Welfare In Britain Research Articles

Stakeholder perceptions of primary school education about food sustainability and farm animal welfare in England

ABSTRACT Background There is growing consensus on the negative impacts of food production on the natural environment and planetary viability. UK society is also increasingly concerned about the impact of intensive farming systems on the billions of sentient farmed animals within them. In liberal democracies and capitalist economies, enlightened citizens and informed consumers are key to the solution to environmental crises, such as anthropogenic climate change. Despite this, there is minimal provision for food sustainability and farm animal welfare in England’s National Curriculum. Purpose To investigate the views of stakeholders on the provision of food sustainability and farm animal welfare education in English primary schools. Sample Ten stakeholders selected for their knowledge or interest in food sustainability and farm animal welfare education. Design and methods In-depth, semi-structured interviews, analysed naturalistically within an interpretivist framework. Results Barriers to teaching food sustainability and farm animal welfare reported by stakeholders were restraints caused by the curriculum, the need and lack of funding, a lack of teacher knowledge about the topic, and concerns about its controversy. Best methods identified for teaching were teaching from an early age and throughout all of schooling, adopting a cross-curricular approach, facilitating learning in a hands-on way, and not waiting for change from government reform. Conclusion This research informs the debate on the provision of food sustainability and farm animal welfare education in English primary schools. Given that the environmental crisis is a global one, and that sentient animals are farmed across the world, the research may also inform discussion on inclusion of food sustainability and farm animal welfare outside of the English education context.

Mapping the Coercive Turn: Universal Credit, Social Crisis, and the Politics of Welfare in Austerity Britain, 2010–2019

This article examines the politics of welfare in Britain from 2010 to 2019. Drawing on Gramscian literature, the first section outlines an original framework of the ‘divide-and-rule’ politics of welfare during the 1980s and 1990s in the United Kingdom. The second section examines the return of welfare restructuring in Britain following the 2008 global financial crisis, focusing on Universal Credit. It contends that a significant escalation of coercive social policies within the social security system undermined previous social antagonisms underpinning the political coalitions of neoliberal welfare reform. Alongside deepening economic stagnation and dislocation exacerbated by austerity after 2010, it argues that this coercive turn intensified an unfolding crisis of legitimacy. The third section examines the politics of welfare amid an unfolding social crisis in Britain. It argues that despite burgeoning socio-political discontent and the emergence of the counter-hegemonic project of Corbynism, 2016–2019 was characterised by an interregnum. With the defeat of Corbynism amid protracted Brexit negotiations, this included a period of political impasse in which popular support for welfare reform, austerity and neoliberalism were in decline, but without an attendant shift in the balance of political forces to advance an alternative hegemonic project. As a result, a deepening social crisis continued to unfold.

Bastardy and the New Poor Law: Redefining the Undeserving

The English New Poor Law, enacted in 1834, signaled a new era of welfare in England, shedding the paternalistic provision of aid that was characteristic of the Old Poor Law. Existing scholarship positions the New Poor Law as an important landmark in the capitalist development of the English economy. This paper analyzes the text of the Bastardy Clause of the New Poor Law––which overturned the existing bastardy laws and said that mothers of illegitimate children could no longer receive aid from the parish––and contextualizes it as a major rethinking of charity in 19th century England. The debate on the Bastardy Clause in the House of Commons demonstrates how English politicians perceived the issue of bastardy to be a moral, social, and economic evil. Ultimately, as this paper shows, by overturning the bastardy laws, the New Poor Law Commissioners and English politicians failed to address the root of the evil: poverty.

Factory and workshop legislation and convent laundries, 1895–1907: campaigning for a Catholic exception

AbstractConvents and convent-run institutions occupied an undefined legal space during the late nineteenth century. As homes for unmarried women, they combined religious ideas of holy seclusion with contemporary ideas of the feminine private sphere. However, women religious were also major providers of charity and welfare in Britain and Ireland, with many running charitable institutions. This brought them in closer contact with the state. As factory and workshop legislation towards the end of the nineteenth century expanded to include laundries, Catholic politicians used this ambiguous societal role to argue that Magdalene asylums deserved less inspection than for-profit laundries. In so doing, they both re-enforced nuns’ right to domestic privacy and promoted their operations as a social good. This created a legal exemption for convent-run laundries, which allowed them to operate with limited scrutiny or interference. An examination of the debates surrounding factory and workshop legislation from 1895 to 1907 exposes a precedent which continued well into the twentieth century.

‘[Her] hostess … is anxious to have her back when she is cured’: The impact of the evacuation of children on wartime local services, England, 1939–1945

World War II had a profound, but uneven, impact on the delivery of services designed to support the bodies and minds of English children. This article, which is based on...

Insights from the Historical Lived Experience of a Fragmented Economy of Welfare in Britain: Poverty, Precarity and the Peck Family 1928–1950

We draw upon a ‘small history’ of one family to throw light on lived experience of welfare in the past, and consider how it may provide some glimpses into what Britain’s current economy of welfare trajectory could mean, where the state welfare safety net has holes and an ad hoc charitable safety net is being constructed beneath them. Using archived case notes from the Charity Organisation Society across the interwar period to the comprehensive welfare state, we discuss one family’s negotiation of poverty and the fragmented economy of welfare involving nascent state provision and a safety net of myriad charitable bodies, and the need to be judged as respectable and worthy. While lived experience of inequalities of assessment criteria, provision and distribution provide some indication for the potential trajectory of contemporary welfare in Britain, towards fragmented localised settlements, the small history also reveals a muted story of alternatives and reliability.

Family Standards of Living Over the Long Run, England 1280–1850*

Abstract This article uses new wage series for men, women and children in combination with an established cost of living index and standard assumptions about family size to construct a measure of family welfare in England, 1280–1850. It asks whether this family could achieve a standard of living historically defined as ‘respectable’. It extracts information from primary and secondary sources to make adjustments for the participation rates of women and children, the varying number of days worked over time, the changing involvement of married women in paid work, and the evolving occupational structure. The resulting series is the first to depict the living standard of a representative working family over the very long run. Prior to the Black Death, this family existed just above subsistence; afterwards shortage of labour brought substantial albeit not unassailable gains. Tudor-era turmoil and constraints on women’s work pushed the family below the ‘respectable’ standard. From the mid 1600s however, the gradual transformation of the economy coincided with improved welfare. Over these centuries, it was rare for men’s work alone to sustain the family at a respectable level; women and children’s earnings were necessary. This article calls for a re-evaluation of the chronology, causes and consequences of long-run growth.

Americanising Brexit Britain's Welfare State?

AbstractWill the British welfare state revert to an Americanisation trajectory or retain features of the European model after April 2019? After a period of historically prolonged austerity and substantial working age welfare reform, with the UK facing yet another renegotiation of the social contract in a post‐Brexit world, the question of whether there remains space for an alternative to the ‘American’ model is of crucial importance. We argue that there has been a blurring of differences across the American and European welfare states in terms of working age benefits, as most countries have adopted aspects of work‐based conditionality reforms, which attach the receipt of benefits to the active pursuit of work and, to varying extents, the underlying politics of US welfare reform, where there are large coalitions supportive of more punitive policies towards low‐income adults and minorities. These trends are taking place against the backdrop of a second major shift: increasing restrictions on benefits for immigrants. This double narrowing of the welfare state, making benefits conditional for citizens and excluding those who are not citizens, seemingly sets the agenda for a more restrictive post‐Brexit welfare state. The experience of the last two decades suggests, however, that the adoption of the American model has not been wholesale; steering a middle path between punitive conditional American benefits and more traditionally generous universal benefits is on the agenda across advanced welfare states.

One British Thing: A Bottle of Welfare Orange Juice, c. 1961–1971

AbstractThis essay inaugurates a new series in the Journal of British Studies titled “One British Thing.” This short essay uses a bottle of welfare orange juice distributed sometime between 1961 and 1971 to tell a larger story about the relationship between Britain's Welfare State and the colonization and decolonization of the British West Indies. The history of the Welfare State has largely been told as a metropolitan story severed from a wider global history of empire. The empty bottle of concentrated orange juice, however, tells a different story. It exposes Britain's own dependency on its colonial subjects to provide the means of furnishing welfare benefits to its metropolitan citizens. The history of welfare orange juice thus opens up a richer understanding of the politics and economics of the Welfare State and its relationship to colonial development projects on the one hand and the slow processes of decolonization on the other.

Histories of the Irish future. By Bryan Fanning. Pp 311. London: Bloomsbury 2015. £14.99. - Welcoming the stranger: Irish migrant welfare in Britain since 1957. By Patricia Kennedy. Pp 253. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. 2015. €24.99.

Histories of the Irish future. By Bryan Fanning. Pp 311. London: Bloomsbury 2015. £14.99. - Welcoming the stranger: Irish migrant welfare in Britain since 1957. By Patricia Kennedy. Pp 253. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. 2015. €24.99.

The Working-Class Struggle for Welfare in Britain

The experience of the British working class from the late nineteenth century to the current era of austerity illustrates that for labor, the welfare state is not just a mechanism to enhance the accumulation of capital or reinforce oppression. From the beginning, it was a vital part of the class struggle—and so it remains today.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Book review: Welcoming the Stranger: Irish Migrant Welfare in Britain Since 1957 and Arrangements of the Integration of Irish Immigrants in England and Wales

Book review: Welcoming the Stranger: Irish Migrant Welfare in Britain Since 1957 and Arrangements of the Integration of Irish Immigrants in England and Wales

National survey and analysis of barriers to the utilisation of the 2005 mental capacity act by people with bipolar disorder in England and Wales

Background: The Mental Capacity Act (2005) (MCA) provides a legal framework for advance planning for both health and welfare in England and Wales for people if they lose mental capacity, for example, through mania or severe depression.Aims: To determine the proportion of people with bipolar disorder (BD) who utilise advance planning, their experience of using it and barriers to its implementation.Methods: National survey of people with clinical diagnosis of BD of their knowledge, use and experience of the MCA. Thematically analysed qualitative interviews with maximum variance sample of people with BD.Results: A total of 544 respondents with BD participated in the survey; 18 in the qualitative study. 403 (74.1%) believed making plans about their personal welfare if they lost capacity to be very important. A total of 199 (36.6%) participants knew about the MCA. A total 54 (10%), 62 (11%) and 21 (4%) participants made advanced decisions to refuse treatment, advance statements and lasting power of attorney, respectively. Barriers included not understanding its different forms, unrealistic expectations and advance plans ignored by services.Conclusion: In BD, the demand for advance plans about welfare with loss of capacity was high, but utilisation of the MCA was low with barriers at service user, clinician and organisation levels.

House of Commons report on animal welfare in England

House of Commons report on animal welfare in England

“Building beyond Brexit: what now?”

Purpose A policy insiders view on the implications of Brexit for housing and welfare in England and Scotland. Why did voters choose to reject the Eu and what happens next as the government prepares for Brexit with no clear route map and growing uncertainty. Will the housing market shrink and what changes lie ahead for housing professionals. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The author provides their viewpoint on Brexit and what is next for Britain. Findings This viewpoint discusses the potential effects of Brexit on the economy, housing, local authorities and so on. Originality/value This paper contains the viewpoint of the author.

Equine Welfare in England and Wales: Exploration of Stakeholders' Understanding

Investigating how those responsible for the care of nonhuman animals understand the concept of animal welfare is important for animal welfare improvement. In-depth interviews with 31 equine stakeholders were used to explore their perceptions and understanding of welfare. The results showed the stakeholders understood the concept of welfare in 4 ways. Firstly, welfare was understood in terms of the provision of resources—for example, food. Secondly, a “horse-centered” understanding of welfare was articulated; this understanding included the horses' mental state and was linked to natural behavior. Thirdly, the word welfare had negative connotations, and for some, good welfare was achieved through avoidance of negative states. Finally, interviewees discussed incidents that occurred in their own familiar contexts but suggested that these were not welfare problems. Evidence indicated that the ways in which equine stakeholders understood the concept of welfare might have been acting as a barrier to the alleviation of some equine welfare problems. There is a need for strategies aimed at improving equine welfare to consider stakeholder constructs of welfare and the ways in which these constructs are generated and acted upon.

Does media coverage influence public attitudes towards welfare recipients? The impact of the 2011 English riots.

Following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011, there were riots in many large cities in the UK. As the rioting was widely perceived to be perpetrated by the urban poor, links were quickly made with Britain's welfare policies. In this paper, we examine whether the riots, and the subsequent media coverage, influenced attitudes toward welfare recipients. Using the British Social Attitudes survey, we use multivariate difference-in-differences regression models to compare attitudes toward welfare recipients among those interviewed before (pre-intervention: i.e. prior to 6 August) and after (post-intervention: 10 August-10 September) the riots occurred (N = 3,311). We use variation in exposure to the media coverage to test theories of media persuasion in the context of attitudes toward welfare recipients. Before the riots, there were no significant differences between newspaper readers and non-readers in their attitudes towards welfare recipients. However, after the riots, attitudes diverged. Newspaper readers became more likely than non-readers to believe that those on welfare did not really deserve help, that the unemployed could find a job if they wanted to and that those on the dole were being dishonest in claiming benefits. Although the divergence was clearest between right-leaning newspaper and non-newspaper readers, we do not a find statistically significant difference between right- and left-leaning newspapers. These results suggest that media coverage of the riots influenced attitudes towards welfare recipients; specifically, newspaper coverage of the riots increased the likelihood that readers of the print media expressed negative attitudes towards welfare recipients when compared with the rest of the population.

Foundations of the Workfare State – Reflections on the Political Transformation of the Welfare State in Britain

AbstractThe British ‘welfare state’ has been transformed. ‘Welfare’ has been replaced by a new ‘workfare’ regime (the ‘Work Programme’) defined by tougher state regulatory practices for those receiving out‐of‐work benefits. US‐style mandatory community work programmes are being revived and expanded. This article, therefore, considers shifting public attitudes to work and welfare in Britain and changing attitudes to working‐age welfare and out‐of‐work benefits in particular. It also considers the extent to which recent transformations of the state may be explained by declines in traditional labourist politics and class‐based solidarity. Thus, we attempt to develop a richer understanding of changing public attitudes towards welfare and the punitive regulatory ‘workfare’ practices engaged by the modern state in the liberal market economy; reflecting on the nature of the relations between ideology, party policies, popular attitudes and their political impact.

Accommodating the elderly poor: almshouses and the mixed economy of welfare in England in the second millennium

This article provides an outline of the development of the English almshouse across the second millennium, and its place within the broader spectrum of social welfare. It discusses the evolution of the almshouse into its modern form, as privately endowed housing dedicated to the elderly poor. It presents the results of new research that provides a firmer quantitative foundation for consideration of the role of the almshouse in welfare history and revisits the issue of the mixed economy of welfare to demonstrate the complex relationship between public and private provision.

Concede and Move On? One Nation Labour and the Welfare State

The idea that Labour has already lost the argument on welfare with the Conservatives, and with it the general election, is probably overplayed. If truth be told, Labour's construction and subsequent defence of the welfare state has always been something of a double‐edged sword for the Party, earning it brickbats as well as support, and sometimes as stranding it in the past, committing it to promises that were undeliverable and ultimately self‐defeating. The political response by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to the welfare trap set for them by David Cameron and George Osborne owes as much to New Labour as it does to ‘One Nation Labour’. That said, the latter does seem to be informing the Party's policy response, in particular its emphasis on restoring the contributory principle. Whether, however, this is practical politics given the inherently hybrid nature of Britain's welfare state and its heavy skew toward help for the elderly is a moot point. And whether ‘One Nation’ actually helps or hinders the Party in its quest for workable policies and a winning electoral formula is similarly debateable. Certainly, however much it is tempted to do so, Labour shouldn't waste too much valuable time trying to counter widespread myths about welfare. Nor should it overreact and obsess about the issue—or, indeed, pour out detailed policy too soon, if at all. Obviously, Labour needs to provide a direction of travel. However, that should focus not so much on welfare itself but on what the Party is proposing on the economy, on housing and on wages.