社会服务现代化 – Modernising Social Services? Evidence from the Frontline

This 2004 report by the Centre for Public Services has been reprinted in a new book, ‘Social Services’, by Li Bing, PH.D. Vice Professor, the Department of Sociology, Beijing Administrative College. The Chinese version can be downloaded (the English version in our publications section). The report examines the implementation of the previous government’s modernisation agenda for public sector reform and gives a voice to social care professionals at the frontline of service delivery and modernisation. It gives their impressions of how the key aspects of the government’s agenda were being implemented on the ground and shows how it undermined service quality and the welfare state.

Microsoft Word Document 社会服务现代化.doc

Social Policy Association Award for Outstanding Contribution from a Non-Academic

Dexter Whitfield has received the 2011 Social Policy Association Award for Outstanding Contribution from a Non-Academic. The award “celebrates his work in campaigning, research and advocacy for fairer UK state services over 40 years and, in particular, his defence of welfare services against privatisation and marketisation”. Accepting the award, Dexter Whitfield commented “I have always believed in the importance of a methodology that combines action research, strategy development, alternative policies and trade union and community organising. The need for this four-part methodology is greater than ever given the economic and financial crisis and the planned transformation of public services and the welfare state.”

The Social Policy Association promotes the study of social policy and advances the role of social policy research within policy making, practice and wider public debates. The majority of the Association’s members are teachers and researchers in social policy and applied social science within UK higher education, complemented by a significant and growing number of members from other European, Asian and Australasian countries.