The Social Fund 20 Years On: Historical and Policy Aspects of Loaning Social Security

by Chris Grover

Overview

Chris Grover critically reflects on the introduction of the Social Fund and its operation in the past two decades, engaging with the argument that was made in the 1980s that relieving need by way of loan was new in social security policy. Using primary data hitherto ignored by social policy research, he locates Social Fund loans in a lengthy history of debate about, and practice in, loaning poor relief and social security. Understanding this history will give a greater depth to our understanding of the state's purposes in relieving the poorest people as well as to our knowledge of contemporary social security policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781409494256
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	01/28/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Dr Chris Grover, Lancaster University, UK

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction; Enter loans: the Act to Amend the Laws for the Relief of the Poor 1819; Loaning poor relief; Industrial conflict and poor relief on loan; The Crossman Review of loaning supplementary benefit; Loaning supplementary benefit and strikes; The Fowler Reviews, special expenses and the antecedents of the social fund; Social fund loans: consistencies and concerns; Social fund loans; Relieving need? Social fund loans in operation; Social fund loans and financial inclusion; Conclusion; Postscript; Bibliography; Indexes.

Editorial Reviews

'In tracing Britain's history of making loans part of the array of relief offered to its most economically vulnerable citizens, author Chris Grover raises a number of important practical and ethical questions for scholars of welfare policy in developed nations... This work will be mostly of use to readers who are professional students of comparative welfare policy, and historians of the welfare state and labour policy. It is conveniently organised into chapters that may be read independently; each deals with a specific aspect of the development and use of loans as a partial provision of British welfare policy... Rather than an evaluation of the effectiveness of state-sponsored loans to the poor, this work guides the reader through the question of what is behind such a policy's formation and acceptance, and lodges each incarnation of the policy squarely within the socio-political and economic contexts in which loans became a part of British poverty policy. In so doing, readers gain an increased ability to reflect on the motivations and ethics behind poor relief strategies in complex societies while learning how loans to the poor evolved as a segment of poverty policy in the United Kingdom.' Contemporary Sociology

From the Publisher