SOCIAL POLICY ASSIGNMENT

Social Policy Assignment

Social Policy Assignment

Introduction

The topic under study focuses on a social policy in the United Kingdom. For this purpose, social policy discussed in the paper is based on health care. The policy is “Children Act 1989”. The discussion demonstrates an understanding of what is “social policy”, focus on the historical development of childcare act in the UK, the ideological development of the policy, the principles and values which lie behind the policy, demonstrates an awareness of legislation, considers how another European country has developed its social policy related to the same theme, discusses how the policy affects people in the wider society and within their own families or communities and finally the conclusion part that summarizes the whole discussion.

Discussion

Any action or an action that shapes the distribution and access to goods and resources in order to affect the well-being of members of a society refers to as the social policy. Social policy means the strategies and legislative principles that intended to positively affect the welfare of human activities. It can also be said that a social policy is a public policy as it intends to work for public welfare (Dickens, 2010, p.114).

As mentioned, the social policy that will be discussed in the paper is “Childcare act of 1989”. The Children Act of 1989 got effective in 1991. It introduces complete alteration to previous legislation in Wales and England, with implications for the wellbeing of children. This Act establishes the freedom of families by comprehensively defining responsibilities of parents. It additionally provides support of community authorities especially for those families which require support for children. The act legislated protection of children who are open to harm and who are already suffering from some harm. There is a requirement that government must submit an annual report illustrating the progress of the child act. The report must be submitted every 5 years. The report should also contain child protection statistics (Alcock, 2008, p.67).

The ideological development of childcare act policy consists of distinctive discourses. These discourses are of the distinctive nature including bureaucratic, medical issues, humanistic and technocratic issues (Baldock, Manning & Vickerstaff, 2007, p.74). The different discourses affected the childcare act policy, which also pertains to the ideological development of the policy. For instance, bureaucratic procedures affect the policy in a way that it engages all the steps that the childcare act should undertake. Similarly, the discourse includes responsibility factor over parents and others in case issues related to childcare. The humanistic discourse pertains to the ideology of understanding or feelings of kindness that the childcare act should encompass.

Discussing the principles and values that lie behind the policy, we found that the childcare Act has following aims:

To converge public and private law into a single framework

To provide a vehicle to parent, that will allow them to challenge state intervention and achieve better child protection

To promote better partnership among parents and statutory authorities

To encourage application of voluntary-acts

To re-design the court framework in or to enhance family proceeding and protection management

One of the ...