The implementation of the NHS and Community Care Act, the greatly
increased use of voluntary sector providers and the switch from grants
to
contracts form the background to this study. The article brings together
two main themes in current social policy debate in the personal social
services: regulation and quality assurance. Contracts are seen as increasingly
significant forms of input, process and output regulation, although
their impact depends upon their type and specificity and upon the capacity
of purchasers to monitor contract compliance, and the sanctions
available to them. Clarification of the conceptual framework is followed
by the report of an empirical study of the position in a single large county.
The results from this study are then discussed in the context of evidence
from other parts of Britain and the United States. The main issues
identified in this discussion are competition, consumer choice, user
involvement, the dangers of excessive and inappropriate regulation, the
importance of trust and risk, and the relationship of resources to quality.
This article is intended to extend our previous analysis (Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 2, Part 3, July 1973) of explanations of the development of social policy. Some problems associated with the preparation of historical accounts are examined and we proceed to review the value of international comparisons of welfare developments as a device for avoiding some of these problems. We look at some examples of studies that have utilized international comparisons and the problems involved in attempting such studies. Our conclusion is that the use of the comparative method is valuable, not because it enables us to get any nearer the truth about welfare developments, but rather because the range of plausible explanations that it will generate makes us more aware of the variety of perspectives on welfare activities that can exist and of the multitude of value-systems that are embodied in these perspectives.
The resources of sociology do not appear to have been extensively or systematically utilized in the study of social policy and administration. One source of evidence for this statement is the absence of explicit references to sociological theories in some of the most well known general texts on British social policy and administration. Pinker's recent analysis of social theory and social policy also lends support to the view that there has been, and still remains, something of a division between sociologists and students of social policy and administration. He concludes that the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology (Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Spencer) had a tendency to be ‘not greatly interested…(in)…remedies for social problems’, and makes the general observation that ‘sociologists have been oddly diffident about the subject-matter of social administration’, possibly because of the latter's atheoretical nature.
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