What'S Wrong With Social Policy And How To Fix It

This book argues that the financial crash of 2008-9 has exposed the disastrous consequences of applying economic theory to the collective life of societies. In seeking to manage social relationships through incentives for individual gain, market-like menus of choices and business-style sets of interlocking contracts, the model adopted by the governments of the UK and USA has subverted the basis for social policy in mutuality and membership.
This has been demonstrated by growing inequalities, by failures and scandals in the social services, by the flat-lining of measured well-being (even during the boom years), by increases in a wide range of social problems, and by public disillusion over the effectiveness of policy programmes. In the post-crash world, the political culture needs to enable the expression of collective action for the benefits of interdependence, and to overcome the threats of ecological catastrophe and divisive ideology.
Only in this way can social policy be part of an inclusive global movement to restore faith in a politics of social justice.
Bill Jordan's up-to-date, passionate and engaging argument forges convincing links between a wide range of the troubling phenomena in the public life of our times.

Bill Jordan is Professor of social Policy, School of Applied Psychosocial Studies at the University of Plymouth.

This trenchant critique shows how orthodox social policy, grounded in the neo-liberal economic model, is ill-designed to respond to the financial crisis. It should oblige all those dealing with British social policy to question the direction being taken.'
Guy Standing, University of Bath
'Breaks important new theoretical ground for a social and community-nurturing vision in the new economic era.'
Gar Alperovitz, University of Maryland and author of America Beyond Capitalism

The crash.
Chapter One: The Problem.
Chapter Two: Income, Credit and Redistribution.
Chapter Three: Services and Well-being.
Chapter Four: Global Social Policy.
Chapter Five: Sustainability - Communities and the Environment.
Chapter Six: Conclusions - Transforming Social Policy.