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Social Policy + History, - Coggle Diagram
Social Policy + History
1997-2010: The Labour Government
Prior to 1997 there was no dedicated team for family policy
Labour created
2003: Minister for Children appointed
2007: Department for Children, School and Families (became Department of Education in 2010)
Finch (2003) argues that the Labour party changed family policy drastically - towards a more 'individualist' outlook
New Right
Undermined family privacy
Labour was constructing a ‘nanny state’ that interfered excessively in family life
Morgan (2007): undermined both marriage + traditional family
Biased towards single parents, dual-career families and gay people, at the expense of single-earner, two-parent nuclear families.
Labours family policy replaced individual choice with increased state control in citizens’ private lives.
Child focused
Lewis - The Labour government of 1997–2010 took the idea of ‘social investment in children’ seriously by:
Appointing a Children’s Commissioner to look after their interests,
Setting goals to eradicate child poverty.
Introducing a Child Tax Credit (in addition to Child Benefit) in 2003 for all families that pay income tax,
Feminist + New Right: mother gets given this - more likely to spend on children
Finch argues these changes recognised children as individuals
in their own right
Positive Changes 1999-2011
The number of children in poverty was reduced by 900,000, while another 900,000 were prevented from falling into poverty in the same period.
Child neglect and abuse fell
Child wellbeing (‘happiness with family’) improved in international league tables.
2010-2015: Coalition Government (Conservatives + Liberal Democrats) - led by David Cameron
They stated that society should be more ‘family-friendly’ because ‘strong and stable families of all kinds are the bedrock of a strong and stable society’
Members started to express anxiety about the quality of family life in the UK - 'broken families'
Conservatives blamed the 2011 London Riots on these families
Breakdown Britain
Report produced by The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) - a New Right organisation
A policy to help 'broken families'
Report produced in 2006 - heavily influenced by Charles Murray's notion of an underclass: underpinned by:
‘dissolution’ – because divorce was too easy to obtain
‘dysfunction’ – because parents were not taking responsibility for the behaviour of their children
‘dad-lessness’ – because too many fathers were losing contact with their children and/or were refusing to take responsibility for them
The Troubled Families Programme (2012)
Identified 120,000 households who:
Are involved in crime and anti-social behaviour
Have children who persistently truant from school
Have adults who have never worked or who are long-term unemployed and are therefore welfare dependent,
Are a high cost to the public purse in terms of what they claim from the state and other problems such as poor health.
These families cost the taxpayer £9 billion annually
2014: showing signs of success
3/4 of these families when back to their old ways
Levitas (2012) language used by the New Right is vindictive + blames social issues on these families
Economic policy + the family
The financial crisis of 2008 led the Coalition government to implement an economic policy based on ‘austerity’.
Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both.
The Coalition government cut public spending across a number of different areas including family.
Most critics agree that this austerity policy has had a negative impact on family social policy
Child Poverty
Bradshaw (2013) claims that, by 2015, cuts in public spending have had a disproportionately large impact on the poorest and most vulnerable families with children, and resulted in a rise in child poverty.
In 2013, child poverty rose by 1.6 per cent in the UK
Ripple effect
Reed (2012) predicted that, by 2015, austerity measures would result in
120,000 more workless families
25,000 more families with a mother suffering from depression
40,000 more families living in overcrowded or poor-quality accommodation
Coalition family policy
Criticism
CJS 4/10 for dealing with family breakdown in the UK
CSJ wanted Coalition government to do more to strengthen marriage + family life
Evaluating State Policy
New Right
Undermining the traditional nuclear family unit especially the traditional sexual division of labour
Leonard (feminist): familial + patriarchal ideologies still shape most state policy on the family - nuclear being most likely outcome
Nuclear family encouraged:
Allan (1985) - Over the past 30 years, tax and welfare policies have favoured and encouraged the heterosexual married couple rather than cohabiting couples, single parents and same-sex couples.
Policies such as the payment of Child Benefit to the mother, and the government’s reluctance to fund free universal nursery provision, have reinforced the idea that women should still take prime responsibility for childcare.
2016 onwards: Conservative Government
2015: David Cameron won the general election
He then stepped down after the Brexit referendum in 2016
Theresa May was elected as Leader of the Conservative Party + appointed Prime Minister 13 July 2016 - elected through party membership
Child benefits + Child Tax credit
Support provided through Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit was limited to 2 children since 6 April 2017, so that any subsequent children born on or after this date were not be eligible for further support.
Resignation
After surviving two votes of no confidence, May stepped down on May 24th 2019
Boris Johnson was elected by party membership vote.
Advocate for Brexit
COVID 19
Over 11.7 million jobs furloughed costing £70 billion
Over £9 billion spend on unusable PPE
Child poverty
Campaigns including Rashford’s, urged No.10 to ensure children had their basic needs met.
There was resistance to this but Johnson made a number of ‘U turns’ on his stance.