Important shifts in the nature of public policy-making are taking place, particularly at the local level. Increasing financial pressures on local government, the struggle to maintain public services, the emergence of new areas of concern, such as employment and economic development, and increasing partisanship in local politics, are all creating new strains but at the same time opening up new possibilities. The series is designed to provide up-to-date, comprehensive and authoritative analyses of public policy and politics in practice. Public policy involves the expression of explicit or implicit intentions by government which result in specific consequences for different groups within society. It is used by power-holders to control, regulate, influence or change our lives and therefore has to be located within a political context. Two key themes are stressed throughout the series. First, the books link discussion of the substance of policy to the politics of the policy-making process. Second, each volume aims to bridge theory and practice. The books capture the dynamics of public policy-making but, equally important, aim to increase understanding of practice by locating these discussions within differing theoretical perspectives. Given the complexity of the processes and the issues involved, there is a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. The series is focused on public policy and politics in contemporary Britain. It embraces not only local and central government activity, but also central-local relations, public-sector/private-sector relations and the role of non-governmental agencies. Comparisons with other advanced societies will form an integral part of appropriate volumes. Each book presents and evaluates practice by drawing on relevant theories and applying them to both the substance of policy (for example, housing, employment, local government finance) and to the processes of policy development and implementation (for example, planning, management, organisational and political bargaining). Every effort has been made to make the books in the series as readable and usable as possible. Our hope is that it willbe of value to all those interested in public policy and politics-whether as students, practitioners or academics. We shall be satisfied if the series helps in a modest way to improve understanding and debate about public policy and politics in Britain during the 1980s.
All children's consultations with their general practitioner over a 12 month period in a small urban practice were analysed. Overall consultation rates ranged from 2.2 per child a year for 8 to 11 year olds, to 6.8 for those under 2. Families were grouped according to their average rate of new consultation for children, standardised for age. Families with higher consulting rates scored higher on an index of economic disadvantage, with mothers who scored higher on a test of "tendency to consult" and who were less educated than those in lower consulting families. The presence of any doctor-defined "significant disease" in any child was highly correlated with the family's consultation rate.
The term racism is engaged at two seemingly independent levels of analysis within Marxism. At one level it constitutes a definite concept within some general theory of capitalist relations of production and their corresponding ideological forms. At another level these ideological forms express themselves in a range of discriminatory practices. Marxism here takes up the challenge in terms of a more practical struggle. The present article establishes the connection between these two levels of analysis. It does so in particular via a consideration of the contributions of 0 . C. Cox and E. Genovese to the field. The implications of such theoretical work are then identified in terms of a number of strategies adopted by the Left to combat racism. The deficiencies at one level are seen to generate problems at the other. Racism, it is argued, signifies an almost indiscriminate range of practices that cannot be conceived together as effects either of dominant economic class relations andlor the political will of the ruling class.
This article discusses two projects supported by the Higher Education Active Community Fund, which involved student and staff volunteers in working with local communities and community-based organisations in two London boroughs. Oral history methods were used to investigate and represent the experiences of elderly people living in Borough A and young people who have been in foster care in Borough B and their carers. Both projects involved collecting detailed life stories on video and editing these for exhibition in the public domain. The video for Borough A was to form part of the Council's website, the older people's portal. The video for Borough B was to be used to train people providing professional services to young people in foster care and to involve the young people in filming, editing and producing a soundtrack. The article discusses the aims and context of the two projects and critically reviews the learning experiences involved. It analyses issues raised by volunteering, working with local communities, and attempting to represent marginalised experience. It reflects critically on notions of community and community development and discusses relations between oral history projects and community definition, higher education and society.
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