Exploring welfare debates

Information for lecturers

This website provides you with a range of additional resources to support your students’ learning. These can be used in the lecture/seminar room, or you can encourage your students to try them out after reading each chapter of the book, so that they can consolidate their learning.

Please use the menu on the left to navigate your way through these resources. You’ll find the following resources for each chapter:

1. Learning outcomes – These don’t appear in the book but they do appear on both the lecturer and student pages of this site. They provide a tool for checking you’re confident that your students understand the material and can apply the ideas themselves.

2. Quick review questions – These don’t appear in the book. They’re provided here to check what students are secure on and where they have gaps. Some questions are ‘multi-structural’ – i.e. designed to encourage students to consider definitions and explanations. Other questions are ‘relational’ – i.e. requiring students to build up discussion and analysis between different concepts, ideas and debates. By using the SOLO Taxonomy in this way, the aim is to foster increasingly deep learning and critical thinking.

3. Crosswords – These offer a quick-check activity to see if students have absorbed the key terms and definitions from each of the book’s Chapters 2 through to 9.  The empty crosswords and clues are downloadable as pdfs on the student pages of this site.  The solutions appear on the lecturer pages, also as downloadable pdfs.
Using the chapter

1. What are the top two or three key points in this chapter for me?

2. How can I explain the argument of this chapter in my own words?

3. How can I make use of this chapter in my own studies?

4. What remains unanswered that I might need to find out through further reading?

You can download these questions as a document for students to complete offline while reading each chapter if you wish:

Download the Word document
Download the pdf
Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

• Explain the importance of concepts for studying Social Policy and understanding welfare debates.

• Grasp the structure of the book and how this will help you study concepts.

Quick Review Questions


1. How are concepts like tea?

2. Why must Social Policy (and Social Science) students study concepts?

3. What expectations do students have of this book and course?

Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

• Describe key debates surrounding the concepts of welfare and wellbeing.

• Compare and contrast the differences between the two terms.

• Explain how the rise of state-funded welfare can be justified.

• Explain how welfare is related to the concept of social rights.

Quick Review Questions


1. Should a definition of welfare be related to and measured in terms of happiness? Justify your answer.

2. Figure 2.1 highlights four ’elements of welfare’. Can you list each of these and provide an example?

3. How would you define decommodification?

4. Compare and contrast the concepts of welfare and wellbeing. Which do you think is more suitable for informing social policy?

5. Should rights be conditional on duties, or should they be available to all regardless?

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.



Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

• Summarise the key ideas associated with entitlement to welfare support.

• Compare and contrast the different theories that can be used to debate need, equality and citizenship.

• Explain the relevance of need, equality and citizenship to welfare provision.

• Explain how need, equality and citizenship relate to each other.


Quick Review Questions


1. What are the key differences between Dean’s (2010) umbrella terms of inherent and interpreted needs?

2. Figure 3.6 illustrates the notion of ‘freedom to be’. How would you explain this idea?

3. What are the differences between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome?

4. Compare and contrast the different philosophical approaches to citizenship. Which do you agree with?

5. Should we assume all citizens are the same?

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.



Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the relationship between nation building and citizen status.

• Explain what is meant by the mixed economy of welfare.

• Compare and contrast arguments for and against universalism.

Quick Review Questions


1. Why is the form of social justice associated with a political community relevant to the development of social welfare?

2. What are the differences between liberal, corporatist-statist and social democratic welfare regimes?

3. Compare and contrast different views of altruism as part of an argument in support of welfare provision.

4. Using Figure 4.3, how can we explain the arguments in favour of state provision of welfare?

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe how so-called deserving and undeserving welfare recipients have been characterised.

• Compare and contrast the different theories relating to universalism and selectivism.

• Explain the relevance of selectivism and conditionality to welfare provision.

• Explain how and why population diversity challenges universal welfare provision.

Quick Review Questions


1. What are the main arguments in relation to the underclass thesis?

2. Figure 5.1 illustrates pressures towards selective service provision. How would you explain each pressure?

3. What are the differences between targeting, means-testing and conditionality?

4. Both the underclass thesis and the diversity thesis support selective welfare provision. Compare and contrast them. Which do you agree with and why?

5. Should welfare provision adopt progressive universalism? Explain your answer.

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the key characteristics associated with the concepts of stigma and the family.

• Compare and contrast the concepts of stigma and shame.

• Explain the relevance of the family, and familisation, to welfare provision.

• Account for the influence of welfare narratives in shaping social policies.

Quick Review Questions


1. What are the three types of stigma identified by Baumberg et al (2012)? Can you recall what each refers to?

2. Why is stigma an important concept in welfare debates?

3. Can we say there is a universal family type? Explain your answer.

4. Compare and contrast the different ideas embedded in family policy and a family perspective. Which do you agree with and why?

5. Should welfare be provided as a social right or based on a needs test (Table 6.2)? Explain your answer.

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the key ideas that are associated with the concept of crisis.

• Compare and contrast the different crisis narratives found in welfare debates.

• Explain the relevance of neo-liberalism to welfare debates.

• Explain how globalisation is relevant to contemporary Social Policy.

Quick Review Questions


1. What are the different “crisis paradigms” identified in the chapter and how would you define them?

2. Table 7.1 identifies the following characteristics of neoliberalism. Can you recall the description of each?

a. The role of the market
b. The role of the state
c. Inequality
d. Deregulation
e. Privatisation

3. Using Table 7.4, which view of globalisation do you agree with and why?

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Summarise the key elements of the risk thesis.

• Compare and contrast the different designs of welfare systems before and after the emergence of the risk society thesis.

• Explain the relevance of risk to new concepts of resilience, social exclusion and social investment welfare.

• Explain how risk reshapes welfare provision.

Quick Review Questions


1. What are the key characteristics of the risk society?

2. How has the concept of risk, and promotion of risk-taking, changed welfare provision?

3. What are the differences between a welfare society and risk society? (You can refer to Table 8.1 to help you.)

4. Is the concept of social exclusion sufficiently different to the concept of poverty? How is it useful in welfare debates?

5. Should resilience be an important concept in welfare provision? Justify your answer.

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the key characteristics associated with social control, participation and empowerment.

• Compare and contrast the different theories that inform tensions between social control and empowerment.

• Explain the relevance of participation for welfare debates.

• Explain how welfare provision can be designed to incorporate social control and empowerment.

Quick Review Questions


1. What is meant by a nanny state and a daddy state?

2. Table 9.1 outlines Foucault’s three types of power. Can you describe each?

a. Sovereign power
b. Biopower
c. Disciplinary power

3. What does Squires (1990) mean by anti-social policy?

4. Compare and contrast the different approaches represented by personalisation and co-production.

5. How is empowerment different from control? Explain your answer.

Crossword


There is a crossword incorporating key terminology introduced in this chapter on the corresponding student page for this chapter.  The solution can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

Learning Outcomes


By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe how concepts are drawn together to explore welfare debates.

• Compare and contrast the different concepts which inform welfare provision.

• Explain the relevance of concepts to Social Policy and the influence of neoliberalism.

• Explain how alternative narratives are possible.

Quick Review Questions


1. How does neoliberalism influence concepts?

2. What impact has austerity had on the promotion of neoliberal praxis?

3. What are the potential avenues for alternative narratives?