canadian informal P/EOL caregivers in 5 different provinces, pertaining to the strengths and weaknesses of the CCB and the general caregiving experience. Interview data was coded with Nvivo software and emerging themes were identified by the research team, with such findings published elsewhere. The purpose of the present analysis was identified after comparing the findings to the literature specific to caregiver burden and public health, after which data was analyzed using the PHP model as a guiding framework. Results: Informal caregivers spoke to several of the determinants of health outlined in the PHP model that are implicated in their burden experience: gender, income and social status, working conditions, health and social services, social support network, and personal health practises and coping strategies. They recognized the need for improving the CCB to better address these determinants. Conclusions: This study, from the perspective of family caregivers, demonstrates that the CCB is not living up to its full potential in sustaining informal P/EOL caregivers. Effort is required to transform the CCB so that it may fulfill the potential it holds for serving as one public health response to caregiver burden that forms part of a healthy public policy that addresses the determinants of this burden. © 2011 Williams et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Citizenship and Structured Dependency: the implications of policy design for senior political power

This paper argues that the structured dependency thesis must be extended to incorporate political power. It outlines a political framework of analysis with which to identify who gains and who loses from social policy. I argue that public policy for older people is a product not only of social structures but also of political decision-making. The Schneider and Ingram (1993) ‘ target populations’ model is used to investigate how the social construction of groups as dependent equates with lower levels of influence on policy making. In United Kingdom and European research, older people are identified as politically quiescent, but conversely in the United States seniors are viewed as one of the most influential and cohesive interest groups in the political culture. Why are American seniors perceived as politically powerful, while older people in Europe are viewed as dependent and politically weak? This paper applies the ‘target populations’ model to senior policy in the Republic of Ireland to investigate how theoretical work in the United States may be used to identify the significance of senior power in policy development. I conclude that research must recognise the connections between power, politics and social constructions to investigate how state policies can influence the likelihood that seniors will resist structured dependency using political means.

From survey to policy: community relations in Northern Ireland

Public policy is expected to be both responsive to societal views and accountable to all citizens. As such, policy is informed, but not governed, by public opinion. Therefore, understanding the attitudes of the public is important, both to help shape and to evaluate policy priorities. In this way, surveys play a potentially important role in the policy making process.

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of survey research in policy making in Northern Ireland, with particular reference to community relations (better known internationally as good relations). In a region which is emerging from 40 years of conflict, community relations is a key policy area.

For more than 20 years, public attitudes to community relations have been recorded and monitored using two key surveys: the Northern Ireland Social Attitudes Survey (1989 to 1996) and the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (1998 to present). This paper will illustrate how these important time series datasets have been used to both inform and evaluate government policy in relation to community relations. By using four examples, we will highlight how these survey data have provided key government indicators of community relations, as well as how they have been used by other groups (such as NGOs) within policy consultation debates. Thus, the paper will provide a worked example of the integral, and bi-directional relationship between attitude measurement and policy making.

(Re)-Introducing Themes of Religion and Spirituality to Professional Social Work Training in the Land of ‘Saints and Scholars’.

This chapter begins by alluding to Ireland’s historical reputation as the land of “Saints and Scholars” and then briefly charts its demise from this position. A parallel process in relation to religiously motivated provision of health and social care is outlined. The inclusion of themes of religion and spirituality within the current professional social work codes in the USA and Britain and the framework for social work training in Northern Ireland is noted. In this context the lack of any substantive inclusion of themes of religion and/or spirituality within the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree at Queens University Belfast will be situated. A series of intersecting reasons for this lack of inclusion are proposed in terms of the experience of living through the recent troubled history of Northern Ireland and a variety of biases in academic thought.
A rationale for the re-introduction of inputs on religion and spirituality is articulated in terms of the widespread resurgence of these themes within health and social care and psychotherapy literature and the new emphasis on practicing in culturally sensitive ways in Britain. The first steps to re-introduce these themes under the higher context marker of “culturally competent practice” are described and an analysis of data from the students’ feedback presented along with illustrative quotations. The dissonance between the initial misgivings of staff and the overwhelmingly positive responses of students are highlighted. The chapter concludes with a discussion of lessons learned through the process with an emphasis on how the inclusion of these themes can result in better practice for service users, including those impacted by “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland.

Combining environmental and medical datasets to explore potential associations between environmental factors and health: Policy implications for human health risk assessments

This review paper discusses the use of Tellus and Tellus Border soil and stream geochemistry data to investigate the relationship between medical data and naturally occurring background levels of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) such as heavy metals in soils and water. The research hypothesis is that long-term low level oral exposure of PTEs via soil and water may result in cumulative exposures that may act as risk factors for progressive diseases including cancer and chronic kidney disease. A number of public policy implications for regional human health risk assessments, public health policy and education are also explored alongside the argument for better integration of multiple data sets to enhance ongoing medical and social research. This work presents a partnership between the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, Queen’s University Belfast, and the nephrology (kidney medicine) research group.