Summary
Contents
Subject index
The New Labour government in the UK is committed to a programme of reform of the welfare state that will pull away safety nets and replace them by trampolines, to bounce citizens back into active participation. Its regime of 'tough love' will make more demands on those claiming benefits and services, as well as clamping down on dependencey, fraud and crime. This will be done by changing the culture of welfare agencies, towards promoting achievement and independence, as well as meeting 'genuine need'. In Social Work and the Third Way, Bill Jordan provides an accessible and lively analysis of the tensions between 'toughness' and 'love' in the Third Way's political philosophy, and the problems of implementing New Labour
Capacities and Empowerment: The Contradictions of the Third Way over Exclusions and Disabilities
Capacities and Empowerment: The Contradictions of the Third Way over Exclusions and Disabilities
In this chapter we will look at how New Labour's rhetoric on social inclusion, enhancing the capacities of sick and disabled people and empowering the excluded, are implemented. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Third Way on these topics; the targeting of benefits on those in ‘genuine need’ requires them to demonstrate incapacity and disability, so they must pass tests that rule them out of most of New Labour's programmes for inclusion, which are based on formal employment. Hence the values of participation and empowerment are greatly fettered by the mechanics of welfare-to-work policies.
However, this is ...
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